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BookDragon Coming-of-age Tag

Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Louise Heal Kawai [in Library Journal]

21 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Fourth grader he may be, but our narrator is quite the sharp observer of his surroundings. His father is dead; his mother runs a "fortune-telling and that kind of stuff" salon. She's often the recipient of his unguarded bluntness: "If video games make you stupid,...

Between the Lines by Nikki Grimes [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW "We live in the same city, go to the same school, but each of us has a different story," a student observes. "What we have in common is trying to figure out how to tell it." Welcome back to Mr. Ward's English class, introduced...

A Transracial Adoption Reader [in The Booklist Reader]

10 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Indian American, Korean, Korean American, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Now-adult adoptees who arrived in the United States from other countries are learning that their U.S. citizenship can’t be assumed. Two recent tragedies have highlighted the shocking realization: the May 2017 suicide of Phillip Clay, adopted at eight by a Philadelphia family and deported to Seoul 29...

Sweet Blue Flowers (vol. 1) by Takako Shimura, translated and adapted by John Werry

22 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

While we groupies wait for the next volume-in-translation of Shimura Takako's internationally-lauded and mega-awarded Wandering Son series (one of my personal favorites ever) from Fantagraphics, take a look at this endearing new (in English) series from manga powerhouse Viz Media about complex relationships between high...

Refugee by Alan Gratz [in School Library Journal]

13 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab, Audio, Cuban, European, Fiction, Middle Eastern, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW The term "refugee" is constantly in the news. In direct response, Alan Gratz gets personal with desensitizing statistics, policies, and politics by giving names, families, and histories to three tweens fleeing three countries during three time periods. Each fits the "refugee" label but is...

Nina: Jazz Legend and Civil-Rights Activist Nina Simone by Alice Brière-Haquet, illustrated by Bruno Liance, translated by Julie Cormier [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, European, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

A young daughter is "having a hard time falling asleep tonight." To lull her to "dream," her mother offers a story about "a baby wrapped in a white sheet and her mother smiling at her." That baby is the titular jazz legend Nina Simone. Her...

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah [in Library Journal]

27 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Arimah's debut collection comprises a dozen surprising, affecting stories. Narrator Adjoa Andoh sublimely intensifies the author's already breathtaking prose into an irresistible, spectacular performance, as she effortlessly modulates her distinctive voice, picking up genders and generations, cadences and accents, and just as easily discards...

A Bride’s Story (vols. 8-9) by Kaoru Mori, translated by William Flanagan

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Central Asian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Without a doubt, A Bride's Story is the most intricately detailed, magnificently exquisite graphic series currently on my shelves. Every volume is a lavish gift to pore over, to  enthusiastically applaud, to be gobsmackingly impressed by again and again and again. Superlatives just aren't enough. To...

Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley [in Library Journal]

22 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Emma Gregory, with her impressive range of Anglophone accents – differentiated by age, region, country – is the ideal conduit for the 10 nuanced, exquisite stories in Tessa Hadley's (The Past) latest collection. Loss of innocence looms large in many of the pieces, from a...

The War Bride’s Scrapbook: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston [in Booklist]

17 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Caroline Preston collaged combinations of vintage photos, drawings, clippings, advertisements, and all manner of 1920s tidbits in The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (2011), onto which she overlaid the text of her titular heroine’s peripatetic adventures-into-adulthood. In her sophomore scrapbook presentation, Preston displays the left-behind...

Margarita Engle’s Cuba for Young Readers [in The Booklist Reader]

13 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Jewish, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

President Obama’s historic December 17, 2014 order to “normalize relations” between the United States and Cuba began the restoration of diplomacy after more than half a century of hostile restrictions. His 72-hour visit to Havana in March 2016 – the first made by a sitting...

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo [in Library Journal]

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Columbia undergrads Lucy and Gabe meet in a Shakespeare seminar – on 9/11. Their class – including the professor who glibly asks if the pilot was drunk when his TA announces the first tower crash – is as yet unaware of the devastating reverberations to...

The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan + Author Interview [in Bloom]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

Café Leila & Beautiful Ruins: Q&A with Donia Bijan “Strange things happened when I returned to Tehran in 2010 after thirty-two years in exile,” writes Donia Bijan in her recent essay, “The Women’s Hour.” Traveling with her sister, she found her childhood home – the hospital their father built...

Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung by Min Kym [in Library Journal]

23 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British Asian, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Kym’s first violin was a paper cutout copied from an encyclopedia; her first actual instrument was a “harsh, factory-made thing” on which she immediately taught herself “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” By her first or second lesson, Kym knew playing the violin "was not simply for...

Everything You Want Me to Be by Mindy Mejia [in Library Journal]

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In sleepy Pine Valley, MN, 18-year-old Hattie Hoffman – beloved daughter, excellent student, best friend, adored girlfriend, talented actress – lies dead. Solving her gruesome murder is up to local sheriff Del Goodman, a family friend who watched Hattie grow up. Her English teacher Peter Lund...

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays by Scaachi Koul [in Library Journal]

28 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Certain authors are their own best narrators – even more true for memoirs (think Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Luvvie Ajayi). Here, Scaachi Koul’s accomplished reading comes with the bonus of regular vocal interjections from her father. With this first book, a collection of smart, sassy, revealing...

Favorite Diverse Children’s Books of 2016 [in Utah Journal of Literacy]

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Bangladeshi American, Black/African American, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Caribbean American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Indian American, Korean American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Persian, Persian American, Repost, South Asian American, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

  ABSTRACT These books feature diverse characters who – in a multiplicity of ways – suffer, learn, and generally triumph in their differences. Varying in genre from picture book to poetry, in setting from Kenya to California, and in ethnic focus from Muslim Bangladeshi to Ojibway/Anishinaaabe (Canadian...

The Idiot by Elif Batuman [in Library Journal]

18 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Turkish American

Batuman makes her fiction debut already a literary darling: a New Yorker staff writer since 2010 and the author of a much-adored essay collection, The Possessed, about the pleasurable intricacies of reading Russian literature. The year is 1995, and Turkish American 18-year-old Selin enters Harvard. She...

The Warden’s Daughter by Jerry Spinelli [in School Library Journal]

16 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In 2017, Cammie O'Reilly is an elderly grandmother visiting her childhood home with her 12-year-old granddaughter after half a century away. While the outside still looks like the same "fortress from the Middle Ages," the inside now houses birds, butterflies, and turtles rather than the...

Selection Day by Aravind Adiga [in Library Journal]

15 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British Asian, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian

*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Sartaj Garewal’s energy couldn’t be more rousingly infectious as he voices the unforgettable characters in Adiga’s (The White Tiger) latest. Raised in a Mumbai slum by a fiercely demanding father, the two Kumar brothers are destined to become cricket champions by the sheer...

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Welcome to BookDragon, filled with titles for the diverse reader. BookDragon is a new media initiative of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC), and serves as a forum for those interested in learning more about the Asian Pacific American experience through literature. BookDragon is inhabited by Terry Hong.

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