Minn & Jake’s Almost Terrible Summer by Janet S. Wong, illustrated by Geneviève Côté [in Bloomsbury Review]
Written in sparse free verse, Janet Wong perceptively captures the elliptical communication of two best friends – caught in that nebulous zone of preteen angst – whose summer starts off...
Based on the real-life experiences of author Guo, this beautifully illustrated thin volume captures the seven-year-old life of Little Leap Forward in 1966 Beijing. Playing by the riverbank one day, Little Leap Forward's best friend Little...
Eighth-grader Yumi Ruíz-Hirsch, a Japanese/Cuban/Jewish American hapa, has a life as complicated as her heritage. Her no-nonsense mother's got a new boyfriend. Her rock-'n-roll songwriter father hasn't outgrown adolescence. Her friends all seem to be going...
Helen Kimura has survived and thrived by using her irresistable beauty to get exactly what she wants. Steely and independent, she's never succumbed to anyone else's expectations but her own. Her four daughters by four different...
Ethnic chick-lit favorite
For years, 13-year-old Korean adoptee Lauren has endured the usual racial taunts for looking so different amidst her homogeneous fellow students in suburban Connecticut. Her popular and fearless best friend has done a far better job...
After he swears off girls forever, loner – some might even call him a loser – Albert Kim finds first love over the summer after sophomore year ...
High school senior Patti Yoon, the perfect Korean American daughter studying for her perfect SAT scores, perfectly playing the violin, aiming for HYP (KorEnglish for HarvardYalePrinceton), and (of course!) never talking to boys, discovers her feisty...
Thank goodness the Pulitzer-winning Jhumpa Lahiri went back to her short story roots: The Namesake was okay, but disappointing after The Interpreter of Maladies which was such a shockingly remarkable debut.
Holy moly, now comes this unforgettable...
You can't believe how scary this book can be, especially if you have children of your own. The eponymous boy of many names in

When the brutal dictator Idi Amin violently grabbed power over Uganda, he declared in August 1972, that within 90 days all Indians would have to leave the country. Part of Uganda’s population since the 16th century,...

The ever-prolific Laurence Yep has penned a brand-new American Girls series featuring Mia, a talented skater who chooses figure skating over the ice hockey she’s grown up playing with her three older brothers. Dedicated and tenacious,...
Meet Kimberly Keiko Cameron, aka “Skim,” a wannabe witch navigating her angst-filled teenage life in a 1990s Toronto high school. In this book created by cousins Mariko and Jillian, making their fabulous collaborative debut, Skim manages...
Get ready for some rollicking fun with this debut novel about super-overachieving Maya, the perfect daughter who gets all As and still manages to help out in her parents’ Thai restaurant.
One small slip-up while her parents...
The Cultural Revolution was a harrowing decade of Chinese history. Moying Li recalls her life from ages 12 to 22, when she bore witness to brutal atrocities against her family, friends, and entire community – and...
Arn Chorn-Pond was just 8 years old when he was torn from his family in 1975 as the Khmer Rouge invaded Cambodia. He survives years of unimaginable atrocities with only rare moments of music to soothe...
A 2007 Booker Prize nominee, Sinha’s third title is presented as a series of 23 directly transcribed tapes, spoken by a creature called “Animal,” who was once human before an industrial chemical catastrophe (inspired by the...
Through loosely connected short stories, Wang's second collection straddles both worlds of her native China with her adopted America – and the undefinable spaces in between. From the young Chinese girl who sees too much in...