Despite his prestigious college degree which should have guaranteed him a bright future, Azel is unable to find meaningful work in his native Tangier, a city in northern Morocco. Mired in self-absorbed disappointment, he spends his days and nights lost in women, wine, and song,...
Through a collection of sparse free verse, Cheng captures a family in crisis. Ann, not yet 15, can't tell her friends that her mother just lost her breasts to cancer. But everyone seems to know already, asking after her mother and bringing chili with beans...
Not only will you be unable to put this down, you'll have to be careful to remember to breathe while reading this unforgettable debut novel written entirely in free verse. By age 10, Matt Pin has already had a harrowing life as a child of...
Just to see what I might find, I went through the books I've included thus far and among almost 400 entries, I couldn't find more than a handful of titles that have an older protagonist. As the over-65 population in the U.S. has been the...
A gorgeously rendered collection of poems that capture the colorful life of Nesta Robert Marley, born in 1945 to a young island girl just 18 and a 63-year-old British white man in a small town in Jamaica. Although his father quickly abandoned the young family,...
Without giving too much away, I have to say that this heartfelt debut has one of the most touching first-kiss scenes ever: up on a snowy mountain under a bright clear sky, having just taken a tumble while skiing, making snow angels and laughing ...
Lac Su is a survivor of things so harrowing that just recounting some of those experiences, even from the distance of a keyboard tapping out a review of his memoir, I Love Yous Are for White People, makes the heart wince. As a 5-year-old immigrant to...
A fabulous biography for the youngest readers about the first-ever bonafide Asian American superstar. And what a figure she was ...
I'm getting on the Shamsie-bandwagon a little late ...
For about-to-turn-sweet-16 Belly (no one calls her Isabel), summers at the beach is where her real life happens. The rest of the year pales to comings-and-goings of the large rambling seaside house, populated by two best-friend mothers and their two children each for the three...
HOLY MOLY! And I was worried that things couldn't get better after Volume 001. Can we say WOW together? Even if you're not a manga fan, go get this series. I grabbed the original Tezuka Astro Boy series to read again, too, while I'm waiting for...
Young Cora is tired of just licking the spoons and not being able to really help in the kitchen. One day when her four older siblings are all out of the house, Cora sees her chance to make something special with her mother, just them...
Already a many-time-many-variety award-winner in her native Australia, Alice Pung's debut memoir arrives Stateside filled with humor and bittersweet grace. Born one month after her family arrived in Melbourne, Australia, after fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia, Pung's father chooses her name for "a story...
Here's a new perspective on the adoption experience: an older-sister-to-be marks off the days, one by one, as she and her father and grandparents make special preparations for the return of her mother who will be bringing her new sibling from Korea. Yumi Heo's illustrations...
With their father unable to find a job in Delhi, Asha, her older sister Reet, and their mother must go live with relatives in Calcutta while her father travels to New York in search of new opportunities. He hopefully promises that reunion is not far...
Walking home one day from school on the violent streets of Chicago, 14-year-old Cashay loses her beloved younger sister to a stray bullet. She would have done anything for her sister – she even purposefully flunked a grade so they could be in the same class. She...
Eight stories feature eight teens from eight different countries coming of age during a time of uncertainty and tumult in their native Middle East countries. In the title story, young Amal of Baghdad, Iraq, must find the very best gift for her departing literature teacher even...
I have to say it: ‘Yoon’ rhymes with ‘swoon’ for a reason! ...
The good news is you will probably find Malindo Lo's young adult debut hard to put down. The bad news is that you will probably find it hard to find at all. At least for awhile ...
Anju Melvin, used to being first in the classrooms of her hometown of Kumarakom in India's southern state of Kerala, wins herself a scholarship for a year aboard at an elite private high school in Manhattan. But what clinches the award is not her own...
