With more than three dozen publishing credits, bilingual author/illustrator Lulu Delacre (Us, in Progress) knows how to balance text and art to achieve memorable literary results. In Luci Soars, Delacre introduces a girl whose noticeable difference – she doesn't have a shadow – draws out...
*STARRED REVIEW What you might miss if you opt for the audiobook is a rather unexpected table of contents page, on which every chapter title is a (western) literary classic, from The Picture of Dorian Gray to The Iliad. Books, indeed, guide debut author Phuc Tran’s life, especially as...
Keller's narrative can't be faulted – the story is achingly gorgeous. A widowed Korean American mother and her two mixed-race daughters move from California to Washington to live with their glamorous, unconventional Halmoni – grandmother" in Korean. Older sister Sam – suffering from sullen teenagerhood...
Greta Jung energetically embodies 11-year-old Yumi Chung's evolution from quiet odd-girl-out to feisty stand-up-comedian-in-the-making. At her exclusive L.A. private school, Yumi is rarely noticed, except by the bully harassing her as "Yu-MEAT" (for her barbecue-scent-infused clothing from helping at her family's Koreatown restaurant) or "Top...
He’s “something like a six-legged beast made of pure darkness,” but come morning, he’s back to being “too serious” middle-schooler Adachi. More observer than participant among his peers, he keeps silent as the class pariah, Yano, is bullied almost daily. When a few boys, claiming...
*STARRED REVIEW Novels featuring neurodiverse protagonists are claiming more space on both adult and children’s shelves. The most common underlying message encourages kindness and empathy, despite obvious, sometimes impenetrable, differences. In what might be the first novel to feature a protagonist with alexithymia – an inability...
Fan Fiction, 50 Years Later Almost two decades have passed since Linda Sue Park became the first Korean American – and only the second Asian American – to win the Newbery Medal, in 2002 for A Single Shard. She's since published dozens of titles (Gondra's Treasure; Forest of...
Afaf Rahman, the principal of suburban Chicago’s Nurrideen School for Girls, takes a few minutes alone for prayers, until gunshots shatter her peace. Palestinian American Sahar Mustafah’s first novel opens with the terror of a school shooter and concludes with Afaf’s eventual return to her...
Yes, it's almost two inches thick and more than 400 pages, but that shouldn't deter readers from procuring this book promptly. Chan Ho-Kei's second thriller available in the U.S., Second Sister, is virtually irresistible, with twisty-turny, didn't-see-that-coming manipulations guaranteed to keep readers wide awake into...
*STARRED REVIEW Two star-crossed seniors just want to dance together at prom. Emma lives with her grandmother since her parents rejected her when she came out, but the bullying at school has never stopped. She and student council president Alyssa are in love, but Alyssa’s fear of...
*STARRED REVIEW Although set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. In such an all-too-familiarly indifferent environment, lauded Korean writer Kim Sagwa (Mina, 2018) introduces three misfits: two teen girls and a socially-outcast,...
Amy Sarig King’s (Me and Marvin Gardens) second middle-grade title explores especially mature subjects – infidelity, parental missteps, mental illness, genetic inheritance, violent triggers – with effective, age-appropriate awareness. On January 18, 2019, "everything changed" in the Johanson home. While 12-year-old Liberty and her nine-year-old...
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women gets a diverse contemporary makeover in Hena Khan’s (Amina’s Voice) latest middle-grade novel, relocated to Atlanta, featuring the Muslim Pakistani American Mirza family’s four daughters – Maryam, Jameela, Bisma, and Aleeza – with their father working in Abu Dhabi, and...
Karina and Chris are next-door neighbors and attend the same school, but they “have [their] own paths”: Karina – ebulliently voiced by Priya Ayyar, who shares her character’s Indian American ancestry – is drawn to photography and books; Chris – earnestly narrated by Christopher Gebauer...
*STARRED REVIEW It’s 1989 and AIDS is a death warrant, but first love knows no limits. Despite a teeny little blip when Lauren Ambrose mispronounces “Audre Lorde,” the cast of Abdi Nazemian’s latest presents in near-perfect pitch. Ambrose is fashion-forward creative genius Judy (named after Garland),...
*STARRED REVIEW The presentation is exquisite: slightly smaller than a single hand, Hiromi Kawakami’s spare text is interrupted by Takako Yoshitomi’s delightful two-color illustrations of mostly geometric shapes with anthropomorphized additions. Subtitled “A Folktale,” these less-than-100 pages easily stand alone as a parable about memory, mythic...
Happy final Friday of Pride Month. Wow . . . that went by quickly! I have 25 (no lie!) more books on, under, next to, and all around my desk that I will not be covering here, which is actually a good thing, because that’s proof that...
Just about everything is new for Zenobia: she's moved to a new state (from Arizona to Maine) and is starting at a new middle school. She recently lost her widowed father, and is getting used to her new guardians, Aunt Lucy and her wife, Aunt...
Organized by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month, in April, has been celebrated annually since 1996. While reading, writing, even performing poetry should be a year-round activity, National Poetry Month is a welcome catalyst to get verse newbies and doubters interested and involved. In...
It's the first day of school again, and Emoni Santiago tells her young daughter Emma, more commonly called Babygirl, "make sure you're nice to the other kids and ...
