We review new titles, but we also talk up good books that may have gone overlooked.
We read for youth, for kids and for adults.
Check back. Reviews are posted often.
My Granny Went to Market: A Round-the-World Counting Rhyme by Stella Blackstone and Christopher Corr
Young readers will wish this funky, traveling diva was their very own granny!
Join Granny as she buys a flying carpet in Istanbul then proceeds to whisk about the world picking up four Chinese lanterns, eight Australian boomerangs, ten Peruvian llamas and much more! By the time she gets home, her flying carpet is loaded with global goods.
The rhyming element makes this a fun read anytime, but the story easily lends itself to a teachable moment: Haul out a map and chart Granny’s escapades.
Tree-ear lives in a 12th century Korean village. Even though he longs to be a potter, his dream job seems out of reach. After all, he is just a poor orphan living under a bridge.
Then one day he breaks a bowl made by Min, a respected potter in town. Because he has no money, Tree-ear has to work off the debt of the bowl as an assistant to Min.
At last, Tree-ear gets to learn the treasured art of pottery. When he is sent to the Imperial Court to show off Min’s work, Tree-ear begins a journey that may shape his destiny.
I liked this book. It had a believable setting and I learned a lot about ancient, Korean culture.
Tami has 90 days to find a husband. That’s how long her tourist visa to the U.S. lasts and she certainly doesn’t want to return to life in her native Iran.
Romance is not a top priority when it comes to marriage, preaches her sister Miriam who is already married and living in Tucson, staying in America is.
Tami has no choice but to agree. She’s ready to trade love for a green card, but then she meets Ike, a barista at the Starbucks near her English class.
Ike is handsome, friendly and off-limits. He’s American, which means he could supply that needed green card, but it also means he probably wouldn’t understand Tami’s predicament and offer marriage on a whim. Or would he?
The plot is fairly obvious, with a few twists along the way. The best part of the book isn’t the love story, but the insights Tami offers as to her attempts to reconcile her confining, yet familiar, Iranian sensibilities with the more open, and often brash, American ideas she encounters along the way.
There’s a small amount of graphic language in the book, which might take it out of the running for a younger student, but it’s also an appealing, quick read.
Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed
Illustrated by Doug Chayka
After the war in Afghanistan killed her father and sister, Lina flees to a refugee camp in
Pakistan with her mother and baby brothers.
She loses her shoes along the way and spends the next two years in the camp going barefoot.
One day, a shipment of donated clothing arrives. Lina scrambles for something new, and is able to grab one sandal. When the crowd clears, she spies the matching shoe on the foot of another girl.
Instead of fighting over the shoes, the two girls decide to share the pair. They become friends and spend much of their time together until Lina’s family learns they’ve been chosen for asylum in
America .
Now the girls must decide what to do with their one pair of shared shoes.
Visit Karen Lynn William's web site, where you can download a teacher's guide that accompanies the book.
This is a very good novel about Binh, a Vietnamese girl who lives in Vietnam with her family. Her family is so poor that it can not afford to send Binh to school! She has to work on the street selling fruit.
One day, Binh’s grandmother says that her oldest daughter is coming to visit. Binh didn’t even know this aunt existed! Di Thao (the aunt) lives in
America
and hasn’t seen her mother in over 30 years!
Binh's family expects Di Thao to bring them lots of gifts and money. They think she must be rich because she lives in
America
, but Di Thao isn’t rich and she doesn’t give them money when she comes, which makes Binh’s family angry.
Over time though, Binh and Di Thao become good friends and really get to know one another. Binh realizes that not all gifts have to do with money.
I really enjoyed this book because it had a lot of Vietnamese words in it. This made the book seem even more real than it already did!
I also really enjoyed how the book had a lot of twists and turns and it helped teach me more about the Vietnamese culture. I would recommend this book to girls and boys ages 11-14!
I picked this book solely because of its name:
Easter Island
.
I want to go there, and since it costs an arm and a leg to do so, I spent my money on the book instead. I’m glad I did.
But I didn’t feel that way right at first. I will admit I had a hard time getting into the story. Yet I stuck it out and fell in love with the book, so much so that I didn’t want it to end, and when it finally did, I couldn’t read anything else.
A week passed before I could say goodbye to
Easter Island
and pick up something new.
Part of the reason I had a hard time getting into the story is that it’s split between two women living 60 years apart. The chapters alternate so that each woman gets equal say, but in the beginning, the technique had me wishing I could just continue with one storyline and not keep jumping around.
However, as the book progressed, the trick started to make sense and I felt the women, and the chapters, merging toward something big.
This is a romantic book, and it's also a historical and scientific novel about the island's geography, ecology and anthropology.
I found it all together fascinating, and now, more than ever, I want to go to Easter Isalnd.
Waiting for Mama by Lee Tae-Jun
Illustrated by Kim Dong-Seong
This story was first published in a Korean newspaper in 1938 by a man still considered to be one of his nation’s premier writers. In it, a small boy waits for his mother at a streetcar stop.
Every time a car pulls up, he cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of his mom, but she never comes and she never comes. Eventually, it begins to snow.
The little boy grows cold but he doesn’t give up hope. Only watchful eyes will figure out the story how the ends as the words stop before the final page.
The illustrations capture the feel of a busy Korean city in the 1930s and the story, while written in English, is also written in Korean characters, making the book distinctly bilingual.
In the heart of
Pakistan , life as a girl is anything but easy. After her brother is wrongly accused of assault, Nadira is the one who is punished by four brute men. They leave her with three scars. The one that is most prominent is the one on her face in the shape of the moon.
One of the only lights of hope she has left is her younger brother, Umar. When he is kidnapped to be used as a camel rider, she knows she must go to any lengths to get him back.
In this story of love and strength, Nadira shows that you don’t have to resort to violence to get what you want. Although she endures brutality all her life, this young woman knows there is power in words and learning.
This book touched me, and it gave me a good sense of a different culture and life. I would recommend it for boys and girls ages 12 and up, especially those who are interested in adventure and other countries.
It really sucked me in, and I didn’t want to stop reading even when the writing stopped.
When a Mexican man dares cross the border to find work and money in the
United States , what happens to the family he leaves behind?
It’s a worthwhile question and one that doesn’t get much play in the American media. Reyna Grande’s debut novel, Across a Hundred Mountains, however, asks the question. Her answer is both highly disturbing and hopeful.
Young Juana García wants nothing more than for her father to return from
California as his departure from their small town, Mexican life set off a startling chain of events that she is helpless to stop. Without her dad, her life unravels.
Adelina Vasquez also lost her father to the lure of
California . Yet older and more confident than Juana, she sets out to cross the border, find her father and bring him home.
The novel moves quickly as the chapters are fairly short. Even so, haunting details are packed into each scene. The author’s bio says that she herself immigrated to the United States from
Mexico when she was just nine. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of this story was her own.
This title would make for a very lively book club discussion, and while it would certainly hold the interest of a student reader, a couple of the chapters do involve prostitution.
Tunisia is just the place that 12 year-old Ireland-native, Benny Shaw, does not want to go. Because his father’s job hangs on the move, Benny has no choice. He has to move to Africa.
Now Benny must suffer a new town and new surroundings. No one in Tunisia has any interest in Benny’s favorite sport. His new teachers don’t appreciate his sarcasm (and they might be crazy). Benny is not at all happy in this new place, until he meets Omar.
Omar is a Tunisian youth who learned English by watching stolen cable television shows. Benny and Omar become fast friends and their antics are soon the blight of the town. However, they are forced to face reality when one of their pranks pulls them into a dangerous situation that pits them against a formidable enemy: the law.
I liked this book for its relatable characters and insight into a foreign culture. It’s good for boys and girls ages 11 – 14.
The Donaldsons and the Yazdans are two very different families. On the surface, they have little in common. One is American through and through; the other immigrated from Iran just a generation ago.
However, the families come face to face in the Baltimore airport as they wait for the Korean-born baby girls they are each adopting to arrive on the same plane. Upon the babies’ arrival, new-mom Bitsy Donaldson is so excited that she blurts out an invitation asking the Yazdans to her home for an “arrival party.” And so begins an unlikely friendship between the two families.
The book unfolds over the course of about six years as the families continue to meet and celebrate their daughters’ arrival. The friendship is strained several times as the families pit their cooking skills, party-throwing abilities and parenting styles against each other. Along the way, each family’s understanding of what it means to be an American is tested.
Digging to America was an enjoyable read, perfect for an airplane, a book club or snuggling under a quilt and keeping warm. It’s suitable as well for a high school reader.
