Prairie Lotus

 Prairie Lotus

By Linda Sue Park

I think this book is wonderful! It is a compelling, interesting story, and also tackles some big issues that were relevant in 1880 and are still very relevant today.

Hanna and her father move across the West from Los Angeles, landing in a tiny town called LaForge, in Dakota Territory. Hanna's mother, who died a few years prior, was half Chinese and half Korean, while her dad is white. In LaForge in 1880 there are no other Asians, and Hanna faces racism from the white townspeople. She notices American Indians facing similar injustices.

But Hanna is determined and strong, standing up for herself and committed to helping her dad establish a successful dress-making shop in town.

This story counters Laura Ingalls Wilder's popular "Little House" books, contributing a rich new perspective in historical fiction.

Pie in the Sky

Pie in the Sky 

By Remy Lai

I really enjoyed this interesting story of a boy who moves with his mom and little brother to a new country, where he doesn't know the language or have any friends.
Jingwen (age 12) loves to bake, and by planning and secretly baking elaborate cakes he copes with all of the strangeness of his new home. Making cakes also allows him to grieve for his father, who died before he could open the bakery of his dreams.
This story is told partly through cartoons and other pictures, which comically illustrate how Jingwen feels like he is living on another planet!

Listen, Slowly

Listen, Slowly
By Thanhha Lai

Thanhha Lai also wrote Inside Out & Back Again, a novel in verse (poetry) which I loved. This story Listen, Slowly is not in verse but touches on similar themes of family, adjusting to a new culture, and friendship.
The main character is Mai, a twelve-year-old Vietnamese American girl from Laguna Beach, California. Instead of hanging out at the beach with her best friend and new crush, Mai is sent to Vietnam with her grandmother to spend the whole summer in a tiny village--where she can't even communicate very well with the locals. Despite her misgivings about Vietnam, Mai makes some new friends (and rethinks her old ones) and learns some important stuff about her family's past. This novel is really funny!

Wishtree

Wishtree

By Katherine Applegate

This is a sweet and funny but also very poignant tale of a changing neighborhood, told from the perspective of a 216-year-old oak tree named Red.
After a new family--who happens to be Muslim--moves into the neighborhood, a vandal carves a mean-spirited "Leave" into the tree's trunk. Red and their animal companions try to help the new family feel more acceptance by coming up with an action plan or two (or three) that involves some real creativity!  

Inside Out & Back Again

Inside Out & Back Again
By Thanhha Lai

This is a beautiful story, in verse, of coming to the United States from Vietnam just at the end of the war, in 1975.
Ten-year-old Ha, along with her mom and three brothers, flees Saigon and survives a harrowing boat ride--eventually ending up in Alabama. There, she struggles to be included in school and learn English while suffering the intolerance and racism of many neighbors and schoolmates.
Stepping into Ha's shoes, we can understand how it feels to have to start over from scratch, leave one home behind and build another, and the power of kindness and compassion.

Refugee

Refugee
By Alan Gratz

We hear a lot about refugees in the news--all over the world people choose to leave their homes or are forced from their homes because of war and other violence, unfair government, religious beliefs, or ethnicity.
In Refugee, Alan Gratz tells the stories of three children and their families: Josef, fleeing from Nazi Germany in the 1930s; Isabel, fleeing Cuba in 1994; and Mahmoud, fleeing Syria in 2015. Each of the journeys is dangerous and terrifying, heartbreaking and true-to-life.
Although the three main characters live in different time periods in history and travel in separate parts of the world, their alternating stories overlap in surprising ways.
Get ready to read this powerful book quickly, because it is hard to put down. And get ready to have a fuller understanding of what people are able to endure and overcome, everyday. 

The Sun is Also a Star

The Sun is Also a Star
By Nicola Yoon

If you're in the mood for a love story, this may be it.
Told from many perspectives, about lives that intertwine in surprising ways, this story takes place all in one day in New York City.
Natasha, a teenager originally from Jamaica, loves facts and is determined to be a scientist. She is also living undocumented with her family in the U.S...and about to be deported. So when she meets Daniel on the street, it's not really a great time to start up a romance.
Daniel, however, is love-struck. He doesn't know the whole story about Natasha and even when he does, he won't give up. His own challenges with his Korean-American family and their expectations of him propel him to pursue a relationship with Natasha despite all odds...
Are Natasha and Daniel meant for each other? What is the Universe trying to do??!

Ms. Marvel

Ms. Marvel #1

By G. Willow Wilson
Illustrated by Adrian Alphona

Get ready to be impressed if you have not already heard about Marvel's new superhero Ms. Marvel!
Kamala Khan, a Pakastani-American teenager from Jersey City, NJ, feels like she doesn't quite fit in with most of the other students in her high school; She can't go to parties, she can't eat bacon (her parents are loving but strict, and the family is Muslim), she doesn't feel as devout as her brother and friend Nakia.
After a green misty bomb explodes in her city one night (bringing the new Age of Inhumanity) Kamala is mysteriously given special powers...Kamala loves the original comic book Ms. Marvel--aka Carol Danvers--but is completely surprised when she herself is transformed into Ms. Marvel!
Being a superhero is not all it's cracked up to be, discovers Kamala, and she must figure out ways to make her  new powers work; maybe by starting to be more accepting of herself!

I Lived on Butterfly Hill

I Lived on Butterfly Hill
By Marjorie Agosín

This is a fictionalized account of a real dictatorship that happened in Chile, a beautiful country in South America. In the novel an 11-year-old girl named Celeste, from Valparaíso (the "San Francisco of Chile") experiences the disappearances of friends and neighbors as the General takes power over her country. Eventually her own parents, who are doctors helping the poor, are forced to go into hiding--and Celeste moves north to Maine to live with her aunt until Chile is safer for her family.
I Lived on Butterfly Hill is slow-paced, written by a Chilean poet and writer, and it has lovely illustrations throughout the story.
Celeste's experience of living far away from her parents--not knowing where they are hiding, for two years--and learning to adapt in a new country is very moving. 

The Great Brain

The Great Brain
By John D. Fitzgerald

This book, the first in the humorous Great Brain series, was published way back in 1967 but takes place when the author was a little boy, growing up in small town Utah way, way back in 1896. I learned a lot about what life was like back then--getting the first indoor toilet in town, making homemade ice cream with a wooden, crank ice cream maker and ice from a frozen pond, and the types of games kids played before there was television or--gasp!--computer games. However, the types of games include things that are kind of unacceptable nowadays, like "Cowboys and Indians." There are many references to Indians, in fact, and many of them are not very kind or accurate. But that's how a lot of white folks--especially those new to the West--viewed the local tribes, so it gives a critical reader something to think about.
Mostly the story is about little John D. getting swindled by his older brother, Tom, who is a smart kid, and always looking for a way to make money (a few pennies, or a whole dollar was a LOT of money back then!). There are other important--and tragic--parts of the story, however, like when the mostly-Mormon community realizes a Jewish man new to town has allowed himself to starve to death rather than ask for charity. Or the cruel treatment of a family of Greek immigrants by some of the townsfolk.
All in all, The Great Brain is a surprisingly funny tale of brotherhood, childhood, and changing attitudes in small town America at the turn of the last century.

The Arrival

The Arrival is told purely through pictures--no words at all. The illustrations, as usual, are captivating, whimsical, and full of wild details. This is the story of one man who leaves his wife and little daughter to seek out a better life in a new place...the settings are fantastical, with creepy beasts and other threats, and bizarre contraptions for traveling, and everyday use. The man must make his way through this strange new "city", and luckily he meets some other immigrants who help him out. They tell their own stories of arrival. Finally, the man has enough money to send to his family in a "letter," and he waits for their arrival...This graphic novel really blew me away, I have to say. It is beautiful.

The Arrival By Shaun Tan
I just love Shaun Tan's books. And this one is really brilliant.

Strudel Stories

I found this little book in the library when I was putting One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street back on the shelf (see previous post), and it was a real treat to read another of Joanne Rocklin's books.

Strudel Stories
By Joanne Rocklin

If you love stories and you love to bake (like me!) you will probably enjoy this sweet collection of tales of a Jewish family, short stories that are baked into the layers of generations of homemade apple strudel and passed down orally from one relative to another.
Some of the stories are humorous, some sad...they cover ghosts, the brutalities of war and persecution, and the hardships of immigrating to a new country. But all of the stories, however bittersweet, are testaments to the strong and enduring human spirit.

Seedfolks

Seedfolks
By Paul Fleischman

Told through short chapters and many different perspectives, this is a sweet story of a diverse group of Cleveland neighbors coming together to build an urban community garden.  Thirteen different voices include a pregnant teenager, an old man, recent immigrants with tough stories, and a young girl trying to connect with her deceased father.
(ISBN: 978-0-06-027471-9)

American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese
By Gene Luen Yang

A funny, poignant, true-to-life-mixed-with-some-fantasy graphic novel about a Chinese American teenage boy coming to terms with who he is.  Along the way he encounters racism, friendship, first crushes, and an annoying "cousin" who embodies every negative Chinese stereotype anyone has ever heard of.
After Jin Wang's family moves from San Francisco's Chinatown to a more suburban neighborhood, he is the only Chinese American in the school.  There is one Japanese American girl in his class, however, with whom everyone thinks Jin has an arranged marriage...Eventually a new boy arrives "off the boat" from China, and after some initial avoidance, Jin decides to be friends with the newcomer.  Good thing, because Wei-Chen tells Jin's crush, Amelia, how great Jin is and Amelia agrees to go on a (hilarious) movie date with Jin.
Meanwhile, a Chinese fable is interspersed with Jin's American high school drama; in the fable a Monkey King is struggling with his own identity and power, wanting to be a god instead of a king.  The Monkey King becomes aware of and begins to dislike his own monkey-ness.  He suddenly insists all monkeys wear shoes, among other changes in his kingdom.
The stories of Jin, his friend Wei-Chen, and the Monkey King are woven together in a clever way at the end of the novel.  Acceptance of oneself is a clear but complicated theme in Yang's graphic novel, which specifically highlights how cruel kids can be to each other in school.  Though his story focuses on a Chinese American teen trying to fit in, this is a story any middle school student can probably relate to.  
(ISBN: 978-1-415-68878-6)

Esperanza Rising

Esperanza Rising
By Pam Muñoz Ryan

This Great Depression-era novel is based on the life of the author's own grandmother, who had to trade a privileged life in Mexico for a farm-worker's life in California.  Esperanza, the main character, arrives in California with her mother after tragedy strikes their hacienda in Aguascalientes.  They confront classism and racism as they begin a new life in a strange land. They also begin to learn about worker's rights and union organization.
(ISBN: 0-439-12041-1)

City of One

City of One;  Young Writers Speak to the World
From Writerscorps
Forward by Isabel Allende

San Francisco Writerscorps teachers are professional writers who teach creative writing to youth.  City of One is a book of poems written by young people between the ages of  8 and 23.  These beautiful, moving poems are about violence--here in the city, and also in far-away war-torn countries.  They convey the many different emotions and reactions people have to violence:  sadness, anger, confusion, and even hope.
(ISBN:  30760000195001)

Kira-Kira

Kira-Kira
By Cynthia Kadohata

A beautiful, beautiful story of two Japanese-American sisters growing up in Georgia in the 1950's.  Their parents work long hours in a chicken processing plant (there are hints of union organizing activities), and they all struggle with racism at work and school.  When the older sister, Lynn, becomes very sick, the family dynamics are strained.  Ultimately hopeful, this sweet and sad novel grapples with all of the important things in life.

(ISBN: 0-689-856-39-3)