Guest Post by Padma Venkatraman ONE TODAY Richard Blanco Illus. Dav Pilkey Little, Brown and Company 2015 As with some of my previous reviews for this site, I feel obliged to begin by confessing my deep and abiding regard for…
Category: Immigration
Focus on the William Morris Award : M-E Girard and Girl Mans Up
Welcome to the first of two reviews of William Morris Award finalists, given by the Young Adult Library Services Association of ALA (YALSA) to outstanding debut YA novels! Today’s finalist is M-E Girard’s Girl Mans Up, published by HarperTeen. Set…
Where Fairy Tales and Real Life Collide: The Land of Forgotten Girls
Two sisters abandoned in a strange land. Another sister lost to the sea, who returns as a ghost. A missing father. A wicked stepmother. These are the stuff of fairy tales, but they’re also real life for 12-year-old Soledad (Sol)…
Complicated Family Histories: A Review of Enchanted Air
Margarita Engle’s parents met in 1947, when her father, an artist from the U.S., visited the Museo Romántico in Trinidad de Cuba, her mother’s hometown; “it was love at first sight.” Although they didn’t speak each other’s language, he proposed…
Mama’s Nightingale: a Story of Immigration and Separation
For one of 2015’s most perfect picture books, I pick Mama’s Nightingale by Edwidge Danticat, illustrated by Leslie Staub. Danticat’s novels for adults, including a book I adore, Claire of the Sea Light, express longing, often of a child for…
The Intimate I: Tales of Modern Refugees
I’m drawn to the power of what I heard at the recent National Council on the Social Sciences conference. I presented with fellow Pirate Tree reviewer, Nancy Bo Flood, on using literature to help students understand war. Conference speakers gave…
Reforma – “A book is a companion that will bring you light and comfort.”
The group Reforma, an American Library Association affiliate, and IBBY, the International Board of Books for Young People, have, at their core, the driving belief that every child has the right to read. Three Pirate Tree reviewers, Nancy Bo…
Learning From the Past to Stand Up for Our Rights: A Review of Audacity
The early part of the twenty-first century has been called the New Gilded Age because of growing inequality, worsening work conditions, and the way that the richest Americans have used their economic power to gain special favors from politicians at…
Seng Ty’s Years of Zero: Coming of Age under the Khmer Rouge
In 1975, when Seng Ty was six years old, Khmer Rouge soldiers forced Cambodians living in the capital city, Phnon Penh, to abandon their homes and begin a march to the countryside, and, for many, to their deaths. Ty has…
SONG OF THE EARTH
SONG OF THE EARTH C. Susan Nunn’s novel, SONG OF THE EARTH, is an unusual book. It weaves intrigue, mystery, page-turning adventure and hot romance set in the “Borderlands,” the barbed-wired, patrolled border along northern Mexico. This “New Adult” novel…