This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, which claimed the lives of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The massacre revealed the helplessness of international organizations and spurred the establishment of the International Criminal…
Tag: historical fiction
Human Rights & Children’s Books: USBBY & PEN
United States Board on Books for Young People, USBBY, and International Board on Books for Young People, IBBY, provide an excellent source of information, reviews, and lists of outstanding international books – an international celebration of diversity. Each year…
AFRICA IS MY HOME
AFRICA IS MY HOME, A CHILD OF THE AMISTAD By Monica Edinger and illustrated by Robert Byrd Monica Edinger skillfully – and delightfully – tells an extraordinary story through the voice of a young girl who experiences an extraordinary journey. …
Exploring the Range of New Adult: A Review of Sideshow of Merit
Ann Angel’s interview with Lauren Myracle about The Infinite Moment of Us touched on the emergence of New Adult—a publishing category designed to appeal to readers in their upper teens and early twenties. Various other discussion groups have focused on…
HOW I BECAME A GHOST
HOW I BECAME A GHOST, A CHOCTAW TRAIL OF TEAR’S STORY by Tim Tingle From Chapter 1, “Talking Ghost” “MAYBE YOU HAVE never read a book written by a ghost before. I am a ghost…I should tell you something…
Divided Loyalties: A Review of Brotherhood
In Richmond, Virginia in 1867, 14-year-old Shadrach Weaver is awakened early and violently one morning. Federal soldiers beat him and carry away his older brother, Jeremiah, wanted for murder. The victim, George Nelson, is an itinerant teacher, a white man…
Surviving Depression: A Review of Every Day After
The long recession and weak recovery have kindled interest in the Great Depression and the ways that families responded to sudden economic deprivation nearly a century ago. Laura Golden’s new middle grade novel Every Day After (Delacorte) mines the author’s…
Politics Comes to Town: A Review of The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano
Fifteen-year-old Evelyn Serrano sees herself as an ordinary girl living in El Barrio, Spanish Harlem in 1969. She has just started a new job in a department store and is proud of her ability to earn money for herself and…
A Family in Wartime: A Review of Three Years and Eight Months
A month ago I highlighted the winners of the 2013 Skipping Stones Honor Awards, given to outstanding multicultural and nature books published in the previous year. Although published in 2013, Icy Smith and Jennifer Kindert’s Three Years and Eight Months…
Childhood Meets the Real World: A Review of P.S. Be Eleven
In Portugal last fall I was struck by the lengths to which parents would go to shelter their children from the hardships of the economic crisis. When I visited the malls and department stores to practice my Portuguese vocabulary, I…