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ANCIENT WORLD
**THE LIBRARIAN WHO MEASURED THE EARTH by Kathryn Lasky.
A colorfully illustrated biography of the Greek philosopher and scientist Eratosthenes follows his life as he becomes Alexandria's chief librarian, writes the first geography book, and accurately measures the globe's circumference. All ages.
THE GOLDEN FLEECE AND THE HEROES WHO LIVED BEFORE ACHILLES by Padraic Colum
Enter a world where harpies torment mortals, the Argonaut Orpheus sings, the mighty god Zeus wages war on the Titans, and Prometheus steals fire. Author Padraic Colum weaves the tales of Jason and his Argonauts with classic Greek mythology to create this captivating epic about life, war, and astounding beings who lived in a time long past.
**THE TROJAN WAR by Olivia E. Coolidge.
Retells the legends of the heroes of the Trojan War, which began with Paris of Troy's abduction of Helen, wife of Menelaus, lord of Greece.
BLACK SHIPS BEFORE TROY: THE STORY OF THE ILIAD by Rosemary Sutcliffe
Retells the story of the Trojan War, from the quarrel for the golden apple, and the flight of Helen with Paris, to the destruction of Troy.
Roman Empire
**THE BRONZE BOW, by Elizabeth George Speare.
When the Romans brutally kill Daniel bar Jamin's father, the young Palestinian searches for a leader to drive them out, but comes to realize that love may be a more powerful weapon than hate. MS/HS.
AFRICA
**SOMEHOW TENDERNESS SURVIVES: STORIES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA.
Apartheid. It's about suffering, about violence. Here are ten stories and autobiographical accounts written by five Black and five White South Africans.
**WAITING FOR THE RAIN by Sheila Gordon.
This novel shows the bonds of friendship under the strain of apartheid as two lifelong friends, Tengo and Frikkie, come of age amidst the tragedy of South Africa.
**OUR SECRET, SIRI AANG by Christina Kessler.
Namelok, a Masai girl, tries to persuade her traditionalist father to delay her initiation and marriage because they will restrict her freedom and keep her from the black rhino mother and baby she is protecting from poachers.
ANANSI THE SPIDER, by Gerald McDermott.
In trying to determine which of his six sons to reward for saving his life, Anansi the Spider is responsible for placing the moon in the sky.MS
**OTHER SIDE OF TRUTH by Beverley Naidoo
Smuggled out of Nigeria after their mother's murder, Sade and her younger brother are abandoned in London when their uncle fails to meet them at the airport and they are fearful of their new surroundings and of what may have happened to their journalist father back in Nigeria.
**CHILD OF THE DANDELIONS by Shenaaz Nanji
In Uganda in 1972, fifteen-year-old Sabine and her family, wealthy citizens of Indian descent, try to preserve their normal life during the ninety days allowed by President Idi Amin for all foreign Indians to leave the country, while soldiers and others terrorize them and people disappear.
**CHANDA'S SECRETS by Allan Stratton.
A girl's struggle amid the African AIDS pandemic, Chanda, is an astonishingly perceptive girl living in the small city of Bonang, a fictional city in Southern Africa. When her youngest sister dies, the first hint of HIV/AIDS emerges, Chanda must confront undercurrents of shame and stigma.
**CHANDA'S WARS by Allan Stratton
Chandra Kabelo, a teenaged African girl, must save her younger siblings after they are kidnapped and forced to serve as child soldiers in General Mandiki's rebel army.
ASIA
China
**RED SCARF GIRL. A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution, by Ji-Li Jiang
Provides the story of Ji-li Jiang a twelve-year-old girl growing up in China in 1966, the year that Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and the changes it brought to her and her family.
**SNOW FALLING IN SPRING by Moying Li
This inspiring memoir follows Moying Li from age twelve to twenty-two, illuminating a complex, dark time in China’s history as it tells the compelling story of one girl’s difficult but determined coming-of-age during the Cultural Revolution.
**BOUND by Donna Jo Napoli
In a novel based on Chinese Cinderella tales, fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child's feet so that she alone might marry well.
India
**SOLD by Patricia McCormick.
When she is tricked by her stepfather and sold into prostitution, thirteen-year-old Lakshmi becomes submerged in a nightmare where her only comfort is the friendship she forms with the other girls, which helps her survive and eventually escape.
**KEEPING CORNER by Kashmira Sheth
In India in the 1940s, thirteen-year-old Leela's happy, spoiled childhood ends when her husband since age nine, whom she barely knows, dies, leaving her a widow whose only hope of happiness could come from Mahatma Ghandi's social and political reforms.
**HOMELESS BIRD by Gloria Whelan.
Married and promptly widowed at 13, Koly finds herself in the grim position of being cast out by a society that has no place for girls like her. With a seemingly hopeless future in India, this courageous and spirited young woman sets out to forge her own destiny.
Japan
THE MAGIC FAN by Keith Baker
Guided by a magic fan, Yoshi uses his building skills to make a boat to catch the moon, a kite to reach the clouds, and a bridge that saves the villagers from a tidal wave. Picture Book
THE BIG WAVE by Pearl Buck
After a tidal wave destroys their village, two Japanese boys learn about tragedy and the necessity of building a new life.Long Picture Book
**MASTER PUPPETEER by Katherine Paterson.
Jiro becomes apprenticed to a harsh puppeteer at the Hanaza Theater in Osaka, where a series of thefts become the source of excited speculation.
**THE OLD MAN MAD ABOUT DRAWING: A TALE OF HOKUSAI by Francis Place, translated by William Rodarmor.
Tojiro, a young seller of rice cakes in the Japanese capital of Edo, later known as Tokyo, is amazed to discover that the grumpy and shabby old man who buys his cakes is a famous artist renowned for his sketches, prints, and paintings of flowers, animals, and landscapes.
HOKUSAI: THE MAN WHO PAINTED A MOUNTAIN by Deborah Kogan Ray.
Stunning illustrations and simple text combine to tell the true story of Japanese artist Hokusai, who overcame many obstacles and defied convention to become one of the most significant and influential artists in the world.
THE INK-KEEPER’S APPRENTICE by Allen Say.
A fourteen-year-old boy lives on his own in Tokyo and becomes apprenticed to a famous Japanese cartoonist.
Korea
**A SINGLE SHARD by Linda Sue Park.
Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself.
THE CARIBBEAN REGION
**THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET by Sandra Cisneros
For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness.
**COLOR OF MY WORDS by Lynn Joseph
When life gets difficult for Ana Rosa, a twelve-year-old would-be writer living in a small village in the Dominican Republic, she can depend on her older brother to make her feel better--until the life-changing events on her thirteenth birthday.
WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN by Esmerelda Santiago
Esmerelda and her seven siblings live in a corrugated metal shack in Puerto Rico. She is uprooted as a result of poverty and her parents' quarreling and suffers blows to her ego from their expectations of her. The girl goes to New York, where her grandmother lives, and must rely on her intelligence and talents to help her survive in an alien world in which being Puerto Rican is not advantageous.
EUROPE AND ASIA AT WAR
**I HAVE LIVED A THOUSAND YEARS by Livia Bitton-Jackson
The author describes her experiences during World War II when she and her family were sent to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
**WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBIT by Judith Kerr.
Recounts the adventures of a nine-year-old Jewish girl and her family in the early 1930's as they travel from Germany to Europe.
**ZLATA’S DIARY by Zlata Filipovic
When Zlata's Diary was first published at the height of the Bosnian conflict, it became an international bestseller. It begins as the day-today record of the life of a typical eleven-year-old girl, preoccupied by piano lessons and birthday parties. But as war engulfs Sarajevo, Zlata Filipovi´c becomes a witness to food shortages and the deaths of friends and learns to wait out bombardments in a neighbor's cellar. Yet throughout she remains courageous and observant. The result is a book that has the power to move and instruct readers a world away.
**THE ENDLESS STEPPE by Esther Hautzig
During World War II, when she was eleven years old, the author and her family were arrested in Poland by the Russians as political enemies and exiled to Siberia. She recounts here the trials of the following five years spent on the harsh Asian steppe.
TOTTO-CHAN: THE LITTLE GIRL AT THE WINDOW by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
This engaging series of childhood recollections tells about an ideal school in Tokyo during World War II that combined learning with fun, freedom, and love. This unusual school had old railroad cars for classrooms, and it was run by an extraordinary man-its founder and headmaster, Sosaku
Kobayashi-who was a firm believer in freedom of expression and activity.
**SO FAR FROM THE BAMBOO GROVE by Yoko Kawashima Watkins
A fictionalized autobiography in which eight-year-old Yoko escapes from Korea to Japan with her mother and sister at the end of World War II.
**WHEN MY NAME WAS KEOKO by Linda Sue Park.
With national pride and occasional fear, a brother and sister face the increasingly oppressive occupation of Korea by Japan during World War II, which threatens to suppress Korean culture entirely.
LATIN AMERICA
**BEFORE WE WERE FREE by Julia Alvarez.
In the early 1960s in the Dominican Republic, twelve-year-old Anita learns that her family is involved in the underground movement to end the bloody rule of the dictator, General Trujillo.
**COLIBRI by Ann Cameron
Kidnapped when she was very young by an unscrupulous man who has forced her to lie and beg to get money, a twelve-year-old Mayan girl endures an abusive life, always wishing she could return to the parents she can hardly remember.
WHAT THE MOON SAW by Laura Resau
Fourteen-year-old Clara Luna spends the summer with her grandparents in the tiny, remote village of Yucuyoo, Mexico, learning about her grandmother's life as a healer, her father's decision to leave home for the United States, and her own place in the world.
**BECOMING NAOMI LEON by Pam Muñoz Ryan
When Naomi's absent mother resurfaces to claim her, Naomi runs away to Mexico with her great-grandmother and younger brother in search of her father.
MIDDLE EAST
**UNDER THE PERSIMMON TREE by Suzanne Fisher Staples
During the 2001 Afghan War, the lives of Najmal, a young refugee from Kunduz, Afghanistan, and Nusrat, an American-Muslim teacher who is awaiting her husband's return from Mazar-i-Sharif, intersect at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan. MS
**TASTING THE SKY: A PALESTINIAN CHILDHOOD by Ibtisam Barakat.
The author remembers her childhood in Ramallah and as a Palestinian refugee in the late 1960s.
**SAMIR AND YONATAN by Daniella Carmi.
Samir, a Palestinian boy, is sent for surgery to an Israeli hospital where he has two otherworldly experiences, making friends with an Israeli boy, Yonatan, and traveling with him to Mars where Samir finds peace about his brother's death in the war.
**A STONE IN MY HAND by Cathryn Clinton
Eleven-year-old Malaak and her family are touched by the violence in Gaza between Jews and Palestinians when first her father disappears and then her older brother is drawn to the Islamic Jihad.
**SEVEN DAUGHTERS AND SEVEN SONS by Barbara Cohen and Bahija Lovejoy.
A retelling of a traditional Arabic tale in which a young woman disguises herself as a man and opens up a shop in a distant city in order to help her impoverished family. Her disguise causes her many complications but she eventually succeeds in redeeming the family fortunes and finding her true love.
**THE BREADWINNER by Deborah Ellis
Because the Taliban rulers of Kabul, Afghanistan, impose strict limitations on women's freedom and behavior, eleven-year-old Parvana must disguise herself as a boy so that her family can survive after her father's arrest.
**KISS THE DUST by Elizabeth Laird
Her father's involvement with the Kurdish resistance movement in Iraq forces thirteen-year-old Tara to flee with her family over the border into Iran, where they face an unknown future.
**HABIBI by Naomi Shihab Nye
When fourteen-year-old Liyanna, her younger brother, and her parents move from St. Louis to a new home between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where her father was born, they face many changes and must deal with the tensions between Jews and Palestinians.
**SHABANU: DAUGHTER OF THE WIND by Suzanne Fisher Staples
In a year that brings a destructive sandstorm, a feud with a rich landowner, and other disasters, Shabanu, the eleven-year-old daughter of a nomad in the Cholistan Desert of Pakistan, becomes a victim of her people's views of sex role and marriage.
**PARADE OF SHADOWS by Gloria Whelan
In 1907, sixteen-year-old Julia Hamilton, happy to accompany her diplomat father on a tour of the Ottoman-controlled cities of Istambul, Damascus, Palmyra, and Aleppo, soon finds the journey increasingly hazardous as she begins to uncover her father's true mission and the secret motivations of the other travelers in their group.
UNITED STATES/CANADA HISTORY
**WARRIORS DON’T CRY by Melba Patillo Beales.
In 1957 Melba Pattillo turned sixteen. That was also the year she became a warrior on the front lines of a civil rights firestorm. Following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board Education, she was one of nine teenagers chosen to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. This is her remarkable story.
**WHEN THE LEGENDS DIE by Hal Borland.
A young Ute grows up in Colorado from 1910 to 1920, and when he becomes civilized, his actions reflect his conflicts.
**SACAJAWEA by Joseph Bruchac.
Sacajawea, a Shoshoni Indian interpreter, peacemaker, and guide, and William Clark alternate in describing their experiences on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Northwest.
**THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET by Sandra Cisneros.
For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness.
**I HEARD THE OWL CALL MY NAME by Margaret Craven.
This book tells of a young minister who is sent to a remote Kwakiutl village not knowing he has less than three years to live. In the village, Mark comes to understand the Kwakiutl Indians around him and sees how their traditions are being destroyed through the influence of white men. MS.
BORN IN THE YEAR OF COURAGE by Emily Crofford.
In 1841, having been shipwrecked and picked up by an American whaling ship outside Japanese territorial waters, fifteen-year-old Manjiro decides to go live in America and work towards opening trade between his country and the West.
**ELIJAH OF BUXTON by Christopher Paul Curtis
In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American South, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.
**THE DARKEST CORNER by Mildred Barger Herschler.
Her friendship with the black woman who works for her family and with two black neighbors in the small Mississippi town where she grows up in the 1950s and 1960s brings Teddy into conflict with her racist father, a member of the local Ku Klux Klan.
**STONES OF MOURNING CREEK by Diane Les Bequets
In Alabama in the 1960s, fourteen-year-old Francie develops a controversial and dangerous friendship with a "colored girl" her own age.
THE ROCK AND THE RIVER by Kekla Magoon
For thirteen-year-old Sam it's not easy being the son of known civil rights activist Roland Childs. Especially when his older brother (and best friend), Stick, begins to drift away from him for no apparent reason. And then it happens: Sam finds something that changes everything forever.
**FALLEN ANGELS by Walter Dean Myers.
Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.
**THE COLOR OF FIRE by Ann Rinaldi
In 1741, while America is at war with Catholic Spain, Phoebe must save her friend Cuffee from execution when the whites in New York City accuse the black slaves of planning a revolt, which erupts in violence and the death of many innocent people.
**HANG A THOUSAND TREES WITH RIBBONS: THE STORY OF PHILLIS WHEATLEY by Ann Rinaldi.
A fictionalized biography of Phillis Wheatley who, brought to the United States as a slave, later finds renown for her poetry.
**THE LETTER WRITER by Ann Rinaldi
A young girl who serves as letter writer for her blind stepmother is haunted by her unwitting role in Nat Turner's Rebellion, one of the bloodiest slave uprisings in the history of America.
**ESPERANZA RISING by Pam Muñoz Ryan.
Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.
**IF I HAD JUST TWO WINGS by Virginia Frances Schwartz
Phoebe's thirteen years as an African American slave have not been easy, but then she hears of a way that she can escape to Canada and lead the life she has always imagined.
**THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND by Elizabeth George Speare.
A young woman brought up in Barbados comes to live with her uncle in Connecticut, and finds their Puritan way of life difficult after her unconventional upbringing.
**DANGEROUS SKIES by Suzanne Fisher Staples
Hypocrisy and prejudice twist events in such a way as to implicate two children, one from a prominent white family and the other an Afro-American, in a murder.
**THE RED ROSE BOX by Brenda Woods.
In 1953, Leah Hopper dreams of leaving the poverty and segregation of her home in Sulphur, Louisiana, and when Aunt Olivia sends train tickets to Los Angeles as part of her tenth birthday present, Leah and her sister Ruth get a first taste of freedom.
**FEATHERS by Jacqueline Woodson.
When a new, white student nicknamed "The Jesus Boy" joins her sixth grade class in the winter of 1971, Frannie's growing friendship with him makes her start to see some things in a new light.
U.S. HOMEFRONT: WORLD WAR II
**YEAR OF IMPOSSIBLE GOODBYES by Sook Nyul Choi.
An unforgettable portrait of one community’s struggle under Japanese occupation. This book portrays the incredible courage of a young girl handling crisis after crisis.
**FAREWELL TO MANZANAR by Jeanne Watksuki Houston
The American-born author describes her family's experiences and impressions when they were forced to relocate in a camp for the Japanese in Owens Valley, California, during the Second World War.
**WEEDFLOWER by Cynthia Kadohata.
After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.
**UNDER THE BLOOD-RED SUN by Graham Salisbury.
Tomikazu Nakaji's biggest concerns are baseball, homework, and a local bully, until life with his Japanese family in Hawaii changes drastically after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
**JOURNEY TO TOPAZ and JOURNEY HOME by Yoshiko Uchida,
After the Pearl Harbor attack, an eleven-year-old Japanese-American girl and her family are forced to go to an aliens camp in Utah.
**BAT 6 by Virginia Euwer Wolff
In small town, post-World War Oregon, twenty-one 6th grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl's bigotry comes to the surface.
UNITED STATES/CANADA MODERN
**THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton.
Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parents' death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves "outsiders.".
**LOOKING FOR RED by Angela Johnson.
A thirteen-year-old girl struggles to cope with the loss of her beloved older brother, who disappeared four months earlier off the coast of Cape Cod.
**A STEP FROM HEAVEN by An Na.
A young Korean girl and her family find it difficult to learn English and adjust to life in America.
**THE FOLD by An Na
Korean American high school student Joyce Kim feels like a nonentity compared to her beautiful older sister, and when her aunt offers to pay for plastic surgery on her eyes, she jumps at the chance, thinking it will change her life for the better.
**HUSH by Jacqueline Woodson
Twelve-year-old Toswiah finds her life changed when her family enters the witness protection program.