Listen, Slowly, by Thanhha Lai.A California girl born and raised, Mai can't wait to spend her vacation at the beach. Instead, though, she has to travel to Vietnam with her grandmother, who is going back to find out what really happened to her husband during the Vietnam War. Mai's parents think this trip will be a great opportunity for their out-of-touch daughter to learn more about her culture. But to Mai, those are their roots, not her own. Vietnam is hot, smelly, and the last place she wants to be. Besides barely speaking the language, she doesn't know the geography, the local customs, or even her distant relatives. To survive her trip, Mai must find a balance between her two completely different worlds.
Perfect for fans of Rita Williams-Garcia and Linda Sue Park, Listen, Slowly is an irresistibly charming and emotionally poignant tale about a girl who discovers that home and culture, family and friends, can all mean different things.
Masterminds, by Gordon Korman. (Also available in audio, narrated by Ramon De Ocampo, Kelly Jean Badgley, et al.)
Eli Frieden
lives in the most perfect town in the world: Serenity, New Mexico. In
this idyllic place, every lawn is perfectly manicured and everyone has a
pool and a tree house. Honesty and integrity are valued above all else.
The thirty kids who live there never lie—they know it's a short leap
from that to the awful problems of other, less fortunate places.
Eli has never left Serenity . . . Why would he ever want to? Then one day he bikes to the edge of the city limits and something so crazy and unexpected happens, it changes everything. Eli convinces his friends to help him investigate further, and soon it becomes clear that nothing is as it seems in Serenity. The clues mount to reveal a shocking discovery, connecting their ideal crime-free community to some of the greatest criminal masterminds ever known. The kids realize they can trust no one—least of all their own parents.
Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America, by Carole Boston Weatherford. Illustrations by Jamey Christoph.
Gordon Parks is most famous for being the first black director in Hollywood. But before he made movies and wrote books, he was a poor African-American looking for work. When he bought a camera, his life changed forever. He taught himself how to take pictures and before long, people noticed.
The Paper Cowboy, by Kristin Levine.
Though he thinks of himself as a cowboy, Tommy is really a bully. He's
always playing cruel jokes on classmates or stealing from the store. But
Tommy has a reason: life at home is tough. His abusive mother isn't
well; in fact, she may be mentally ill, and his sister, Mary Lou, is in
the hospital badly burned from doing a chore it was really Tommy's turn
to do.
To make amends, Tommy takes over Mary Lou's paper route. But the paper route also becomes the perfect way for Tommy to investigate his neighbors after stumbling across a copy of The Daily Worker, a communist newspaper
Tommy is shocked to learn that one of his neighbors could be a communist, and soon fear of a communist in this tight-knit community takes hold of everyone when Tommy uses the paper to frame a storeowner, Mr. McKenzie. As Mr. McKenzie's business slowly falls apart and Mary Lou doesn't seem to get any better, Tommy's mother's abuse gets worse causing Tommy's bullying to spiral out of control.
(All descriptions from OverDrive.)
Eli has never left Serenity . . . Why would he ever want to? Then one day he bikes to the edge of the city limits and something so crazy and unexpected happens, it changes everything. Eli convinces his friends to help him investigate further, and soon it becomes clear that nothing is as it seems in Serenity. The clues mount to reveal a shocking discovery, connecting their ideal crime-free community to some of the greatest criminal masterminds ever known. The kids realize they can trust no one—least of all their own parents.
Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America, by Carole Boston Weatherford. Illustrations by Jamey Christoph. Gordon Parks is most famous for being the first black director in Hollywood. But before he made movies and wrote books, he was a poor African-American looking for work. When he bought a camera, his life changed forever. He taught himself how to take pictures and before long, people noticed.
The Paper Cowboy, by Kristin Levine.
Though he thinks of himself as a cowboy, Tommy is really a bully. He's
always playing cruel jokes on classmates or stealing from the store. But
Tommy has a reason: life at home is tough. His abusive mother isn't
well; in fact, she may be mentally ill, and his sister, Mary Lou, is in
the hospital badly burned from doing a chore it was really Tommy's turn
to do.To make amends, Tommy takes over Mary Lou's paper route. But the paper route also becomes the perfect way for Tommy to investigate his neighbors after stumbling across a copy of The Daily Worker, a communist newspaper
Tommy is shocked to learn that one of his neighbors could be a communist, and soon fear of a communist in this tight-knit community takes hold of everyone when Tommy uses the paper to frame a storeowner, Mr. McKenzie. As Mr. McKenzie's business slowly falls apart and Mary Lou doesn't seem to get any better, Tommy's mother's abuse gets worse causing Tommy's bullying to spiral out of control.
(All descriptions from OverDrive.)
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