Book Choices

LITERATURE CIRCLE

The Watsons are a loving, funny family who live in Flint,

Michigan in the early 1960's. When the oldest brother, Byron,

continues down the path to trouble, his parents decide to take him to stay with his strict grandmother in Birmingham,

Alabama. The entire family goes on the long car trip, and while

they are in Birmingham, a church is bombed, killing several

children. Kenny, the middle child, is traumatized by what he

sees, and takes a while to recover, with the help of his big

brother, Byron.

WATSON’S GO TO BIRMINGHAM

Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing

up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled

school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only

other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully

written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on

the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one

Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he thought he

was destined to live.

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME

INDIAN

Esperanza Ortega is a young girl, who grows up in Mexico in the 1920's on Rancho de las Rosas, a vineyard her

family owns. Mexico is recovering from the revolution of ten years earlier. There is still a great deal of animosity towards the rich landowners, who are seen to be

uncaring of the peasants. The story opens, as she is anticipating the harvest of the grapes from their vineyard that always coincides with her birthday. At

the end of the harvest, there is always a wonderful fiesta attended by the

servants, vaqueros, campesinos, and many of the wealthy families in the area. The afternoon before the iLa cosecha, or

harvest ceremony, Esperanza cuts her finger on a rose thorn, while she is

gathering roses for table decorations the next day. As she is thinking this is bad

luck, the plot begins.

ESPERANZA RISING

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins

a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths

of her life like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her

family’s future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a

factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition. Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

A GIRL IN TRANSLATION

Milkweed, a book by Jerry Spinelli, tells of a Polish boy

during World War II from the point-of-view of an old

man looking back on his life. Unaware of his past, the boy

experiences a series of adventures, meeting

interesting people along the way. These adventures and

people seem to help give the boy an identity as they

struggle through the war--and his later life.

MILKWEED

The day after Liyana got her first real kiss, her life changed forever. Not because of the kiss, but because it

was the day her father announced that the family was moving from St. Louis all the way to Palestine. Though her father grew up there, Liyana knows very little about her family's Arab

heritage. Her grandmother and the rest of her relatives who live in the

West Bank are strangers, and speak a language she can't understand. It isn't

until she meets Omer that her homesickness fades. But Omer is

Jewish, and their friendship is silently forbidden in this land. How can they make their families understand? And how can Liyana ever learn to call this

place home?

HABIBI