Theme: Family problems

Tia Isa Wants A Car

Descriptors: Americas, Picture Book, Primary (ages 6-9) » Other Themes: , , , , , , , , » 1 Comment

Nzingha: Warrior Queen Of Matamba, Angola, Africa, 1595 (The Royal Diaries)

Presents the diary of thirteen-year-old Nzingha, a sixteenth-century West African princess who loves to hunt and hopes to lead her kingdom one day against the invasion of the Portuguese slave traders.

Descriptors: Africa, Database, Historical Fiction, Intermediate (ages 9-14) » Other Themes: , , , , , , » Leave a comment

From North To South/Del Norte Al Sur

José loves helping Mamá in the garden outside their home in California. But when Mamá is sent back to Mexico for not having citizenship papers, José and his Papá face an uncertain future. What will it be like to visit Mamá in Tijuana? When will she be able to come home? Award-winning children’s book author [...]

Descriptors: Americas, Mexico, Picture Book, Primary (ages 6-9), United States of America » Other Themes: , , , , , » 4 Comments

Kat, Incorrigible

Katherine Ann Stephenson has just discovered that she’s inherited her mother’s magical talents, and despite Stepmama’s stern objections, she’s determined to learn how to use them. But with her eldest sister Elissa’s intended fiancÉ, the sinister Sir Neville, showing a dangerous interest in Kat’s magical potential; her other sister, Angeline, wreaking romantic havoc with her [...]

Descriptors: England (UK), Fantasy, Intermediate (ages 9-14) » Other Themes: , , , , , » Leave a comment

Jasper Jones

Charlie Bucktin, a bookish thirteen year old, is startled one summer night by an urgent knock on his bedroom window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in their small mining town, and he has come to ask for Charlie’s help. Terribly afraid but desperate to impress, Charlie follows him into the night.Jasper takes him [...]

Descriptors: Australia, Mystery, Oceania, Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Other Themes: , , , , » Leave a comment

Season of Secrets

Sent by their father to live in the country with their grandparents after the sudden death of their mother, Molly’s older sister Hannah expresses her grief in a raging rebellion while imaginative Molly finds herself increasingly distracted by visions, that seemingly only she can see, of a strange hunt in the nearby forest.

Descriptors: England (UK), Fantasy, Intermediate (ages 9-14) » Other Themes: , , , , , , , , , » Leave a comment

Surrender

As he is dying, a twenty-year-old man known as Gabriel recounts his troubled childhood and his strange relationship with a dangerous counterpart named Finningan.

Descriptors: Australia, Fiction, Oceania, Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Other Themes: , , » Comments closed

The Red Shoe

Three sisters growing up in post-World War II Sydney, Australia, deal with their mentally unstable father, their possibly unfaithful mother, and the defecting Russian spy who lives next door.

Descriptors: Australia, Historical Fiction, Oceania, Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Other Themes: , , » Comments closed

Joker

A modern retelling of Hamlet, in which seventeen-year-old Matt begins questioning everything he believes in after the death of his best friend and his parents’ divorce.

Descriptors: Australia, Fiction, Oceania, Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Other Themes: , » Comments closed

Breakfast At Sadie’s

When thirteen-year-old Sadie finds her mother’s note saying she has to “get away for awhile,” Sadie is left to manage a bed and breakfast in the Welsh countryside by herself, while at the same time trying to cover her mother’s absence.

Descriptors: Europe, Intermediate (ages 9-14), Realistic Fiction, Wales (UK) » Other Themes: , , » Comments closed