Theme: outsider

A Stranger at Home

The powerful memoir of an Inuvialuit girl searching for her true self when she returns from residential school. Traveling to be reunited with her family in the Arctic, 10-year-old Margaret Pokiak can hardly contain her excitement. It’s been two years since her parents delivered her to the school run by the dark-cloakednuns and brothers. Coming [...]

Descriptors: Americas, Biography, Canada, Intermediate (ages 9-14) » Other Themes: , , , , » Leave a comment

The Auslander

When Peter’s parents are killed, he is sent to an orphanage in Warsaw, Poland. But Peter is Volksdeutscher-of German blood. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he looks just like the boy on the Hitler Youth poster. The Nazis decide he is racially valuable. Indeed, a prominent German family is pleased to adopt such [...]

Descriptors: Europe, Germany, Historical Fiction, Intermediate (ages 9-14), Poland » Other Themes: , , , , , , , , , » Leave a comment

Mexican Whiteboy

Sixteen-year-old Danny searches for his identity amidst the confusion of being half-Mexican and half-white while spending a summer with his cousin and new friends on the baseball fields and back alleys of San Diego County, California.

Descriptors: Fiction, Intermediate (ages 9-14), Realistic Fiction, United States of America, Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Other Themes: , , , , » 5 Comments

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

In 1984, Marjane flees fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in Vienna. Once there, she faces the trials of adolescence far from her friends and family, and while she soon carves out a place for herself among a group of fellow outsiders, she continues to struggle for a sense of [...]

Descriptors: Austria, Biography, Graphic Novel, Iran, Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Other Themes: , , , , , , , , , » Leave a comment