Today Juanito is accompanying his father who is in the landscaping business, and he takes his sketchbook along to draw anything that catches his eye, and gets to help his father plan an entire garden–and then help plant it. Includes an autobiographical note.
In a country governed by isolation, fear, and a tyrannical dictator, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer, but he decides to use his position to try to outwit his handler, undermine the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country.
When Jyoti visits her grandmother halfway around the world, she is overwhelmed by the differences between India and home. At first she feels lonely and out of place, but soon, despite a language barrier, she and Sita Pati are able to understand each other. They form a bond-looking at books together, making designs with colored sand, shopping at the market, playing games, eating chapatis, and sipping warm milk with saffron to bring sweet dreams. When it’s time to part, Jyoti doesn’t want to leave, but then she remembers that in Tamil, people don’t say goodbye, they say “I’ll go and come back.” Sure enough, the two reunite the next summer when Pati visits Jyoti in America, and it’s Jyoti’s turn to make her grandmother feel welcome. Can they create some special memories that will last until the next time they see each other?
Featured in WOW Review Volume XV, Issue 2.
Hanging upside down in a tree, Sydney imagines he is a sleepy, sun-bathing sloth. And that’s where Sami finds him. Sami thinks sloths are too slow, so she scampers up the tree and becomes a spider monkey. “Fast is fun!” she chatters. “Fast is best!” And that’s where Edward finds them…One after another, the neighborhood kids wander by and slip into a shared imaginative world where leaves and giant flowers unfurl, playing, laughing, teasing and bickering, until Edward the elephant fills up his trunk and—WHOOSH!—sends the children “galloping home like a herd of small wet animals.”
A young girl’s love of the coquíes’ nightly song helps her survive a destructive hurricane with her family. Includes author’s note.
When Liling moves from her home in the mountains of China to the big city, her parents cannot afford to send her to school, and she spends her days with her mother, wishing she had a friend–until she sees a girl in a yellow coat, who lives in the next building, comes from a different mountain, and is happy to be Liling’s friend.
The Pandavas call on old friends, make new allies, and face fearsome trials as they embark on a mission to stop the Sleeper from accessing the nectar of immortality, but ultimately Aru must decide who deserves immortality–the devas or the asuras–and an unexpected answer comes from an unexpected place.
As a budding scientist, Marco tries different ways of sorting his collection of stuffed animal toys before bedtime, but the animals have their own ideas.
Told in two voices, Ashish’s friends Pinky and Samir pretend to date during a summer at Cape Cod to achieve their individual goals–especially to get their respective mothers off their backs.
With the help of her friends, fifteen-year-old Sunny embarks on a mission to find a precious object and return it to the spider deity Udide, but defeating the guardians of Udide’s ghazal will put all of Sunny’s hard lessons and abilities to the test.