Author: Book Importer

Book Importer

Staking A Claim, The Journal Of Wong Ming-Chung, A Chinese Miner, California, 1852

In 1852, during the height of the California Gold Rush, ten-year-old Wong makes the dangerous trip to America to live with his uncle, exchanging the famine and war of his native country for brutal bullies and grueling labor in America, Wong joins his uncle and countless others in the effort to strike it rich on the great Golden Mountain. Unfortunately, he, and most of the rest of the dreamers, soon discover that there’s no such thing as a Golden Mountain, only dirt, mud, and occasionally tiny flecks of gold dust flecks that are to be turned over to the owners of the mines, in return for barely livable wages. However, someone as clever and resourceful as Wong will have to find other ingenious ways of making money if they’re going to make it in America. But can they overcome the bitter, racist white Americans to find success?

Oranges On Golden Mountain

When hard times fall on his family, Jo Lee is sent from China to San Francisco, where he helps his uncle fish and dreams of being reunited with his mother and sister.

I Must Betray You

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.

I’ll Go And Come Back

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.

Akata Woman (The Nsibidi Scripts)

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.

I’m Not Sydney!

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.”

Gold Mountain

Fifteen-year-old Tam Ling Fan disguises herself as her twin brother, journeys from her village in China to California, and works as a laborer on the Transcontinental Railroad–where she faces danger on multiple fronts–to earn the money her family desperately needs.