My Name Is Parvana

On a military base in post-Taliban Afghanistan, American authorities have just imprisoned a teenaged girl found in a bombed-out school. The army major thinks she may be a terrorist working with the Taliban. The girl does not respond to questions in any language and remains silent, even when she is threatened, harassed and mistreated over several days. The only clue to her identity is a tattered shoulder bag containing papers that refer to people named Shauzia, Nooria, Leila, Asif, Hassan — and Parvana. In this long-awaited sequel to The Breadwinner Trilogy, Parvana is now fifteen years old. As she waits for foreign military forces to determine her fate, she remembers the past four years of her life. Reunited with her mother and sisters, she has been living in a village where her mother has finally managed to open a school for girls. But even though the Taliban has been driven from the government, the country is still at war, and many continue to view the education and freedom of girls and women with suspicion and fear.

Keeping Score

In Brooklyn in 1951, a die-hard Giants fan teaches nine-year-old Maggie, who is a “Bums” (Dodgers) fan, how to keep score which creates a special friendship between them.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 3.

Faces In The Water

The water from a magical well in their farmhouse was the reason behind this ‘good fortune’, they said. One day, fifteen-year-old Gurmi sets out to look for the well and what he sees changes everyone’s world forever. The faces of three girls look up at him from the water, and draw him into a world of fun, games and cyber magic -and Gurmi has to face up to an unnerving truth as murky as the surreal well. What terrible crimes have been committed behind the walls of the rambling Diwanchand family home? Will Gurmi and the ghost-girls be able to avenge the evil that has taken place and prevent yet another unspeakable atrocity from occurring? Funny, yet sensitive and immensely powerful, Faces in the Water is the story of lives lost to appease our society’s insatiable hunger for male children, and the price families pay for its sake.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 3

Planet Ark: Preserving Earth’s Biodiversity

Young readers can learn how to protect the world’s plants and animals from extinction by making small changes in their everyday lives — from planting trees to turning off the tap — to help preserve the world’s biodiversity.

Lessons from Hu’ul Ke

How a young boy is raised by his grandfather on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. The book denotes various aspects of O’odham himdag (culture) and begins with a simple question that the boy asks his Hu’ul Ke:li (Grandfather) with a culturally relevant answer as to why they do the things they do during the day. Various activities include waking up early in the morning and asking why they do so – to daily chores and activities such as tending horses, working in the garden, hauling water, and gathering food/medicine in the desert.

Hide And Seek

For five hundred years the Jaguar Cup, sacred to the Silver Jaguar Society, was hidden in a cave on the coast of Costa Rica–so when a fake copy shows up on display in America, it is up to Jose´, Anna, and Henry, junior members of the society, to travel to Costa Rica and rescue the real cup from thieves.

The Fault in Our Stars

TIME Magazine’s #1 Fiction Book of 2012!

“The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

Funny in Farsi

This new Readers Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner.” In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since. Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas’s wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple melting pot. In a series of deftly drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American English (hot dogs and hush puppies?—a complete mystery), American traditions (Thanksgiving turkey?—an even greater mystery, since it tastes like nothing), and American culture (Firoozeh’s parents laugh uproariously at Bob Hope on television, although they don’t get the jokes even when she translates them into Farsi).Above all, this is an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing—without an accent.

Daisy’s Defining Day

Daisy loves words, so she is delighted when Miss Goldner teaches the class about alliteration. When her neighbor Grant starts calling her Lazy Daisy, she decides to come up with an alliterative nickname so dazzling it sticks. As Daisy collects D words that describe her, she shows delightful determination in finding the perfect name.

The Lobster Chronicles: A Narrow Escape

Inspired by urban visionary Jane Jacobs, seven-year-old Lucia takes the reader through a day in her neighborhood and celebrates the people and places that make it feel like home. A great starting point for discussions on cities, this book will encourage readers to stop and smell the urban roses.