A study of the contemporary Yupik culture in an Alaskan village as seen through the eyes of a typical family.
In A Different Light
Realistic Fiction
Realistic Fiction genre
The War Canoe
Mickey, a young Tlingit Indian who is a troublemaker in his small Alaska town, discovers his proud heritage with the help of several interested adults and builds a traditional war canoe to honor his discovery.
Amadi’s Snowman
As a young Igbo man, Amadi does not understand why his mother insists he learn to read, since he already knows his numbers and will be a businessman one day, but an older boy teaches him the value of learning about the world through books.
Confetti Girl
Apolonia “Lina”Flores is a sock enthusiast, a volleyball player, a science lover, and a girl who’s just looking for answers. Even though her house is crammed full of books (her dad’s a bibliophile), she’s having trouble figuring out some very big questions, like why her dad seems to care about books more than her, why her best friend’s divorced mom is obsessed with making cascarones (hollowed eggshells filled with colorful confetti), and, most of all, why her mom died last year. Like colors in cascarones, Lina’s life is a rainbow of people, interests, and unexpected changes.In her first novel for young readers, Diana López creates a clever and honest story about a young Latina girl navigating growing pains in her South Texan city.
Secret Saturdays
Twelve-year-old boys living in a rough part of New York confront questions about what it means to be a friend, a father, and a man.
Pedrito’s Day
When Pedrito replaces, from his own earnings, money he has lost, his mother decides that he is finally big enough for some of his father’s earnings to be used towards buying him a bicycle.
Muchacho: A Novel
Living in a neighborhood of drug dealers and gangs in New Mexico, high school junior Eddie Corazon, a juvenile delinquent-in-training, falls in love with a girl who inspires him to rethink his life and his choices.
Rudy’s Memory Walk
As high school senior Rudy adjusts his attitudes toward the elderly when his senile grandmother has to move in with his family, his girlfriend encourages him to talk with a friend’s mother who has similar problems with her own mother.
We Were Here
After “it” happens, Miguel is sent to juvenile hall for a year. The judge had no idea he was doing Miguel a favor. Ever since “it” happened, his mother can’t even look at him. “Any” home besides his would be a better place to live.
Star in the Forest
After eleven-year-old Zitlally’s father is deported to Mexico, she takes refuge in her trailer park’s forest of rusted car parts, where she befriends a spunky neighbor and finds a stray dog that she nurses back to health and believes she must keep safe so.