Realistic Fiction

Realistic Fiction genre

Crazy Diamond

That’s Mira M. And this is the story of her unforgettable life — as a kid alone in a junkyard tire swing, to her escape from Croatia at age 9 in a Marshall amp road case in the rear of her uncle Lou’s van. A musician, he hands her the key to her future: a guitar. When she’s 14, Mira meets Melody, Rosa and Jackson, three teens who stow away from Ghana in a ship-ping container and end up — to their surprise — in Hamburg, Germany. What stories they have! And what a story the four of them, plus Kralle (a little older and wiser) and Zucka (the record producer’s son), share on the way to the fame that all of them covet — except Mira, even after the MTV Awards show in Barcelona. Her song lyrics tell her truth. But are they her lyrics? Her music? She swears so. But who listens, now that she’s 18 — and dead?

Mieko and the Fifth Treasure

When the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Mieko’s nearby village was turned into ruins, and her hand was badly injured. Mieko loves to do calligraphy more than anything, but now she can barely hold a paintbrush. And she feels as if she has lost something that she can’t paint without-the legendary fifth treasure, beauty in the heart. Then she is sent to live with her grandparents and must go to a new school. But Mieko is brave and eventually learns that time and patience can help with many things, and may even help her find the fifth treasure. Written by the author of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes, Mieko,s story will touch the hearts of all its readers.

I Lost My Tooth in Africa

More than anything, Amina wants to lose her loose tooth while visiting her family in Mali, West Africa. Only then can she put it under a gourd for the African tooth fairy, who will exchange it for two chickens! Happily this happens, and even better, the chickens lay eggs. But will the eggs hatch before it’s time to return home to America? In this fresh, spontaneous story that is infused with close family warmth, Penda June Diakité joins forces with her award-winning author/artist father to give a charming peek at everyday life in Mali.

Featured in Volume 1, Issue 3 of WOW Review.

You & You & You

Anon is a twelve-year-old loner. Zarah is a beautiful seventeen-year-old caught up in a sexual relationship. Nils is a twenty-year-old college student searching for the meaning of life and death. Each character’s obsessive fantasy overwhelms their everyday lives.These three are catalysts in each others’ lives and when they finally meet, each begins to draw the others into the real world, but things are still left uncertain at the end of the novel.

Say Cheese!

Lola has promised her mother that she will stay clean and tidy for school picture day. “It will be easy peasy, lemon squeezy!” says Lola. But staying clean and tidy is not so easy, especially when there is finger painting to do and a game of puddles to play. By the time Lola poses for her picture, she is covered in paint and pink milk, and her extremely special photograph for Mom is ruined. But then Charlie has an idea that just might save the day.

Isabel’s House of Butterflies

Outside her home in Michoacan, Mexico, grows eight-year-old Isabel’s greatest treasure: an oyamel tree. Every autumn, a miracle happens because Isabel’s tree is the wintering place for thousands upon thousands of monarch butterflies that migrate from the north. When they flutter down to roost, they transform Isabel’s tree into La casa de las mariposas–The House of Butterflies. But this wonder is in danger of disappearing forever. Isabel’s family is poor, and it has been a cruel, dry year for Papa’s meager crop of corn and beans. Soon, chopping down the tree to sell its wood may be the family’s only hope for survival. What will happen to the butterflies then?

Jump Up Time: A Trinidad Carnival Story

Carnival is supposed to be a happy time, but Lily wishes it were over. Her family has been working on the gorgeous hummingbird costume for months, but it’s Lily’s big sister, Christine, who will wear it at the Children’s Carnival. Lily doesn’t want to wait till next year for her chance to jump up in costume.

The Girl Who Saw Lions (Neal Porter Books)

“BE STRONG MY ABELA.”  Orphaned by AIDS in Africa, Abela has a long journey ahead.When Abela’s mother dies of Aids in their African village, she is left to face the lions of the world. Lions like her Uncle Thomas who has plans to sell her in Europe. Lions like his bitter white wife, whom he abandons with Abela. Abela is forced to stay indoors in a sunless London apartment, cooking and cleaning, and hopelessly dreaming of her African homeland. Meanwhile, in a London suburb, Rosa is distraught when her mother tells her she wants to adopt a child. Rosa doesn’t want a sister or brother. Things were so good, why did they have to change? Berlie Doherty tells parallel stories, each separate and compelling in their own right, but stories that eventually tangle together bringing a message of hope and what it means to be a family.

Time to Say I Love You

In this sweet, touching story, a mother tries to choose a time to tell her little girl how much she loves her. Over the course of a beautiful day at the seaside, the two roam over sandy beaches and grassy hills as the mother searches for just the right time and spot.

Yoruba Girl Dancing

For Remi, growing up in Nigeria is a celebration of love and family, eccentricity and old ritual. She feels confident in her privilege and grounded in the heart of her culture. But when she turns six, she is sent to faraway England, to a posh all-girls’ boarding school where she will stay for what seems like a desolate, lonely eternity. There she’s left to find her own way – the only black in a school full of upper-class English girls whose rituals are as foreign to Remi as her’s are to them. Through sheer inner exuberance, Remi triumphs over the dismal climate, social anomalies, and glaring affronts that are her English experience. She endures foreign holidays celebrated with strangers, and navigates the labyrinth of race, caste, and culture, taking nothing lying down, and emerges victorious – if changed forever.

Yoruba Girl Dancing is the story of a girl’s exile from her homeland and her metamorphosis into someone that even she at times hardly recognizes.