Realistic Fiction genre
Twelve-year-old Jenni’s much-anticipated vacation with her family and best friend Autumn goes awry when an old elevator transports her to a future in which everything has changed, and she must not only return to her time but find a way to prevent what she has seen from coming true.
Lupita, a budding actor and poet in a close-knit Mexican American immigrant family, comes of age as she struggles with adult responsibilities during her mother’s battle with cancer in this young adult novel in verse. When Lupita learns Mami has cancer, she is terrified by the possibility of losing her mother, the anchor of her close-knit family. Suddenly, being a high school student, starring in a play, and dealing with friends who don’t always understand, become less important than doing whatever she can to save Mami’s life. While her father cares for Mami at an out-of-town clinic, Lupita takes charge of her seven younger siblings. As Lupita struggles to keep the family afloat, she takes refuge in the shade of a mesquite tree, where she escapes the chaos at home to write. Forced to face her limitations in the midst of overwhelming changes and losses, Lupita rediscovers her voice and finds healing in the power of words. Told with honest emotion in evocative free verse, Lupita’s journey toward hope is captured in moments that are alternately warm and poignant. Under the Mesquite is an empowering story about testing family bonds and the strength of a young woman navigating pain and hardship with surprising resilience.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume IV, Issue 4
This book has been included in WOW’s Language and Learning: Children’s and Young Adult Fiction Booklist. For our current list, visit our Booklist page under Resources in the green navigation bar.
Eleven-year-old Margarito, a big fan of the form of wrestling known as lucha libre, begins to suspect that he has a close connection with his favorite luchador, El Angel de La Guardia, the Guardian Angel.
A little Vietnamese girl tries to come to terms with her grief over the loss of her family and her new life with the Australian family with whom she lives.
Fourteen-year-old Alem Kelo adjusts to life as a foster child seeking asylum in London, while his Eritrean mother and Ethiopian father work for peace between their homelands in Africa.
“Frankie is entranced by the girl in the red skirt, the gypsy from Romania who speaks no English. It is a terrible shock to him when his neighbours on the estate react violently against Emilia’s people, and what’s worse is that it’s his mother leading the protest.”
Life has been very lonely for Christopher. The young Rwandan refugee is having trouble getting used to his new school, new language, and new life. Worst of all, he misses his grandfather who had to be left behind. His teacher persuades Christophe to share his story with his classmates — so he tells them of the terrifying day the soldiers came to his house and killed his baby brother. The spoken story fills the air and his classmates are spellbound. But when his teacher asks him to write it down and read it out at an assembly, Christophe is horrified. In his culture, it is believed that once a story is written down, it loses its potency. Will Christophe find a way to break through the barriers and share his story?
Mahtab and her family are forced to leave their home in Afghanistan and travel secretly to faraway Australia, a journey she must endure along with the disappearance of her father.
Felicita leads a modern life but also participates in traditional tribal customs.
Tony saves all his summer job money to buy the beautiful saddle at the trading post, but when his grandmother becomes ill after pawning her valuable bracelet to help Tony’s uncle, Tony is faced with a difficult decision.