A timely and important illustrated nonfiction guide for middle grade readers about the history of our fight against climate change, and how young people today can rise to action.
Saving Earth: Climate Change And The Fight For Our Future
Americas
Materials from the Americas
Notebook Keeper
After traveling to Tijuana, Mexico, Noemi and her mother are denied entry at the border and must find the refugee in charge of the notebook, an unofficial ledger of those waiting to cross into the United States. Includes author’s note.
The Notebook Keeper was featured in the WOW Currents The Power of Home: Promise or Uncertainty? Part II.
The Second Chance Of Benjamin Waterfalls
Benjamin Waterfalls comes from a broken home, and the quickest fix he’s found for his life is to fill that emptiness with stuff he steals and then sells. But he’s been caught one too many times, and when he appears before a tough judge, his mother proposes sending him to boot camp at the Ojibwe reservation where they used to live. Soon he is on his way to Grand Portage, Minnesota, to live with his father, the man Benny hasn’t seen in years. Not only is boot camp not what he expects, but his rehabilitation seems to be in the hands of the tribal leader’s daughter, who wears a mask. Why? Finding the answer to this and so many other questions prove tougher than any military style boot camp. Will answers be enough for Benny to turn his life around and embrace his second chance?
When We Make It
Sarai uses verse to navigate the strain of family traumas and the systemic pressures of toxic masculinity and housing insecurity in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn, questioning the society around her, her Boricua identity, and the life she lives.
Vincent Ventura And The Curse Of The Weeping Woman / Vincent Ventura Y La Maldición De La Llorona
“Vincent Ventura, monster fighter extraordinaire, can’t believe the house at 666 Duende Street has attracted yet another creepy creature! In fact, this time there are several unusual beings, including two boys who disappear and reappear-are they ghosts?!? And the lady in white with fiery glowing eyes who calls out for them? Is she … La Llorona?!? And who is the other young woman? The next day at school, Vincent and his cousins Bobby and Michelle meet a new substitute teacher, Ms. Malin Che, who just moved into the haunted house. What is her connection to La Llorona and the unusual children? At least this time, the kids have new friends to help solve the mystery: Sayer, who they helped in a previous battle with trolls, or duendes, and Zulema, a witch owl who was the target of evil witches. As the relationship between Vincent and Zulema evolves, becoming more complex and exciting, so too does the current case! Two new beings turn up: a hideous figure dressed as a Mexican cowboy whose face is devoid of flesh and a second spooky woman! Ms. Che, a Latin American folklore expert, tells them about el Charro Negro and the weeping women collectively called Cihuateteos. This bilingual book for intermediate readers, the fourth installment in Garza’s Monster Fighter Mystery series, follows the nail-biting battle for the souls of two boys! Will Vincent and his friends be able to save them from the monsters’ clutches?!
In The Serpent’s Wake
Tess Dombegh sails south as a spy, hunting for evidence of politically-motivated crimes, while also hunting for the last World Serpent that could save her friend, Pathka.
Echoes Of Grace
On the Texas-Mexico border, eighteen-year-old Grace’s relationship with her older sister Mercy is fractured when Mercy’s two-year-old son dies in an accident, bringing to the surface old family traumas and literal ghosts as the family struggles to heal.
The Sky We Shared
Set during WWII and told in alternating voices, Nellie, a young Oregonian and survivor of a balloon bomb sent over by the Japanese, strives to understand how the war has torn her community apart and created prejudice against Japanese-Americans, while across the ocean, as part of her nationalist duty, Tamiko helps create the balloon bombs, but in her struggle to survive hunger and starvation, Tamiko muddles her way through her anger against the United States for the war.
Dead Man’s Gold And Other Stories: And Other Stories
Ten ghost stories about Chinese people who, having come to North America to make their fortunes, encounter ghosts who either help or hinder their success.
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?