Americas

Materials from the Americas

The Crazy Man

This novel in verse tells the story of a 11-year-old girl struggling to recover after a farm accident leaves her crippled and fatherless.

After Emaline, 11, is crippled by a farm accident with her father’s tractor, Daddy kills her beloved dog, Prince, and walks away from the farm. Mom takes in Angus from the local mental hospital to help with the farm work, but the neighbors complain about the crazy man on the loose. Emaline never denies Angus’ illness, but she sees his kindness and strength, and they help each other with their work and with their grief.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: America Keeps the Memory Alive

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in Washington D.C., in April 1993. This book walks the reader through the museum, floor by floor. It interweaves the story of the Holocaust with a description of the museum. The book describes the Nazis’ rise to power, the “final solution”, and the aftermath of the Holocaust (1945 to present).

Hello, America

The year is 1951 and eighteen-year-old Elli and her mother arrive in New York City. Finally they can leave behind bitter Holocaust memories and become real Americans! From office filing all day, to the challenge of night school, to interpreting the intentions of Alex, a handsome and persistent doctor, Elli soon finds learning English is only half as hard as “making it” in this new world. Against a backdrop of soda shops, skyscrapers, and subways, acclaimed author Livia Bitton-Jackson fuses old-world tradition and modern dreams, in this vivid kaleidoscope of immigrant America.

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?

Celebrate! In Central America

Describes the background and customs associated with some of the festivals of Central America.

Jade and Iron: Latin American Tales from Two Cultures

The part one of this anthology contains mythic tales from the native inhabitants explaining how the world came to be. There are warriors and princesses who turn into towering volcanoes, an opossum who steals fire for mankind, and a giant worm who drinks a river so people can find fish. The second part contains stories from the Europeans who came to the New World and is about people’s relationships with each other and with nature. There’s a mysterious woman magician who escapes from jail on a flying boat, horses the color of rainbows, and a jungle creature who enchants a young girl.

Porcupine

War-torn Afghanistan could not seem farther from Newfoundland, but it is about to change twelve-year-old tomboy Jack Cooper (or Jacqueline, as her mother insists on calling her) forever. When her father is killed in the war, she watches helplessly as her mother crumbles under sorrow and depression. Jack and her younger sister and brother, Tessa and Simon, end up across the country, living on a run-down farm in a small town on the Prairies with a great-grandmother they didn’t know existed. Worried that they will be abandoned again if Gran moves into a retirement home, Jack puts on a brave face and encourages Tessa and Simon to take on the challenges of their new life. In the process, she learns that families come in many different forms and that love, trust, and faith can build a home anywhere.

Hurricane: A Novel

outside, the wind is howling. it is a monster shrieking to get inside. outside, the rain is a solid wall of water. everything is dark. everything is destroyed. everything is gone…. Everything except for the desperate courage of those who survive that terrifying night. After hours of cowering in the dark with no lights, no warmth, and the terrible noises of the rain and wind pounding on the walls, José walks out his front door and steps into a nightmare. But his nightmare has only begun as he and the few who are left in his small village start to pull their lives back together. Based on Hurricane Mitch’s devastation of Honduras in 1998, Terry Trueman’s powerful story is about a young boy’s fear and courage in the face of a force of nature too huge to even imagine.