Materials from the Americas
Moving to a new city can be exciting. But what if your new home isn’t anything at all like your old home? Will you make friends? What will you eat? Where will you play? In a shared voice, a boy moving from New York City to Mexico City and a girl moving from Mexico City to New York City express their fears about leaving home to live in a new and unfamiliar place. Tania de Regil offers a heart-warming story about finding home wherever you go.
When a little girl and her younger brother are forced along with their family to flee the home they’ve always known, they must learn to make a new home for themselves — wherever they are. And sometimes the smallest things — a cup, a blanket, a lamp, a flower, a story — can become a port of hope in a terrible storm. As the refugees travel onward toward an uncertain future, they are buoyed up by their hopes, dreams and the stories they tell — a story that will carry them perpetually forward.
This timely, sensitively told story, written by multiple award–winner Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Sendak Fellowship recipient Rashin Kheiriyeh, introduces very young readers in a gentle, non-frightening and ultimately hopeful way to the current refugee crisis.
Told in lively and powerful verse by debut author Kevin Noble Maillard, Fry Bread is an evocative depiction of a modern Native American family, vibrantly illustrated by Pura Belpré Award winner and Caldecott Honoree Juana Martinez-Neal.
Please watch WOW’s Imagination Friday with the author and illustrator of Fry Bread.
This book is featured in WOW Currents: Big Events, Strong Emotions – Anxiety.
Featured in WOW Review, Volume XV, Issue 4.
Awards:
Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal
2020 American Indian Youth Literature Picture Book Honor Winner
National Public Radio (NPR) Best Book of 2019
NCTE Notable Poetry Book
2020 NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People
2020 ALA Notable Children’s Book
2020 ILA Notable Book for a Global Society
A Different Pond is an unforgettable story about a simple event – a long-ago fishing trip. Graphic novelist Thi Bui and poet Bao Phi deliver a powerful, honest glimpse into a relationship between father and son – and between cultures, old and new. As a young boy, Bao and his father awoke early, hours before his father’s long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. A successful catch meant a fed family. Between hope-filled casts, Bao’s father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.
Read two takes on A Different Pond in June 2019’s My Take/Your Take.
One winter afternoon, Joe and Cody went ice fishing with their papa, their mama, and Cody’s little black dog, Ootsie. It was the perfect day to fish. The sky was clear, and the sun made the snow sparkle like diamonds.Brothers Joe and Cody are spending a chilly winter afternoon ice fishing with their parents. Cody is helping Papa fish, while Mama and Joe doze in the sled. Suddenly the sled dogs sit up and sniff. A fox is across the lake, her fur as bright as flames. The sled dogs give chase, pulling Mama and Joe along on a wild ride.Written in both English and Cree, Fox on the Ice is a wonderful, lyrical story of celebration from award-winning author Tomson Highway, capturing a passing way of life for future generations. Illustrator Brian Deines has created an evocative masterpiece of shimmering oils depicting the beauty of northern Manitoba.
Yolanda sets out with family and friends to help her grandmother and discovers long-buried secrets about a family curse and the healing power of the magic surrounding her.
When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, fifteen-year-old Dan French had no way to know that one day his tribute to the great president would transform a plot of Washington, DC marshland into America’s gathering place. He did not even know that a sculptor was something to be. He only knew that he liked making things with his hands. This is the story of how a farmboy became America’s foremost sculptor. After failing at academics, Dan was working the family farm when he idly carved a turnip into a frog and discovered what he was meant to do. Sweeney’s swift prose and Fields’s evocative illustrations capture the single-minded determination with which Dan taught himself to sculpt and launched his career with the famous Minuteman Statue in his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. This is also the story of the Lincoln Memorial, French’s culminating masterpiece. Thanks to this lovingly created tribute to the towering leader of Dan’s youth, Abraham Lincoln lives on as the man of marble, his craggy face and careworn gaze reminding millions of seekers what America can be. Dan’s statue is no lifeless figure, but a powerful, vital touchstone of a nation’s ideals. Now Dan French has his tribute too, in this exquisite biography that brings history to life for young readers.
Thirteen-year-old Newt Gomez must confront his fears and accept uncertainty while coping with aftereffects of a bear attack and deciding between attending middle school on the mainland or his Pacific Northwest island home.
When two rabbit sisters ignore their parents’ warnings and decide to play outside on the open tundra, a hungry owl soon spots them and decides they will make a delicious meal. As a chase ensues, the sisters must act quickly, using the owl’s own greed against him in order to get away. A traditional Inuit story and cautionary tale, this book presents a centuries-old narrative for a new generation of readers.
This home is home because my dad is here, and it’s nothing like home because my mom isn’t here, thinks the boy in this story when he enters his dad’s new apartment for the first time. His dad moved out on Monday and now it’s Friday night, the start of his weekend with his dad. The boy and his dad follow their normal weekend routine — they eat eggs for breakfast, play cards and spend time at the park. And then they do the same things on Sunday. It is hard to say goodbye at the end of the weekend, but Dad gives his son a letter to remind him that, even if his dad can’t always be there, the boy is loved. Naseem Hrab has written a poignant yet hopeful story, strikingly illustrated in Frank Viva’s signature style, about what happens when parents separate, and the new reality of having two homes.