Ballad & Dagger (An Outlaw Saints Novel) (Outlaw Saints, 1)

When sixteen-year-old Mateo and Chela discover each other and their powers during a political battle between neighborhood factions, they set aside their differences to unravel the mystery behind their sunken homeland and to stop a dangerous political operative who is trying to harness their gifts to unleash terror on the world.

Nobody’s Pilgrims

Three runaway teenagers are chased in a road trip from the Texan frontera to New England, by a drug cartel planning to unleash chaos unto the country. Seventeen year old Turi escapes from his abusive family by reading. He hopes to actually escape by saving up from his work at a chicken farm near Ysleta, Texas. He believes the beautiful setting of his favorite book, Connecticut, will be the perfect home for him. So Turi sets off on the road with Arnulfo-an undocumented teenager he met at the farm, and Molly-a lonely girl looking to build a better life. The boys start their trip by hitching a ride with an elderly man, but they leave him behind and steal his truck when they begin to suspect he’s in the middle of an illicit operation, and hiding a dangerous secret. Unfortunately for the three runaways, the secret is hidden in the truck and results in a drug cartel chasing them down, the release of a virus, and the total breakdown of society around them.

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?

Oranges On Golden Mountain

When hard times fall on his family, Jo Lee is sent from China to San Francisco, where he helps his uncle fish and dreams of being reunited with his mother and sister.

We Are Water Protectors

When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth and poison her people’s water, one young water protector takes a stand to defend Earth’s most sacred resource.

This book is discussed in WOW Review: Volume 14, Issue 2, WOW Currents: Water In Indigenous Children’s Literature, and WOW Currents: Environmental Sciences.

I’m Not Sydney!

Hanging upside down in a tree, Sydney imagines he is a sleepy, sun-bathing sloth. And that’s where Sami finds him. Sami thinks sloths are too slow, so she scampers up the tree and becomes a spider monkey. “Fast is fun!” she chatters. “Fast is best!” And that’s where Edward finds them…One after another, the neighborhood kids wander by and slip into a shared imaginative world where leaves and giant flowers unfurl, playing, laughing, teasing and bickering, until Edward the elephant fills up his trunk and—WHOOSH!—sends the children “galloping home like a herd of small wet animals.”