Materials from United States of America
In early 1940s Los Angeles, Mexican Americans Marisela and Lorena work in canneries all day then jitterbug with sailors all night with their zoot suit wearing younger brother, Ray, as escort until the night racial violence leads to murder. Includes historical note.
A dazzling story told with the sensitivity, humor, and brilliant verse of debut talent Aida Salazar.
A girl describes how each person in the family has hair that looks and acts different, Papa’s like a broom, Kiki’s like fur, and Mama’s with the sweet smell of bread before it’s baked.
In September 1944 eleven-year-old Billie lives with her great aunt, Doff, eagerly waiting for her older brother Leo to return from boot camp, and desperate to find the father that left when she was little; but Leo brings a friend with him, a Navajo named Denny, and the injured dog they have rescued and named Bear–and when the two young men go off to war Bear becomes the thread that ties them all together, and helps Billie to find a true friend.
Little Lobo, a Mexican American, and Bernabe, his dog, deliver supplies to vendors at the Mercado, a busy border town market.
When ten-year-old Margarita Sandoval’s family moves to Wyoming during the Great Depression, she faces racism, homesickness, and the possibility that her grandmother’s land in New Mexico may be lost.
Sophia Garcia, thirteen, wants to excel at softball like her older sister, Ellie, and make her family proud, but when she is chosen for a different team and position than Ellie, she must learn to succeed by being herself.
Brothers Teodoro and Manny Avila take a road trip to address Manny’s PTSD following his tour in Iraq, and to help T. change his life and win the heart of Wendy Martinez. Includes information and resources about PTSD.
When resentment surges during the Great Depression in a Texas border town, Estrella, fifteen, organizes a protest against the treatment of tejanos and soon finds herself witih her mother and baby brother in Mexico.
The del Cisne girls have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals, Blanca as obedient and graceful as Roja is vicious and manipulative. They know that, because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. They know that, one day, the swans will pull them into a dangerous game that will leave one of them a girl, and trap the other in the body of a swan. But when two local boys become drawn into the game, the swans’ spell intertwines with the strange and unpredictable magic lacing the woods, and all four of their fates depend on facing truths that could either save or destroy them … The story of the ugly duckling was never about the cygnet discovering he is lovely. It is about the sudden understanding that you are something other than what you thought you were.