United States

Materials from United States of America

When Light Left Us

When the Vasquez siblings’ father left, it seemed nothing could remedy the absence in their lives . . . until a shimmering figure named Luz appeared in the canyon behind their house. Luz filled the void. He shot hoops with seventeen-year-old Hank’s hands. He showed fourteen-year-old Ana cinematic beauty behind her eyelids. He spoke kindly to eight-year-old Milo. But then Luz left, too, and he took something from each of them. As a new school year begins, Hank, Ana, and Milo must carry on as if an alien presence never altered them. But how can they ever feel close to other people again when Luz changed everything about how they see the world and themselves? In an imaginative and heartfelt exploration of human–and non-human–nature, Leah Thomas champions the unyielding bonds between family and true friends.

How The Turtle Got Its Squares

Bilingual Edition in English and Caddo Language Tsa Ch¿ayah/How The Turtle Got Its Squares is a traditional Caddo Indian story that reaches back through countless generations into the Caddo past in what is now Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. In those days much of the entertainment and education of Caddos took the form of stories and songs that were passed from generation to generation in the Caddo language. They explained the natural world, history, and moral lessons. In the late 1950¿s linguist Wallace Chafe met storyteller Sadie Bedoka Weller, recorded this story and transcribed it in an alphabet customized to the sounds of Caddo. In recent generations the Caddo language has fallen almost completely out of use; stories like Tsa Ch¿ayah have rested silently in archives and scholarly books. Now the Kiwat Hasinay Foundation has brought the story to life again, with original illustrations by Caddo artist Robin Michelle Montoya. The text is written in Chafe¿s alphabet, and the actual voice of Sadie Bedoka can be heard on a CD that is available to accompany the book. Tsa Ch¿ayah, with its bilingual format and CD, helps children read and write English, read and write Caddo, understand and even speak a sample of spoken Caddo. Above all, it brings the wisdom and culture of the past once again into the present and future of the Caddo people. –Alice Anderton, Intertribal Wordpath Society Retold for the first time in print with Caddo language and English text and delightful illustrations, this charming book introduces a story told by generations of Caddo Indian Nation storytellers to capture the imaginations of their children. The story of ¿How The Turtle Got Its Squares¿ will fascinate and entertain new storytellers and their young listeners alike.

The Outlaw

In this spare and powerful story set in the Old West, people in a small town live in constant worry of another visit from the Outlaw. Then the Outlaw suddenly and mysteriously disappears. Time passes, and one day a stranger rides into town. He takes it upon himself to fix everything that is in disrepair — the clapboard schoolhouse, the train station platform. He even builds a horse trough. But when someone recognizes him as the Outlaw, the crowd turns on him. It takes the courage of a small boy to change the course of events.

Featured in WOW Review Volume X, Issue 4.

The First Rule Of Punk

Twelve-year-old María Luisa O’Neill-Morales (who really prefers to be called Malú) reluctantly moves with her Mexican-American mother to Chicago and starts seventh grade with a bang–violating the dress code with her punk rock aesthetic and spurning the middle school’s most popular girl in favor of starting a band with a group of like-minded weirdos.

Evangelina Takes Flight

Having fled the rampaging revolutionaries in Mexico in 1911, thirteen-year-old Evangelina and her family face unexpected prejudice and violence in Texas.

Step Up To The Plate, Maria Singh

Nine-year-old Maria Singh learns to play softball just like her heroes in the All-American Girls’ League, while her parents and neighbors are struggling through World War II, working for India’s independence, and trying to stay on their farmland.

Light Years

When a mysterious virus turns into a worldwide pandemic, sixteen-year-old Luisa Ochoa-Jones travels across the country in search of a cure, discovering that the fate of humanity may rest in the confluence of her extraordinary computer programming skills and a synesthesia-like condition that causes her senses to misfire when she is under emotional stress.