Fourteen-year-olds Raphael and Gardo team up with a younger boy, Rat, to figure out the mysteries surrounding a bag Raphael finds during their daily life of sorting through trash in a third-world country’s dump.
Asia
Materials from Asia
Benazir Bhutto
Leading Women celebrates the impact that women in leadership roles have made across cultures and decades.
Thunder Over Kandahar
A powerful novel of enduring friendship set amid the terror and chaos of present-day Afghanistan.Best friends Tamanna and Yasmine cannot believe their good fortune when a school is set up in their Afghan village; however, their dreams for the future are shattered when the Taliban burns down the school and threatens the teacher and students with death.As Tamanna faces an arranged marriage to an older man and the Taliban targets Yasmine’s western-educated family, the girls realize they must flee. Traveling through the heart of Taliban territory, the two unaccompanied young women find themselves in mortal danger. After suffering grave injuries, Tamanna from a fall and Yasmine from a suicide bombing, the girls are left without the one thing that has helped them survive — each other.Reunited years later in England, Tamanna and Yasmine discover that, despite the horrific events of the past, they are both driven to return home by memories of their families and a longing for their country.The book features stunning photographs by award-winning photojournalist Rafal Gerszak (The New York Times, BBC World News) that bring readers an immediate sense of the faces and landscape of Afghanistan.Filled with tension and drama, Thunder Over Kandahar paints a vivid portrait of the perils of contemporary Afghanistan.
The Jungle Book
Kipling’s classic Mowgli tales spring to new life with the help of stunning artwork by acclaimed illustrator Nicola Bayley.First published in 1984 in THE JUNGLE BOOK, these three stories tell of Mowgli’s upbringing by wolves in the Indian jungle. When he is a baby they save him from the tiger Shere Khan, then teach him the law and language of the jungle animals, with help from two other unforgettable characters, Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther. In this classic edition, Mowgli’s adventures are illustrated in ravishing and exquisite detail by Nicola Bayley.
Saving the Ghost of the Mountain: An Expedition among Snow Leopards in Mongolia
Sea
Despite recurring nightmares about her mother’s death and her own fear of flying, fifteen-year-old Sienna accepts her father’s birthday gift to fly to Indonesia with his team of disaster relief workers to help victims of a recent tsunami, never suspecting she would fall in love with an Indonesian boy, recently orphaned, who suspects his father is still alive.
Stolen
Gemma, 16, is on layover at Bangkok Airport, en route with her parents to a vacation in Vietnam. She steps away for just a second, to get a cup of coffee. Ty–rugged, tan, too old, oddly familiar–pays for Gemma’s drink. And drugs it. They talk. Their hands touch. And before Gemma knows what’s happening, Ty takes her. Steals her away. The unknowing object of a long obsession, Gemma has been kidnapped by her stalker and brought to the desolate Australian Outback. STOLEN is her gripping story of survival, of how she has to come to terms with her living nightmare–or die trying to fight it.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 1
The Boy in the Garden
After Jiro encounters a life-like garden statue of a tall bird, he falls asleep and dreams of the story his mother once told him about a grateful crane.
Sweet Moon Baby
The smiling moon watches over a baby girl in China whose parents love her but cannot take care of her, and guides a childless couple that lives far away to the daughter for whom they yearn.
Henry’s First-Moon Birthday
A young girl helps her grandmother with preparations for the traditional Chinese celebration to welcome her new baby brother.