journeys

Waiting For The Rain (Laurel Leaf Books)

Tengo is the 10-year-old son of workers on Oom Koos’s large farm in the Transvaal. He longs to go to school like his friend Frikkie, who visits his uncle’s farm on holidays. But Tengo’s family is too poor to pay for the education that comes free to whites. He finally gets his wish at age 14. Tengo goes to live with his cousin in a squalid township outside Johannesburg and studies furiously. After three years, he is almost ready for college, but a year-long school boycott ruins his chances and he is drawn into the fight against apartheid. When he and Frikkie meet in a violent confrontation, Tengo realizes that he will carry on the struggle for freedom as a scholar, not a soldier. The writing here is powerful, evoking in minute detail daily life and the broad landscapes of the country.

I Know Here

The little girl in this story lives in a trailer near a forest where her father is building a dam. Everything in her world is familiar and precious to her. But the family is moving to the city, which the little girl knows only as a place marked by a big red star on the map at school. The teacher suggests that she draw something that she wants to remember to take away with her when she leaves, and the little girl decides to draw what she knows — her road and everything her world contains — so that she can keep it with her always.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 2

No Safe Place

Orphaned and plagued with the grief of losing everyone he loves, 15-year-old Abdul has made a long, fraught journey from his war-torn home in Baghdad, only to end up in The Jungle — a squalid, makeshift migrant community in Calais. Desperate to escape, he takes a spot in a small, overloaded England-bound boat that’s full of other illegal migrants and a secret stash of heroin. A sudden skirmish leaves the boat stalled in the middle of the Channel, the pilot dead, and four young people remaining — Abdul; Rosalia, a Romani girl who has escaped from the white slave trade; Cheslav, gone AWOL from a Russian military school; and Jonah, the boat pilot’s ten-year-old nephew. As they attempt to complete the frantic and hazardous Channel crossing, their individual stories are revealed and their futures become increasingly uncertain.

Where the Streets Had a Name

Thirteen year old Hayaat is on a mission. She believes a handful of soil from her grandmother’s ancestral home in Jerusalem will save her beloved Sitti Zeynab’s life. The only problem is that Hayaat and her family live behind the impenetrable wall that divides the West Bank, and they’re on the wrong side of check points, curfews, and the travel permit system. Plus, Hayaat’s best friend Samy always manages to attract trouble. But luck is on the pair’s side as they undertake the journey to Jerusalem from the Palestinian Territories when Hayaat and Samy have a curfew-free day to travel. But while their journey may only be a few kilometers long, it could take a lifetime to complete. Deals with the Israel-Palestinian conflict with sensitivity and grace.

Everlasting

Sailing aboard her father’s ship is all seventeen-year-old Camille Rowen has ever wanted. But as a lady in 1855 San Francisco, her future is set to marry a man she doesn’t love to preseve her social standing. On her last voyage before the wedding, Camille learns the mother she has always believed dead is alive and in Australia. When their Sydney-bound ship goes down in a gale, and her father dies, Camille sets out to find her mother with a map believed to lead to a stone that once belonged to the legendary civilization of immortals. The stone can bring someone back from the dead. Unfortunately, her father’s adversary is also on the hunt for the stone, and she must race him to it. The only person Camille can depend on is Oscar, a handsome young sailor and her father’s first mate, who is in love with Camille and whom she is drawn to despite his low social standing and her pending wedding vows. With an Australian card shark acting as their guide, Camille eludes murderous bushrangers, traverses dangerous highlands, evades a curse placed on the stone, and unravels the mystery behind her mother’s disappearance sixteen years earlier. But when another death shakes her conviction to resurrect her father, Camille must choose what and who matters most.

Paradise Red

Master storyteller K. M. Grant brings the dramatic saga of young love and religious conflict to a satisfying end in the final book of the Perfect Fire trilogy. As winter falls upon the Occitan, Raimon must find a way to recover the Blue Flame from the hands of the evil White Wolf. But his plan could lead him back to the pyre—and he might not be so lucky to escape from it again. Meanwhile, Yolanda—unwillingly married to Sir Hugh des Arcis—is threatened by her husband’s desire for a son. As Sir Hugh sets off on a mission to claim the Occitain for France, she makes her own journey through the blizzard to find Raimon, a journey that could end in disaster. As the flames rise one last time, Raimon and Yolanda’s fates, like the fates of the Flame and the Occitan itself, hang by a smoky thread.

Chavela and the Magic Bubble

Chavela loves chomping chicle—chewing gum. And she loves blowing bubbles even more. One day, while out with her abuelita, she finds a mysterious kind of gum she’s never seen before. She pops it in her mouth and blows a giant bubble that lifts her up into the air! It carries her on a journey more magical than any she could ever imagine. Luscious, candy-colored paintings illustrate this fantastical story with an ecological twist. An afterword provides information on natural chewing gum, the rainforest, and sustainable farming, as well as music to a traditional Latin American folksong.

Across the Nightingale Floor (Tales of the Otori, Book 1)

This is the first book in a new epic trilogy that has already become a bestselling sensation in England and Australia, earning comparisons to The Lord of the Rings. It begins with the legend of a nightingale floor in a black-walled fortress-a floor that sings in alarm at the step of an assassin. It will take true courage and all the skills of an ancient Tribe for one orphaned youth named Takeo to discover the magical destiny that awaits him…across the nightingale floor.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 1