Siblings

Flowers In The Sky

Fifteen-year-old Nina Perez is faced with a future she never expected. She must leave her Garden of Eden, her lush island home in Samana, Dominican Republic, when she’s sent by her mother to live with her brother, Darrio, in New York, to seek out a better life. As Nina searches for some glimpse of familiarity amid the urban and jarring world of Washington Heights, she learns to uncover her own strength and independence. She finds a way to grow, just like the orchids that blossom on her fire escape. And as she is confronted by ugly secrets about her brother’s business, she comes to understand the realities of life in this new place. But then she meets him—that tall, green-eyed boy—one that she can’t erase from her thoughts, who just might help her learn to see beauty in spite of tragedy.

Featured in WOW Review Volume XIII, Issue 1

Brother’s Keeper

Twelve-year-old Sora and her eight-year-old brother, Youngsoo, must try to escape North Korea’s oppressive Communist regime on their own in 1950. Includes historical notes, photographs of the author’s mother, glossary of Korean words, and timeline.

Featured in WOW Review Volume XIII, Issue 1

Brother’s Keeper is a WOW Recommends: Book of the Month for February 2021.

Finding Narnia: The Story Of C. S. Lewis And His Brother Warnie

Before C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, he was a young boy named Jack who spent his days dreaming up stories of other worlds filled with knights, castles and talking animals. His brother, Warnie, spent his days imagining worlds filled with trains, boats and technology. One rainy day, they found a wardrobe in a little room next to the attic, and they wondered, “What if the wardrobe had no end?” Years later, Jack began to think about what could be beyond that wardrobe, and about a girl named Lucy and her siblings. This picturebook biography introduces the beloved creator of The Chronicles of Narnia to a new generation of children who see hidden magic in the world around them.

Voyages In the Underworld Of Orpheus Black

Harry Black, a conscientious objector, artist, and firefighter battling the blazes of German bombing in London in 1944, wakes in the hospital to news that his soldier brother, Ellis, has been killed. In the delirium of his wounded state, Harry’s mind begins to blur the distinctions between the reality of war-torn London, the fiction of his unpublished sci-fi novel, and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Driven by visions of Ellis still alive and a sense of poetic inevitability, Harry sets off on a search for his brother that will lead him deep into the city’s Underworld.

Under the Broken Sky

When Soviet troops invade Japanese-occupied Manchuria during the last days of World War II, 12-year-old Natsu Kimura must care for her younger sister as they struggle to survive and return to Japan.

Under the Broken Sky is a WOW Recommends: Book of the Month for April 2020.

Girl Under a Red Moon: Growing Up During China’s Cultural Revolution

In a small village called Yellow Stone, in southeastern China, Sisi is a model sister, daughter, and student. She brews tea for her grandfather in the morning, leads recitations at school as class monitor, and helps care for her youngest brother, Da. But when students are selected during a school ceremony to join the prestigious Red Guard, Sisi is passed over. Worse, she is shamed for her family’s past — they are former landowners who have no place in the new Communist order. Her only escape is to find work at another school, bringing Da along with her. But the siblings find new threats in Bridge Town, too, and Sisi will face choices between family and nation, between safety and justice. With the tide of the Cultural Revolution rising, Sisi must decide if she will swim against the current, or get swept up in the wave. Bestselling author Da Chen paints a vivid portrait of his older sister and a land thrust into turmoil during the tumultuous Chinese Cultural Revolution.