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Multicultural Teen Selections
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HIROSHIMA
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Author:Lawrence Yep
Through a "present-tense narration that moves back and forth between the experiences of a 12-year-old girl and the men on the Enola Gay, Yep's novella tells the events of the day the first atomic bomb was dropped and its aftermath. Sachi survives but is badly burned; her sister dies and her soldier father is killed in action. For three years the girl spends most of her time indoors, as newcomers to the city fear the scarred survivors. Then she travels to America for plastic surgery, which enables her to take part in her society again. She returns to Japan, hoping to help other victims. Yep ends with two chapters on the destructive potential of nuclear warfare and on some of the efforts being made toward disarmament."
Retails:$4.50
ISBN: 0590208330
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THE SERPENT'S CHILDREN
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Author:Lawrence Yep, Tim O'Brien (Illustrator)
When villagers call Cassia and her brother, Foxfire, "the serpent's children," they mean it as an insult. But to Cassia it is an honor, for legend says that once a serpent sets her mind on something, she never gives up. And in a time when famine, drought, and violence mark her family's life, Cassia has nothing less than its survival to fight for. Father is a revolutionary, determined to free China from invaders. Foxfire, certain he'll find a mountain of gold, flees to a faraway land. Cassia will need all of her strength and wisdom to keep her family together, and to prove that she is truly the serpent's child.
Retails:$6.99
ISBN: 0064406458
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SEESAW GIRL
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Author:Linda Sue Park, Jean (Illustrator),Mou-Sien Tseng (Illustrator),Jean Tseng (Illustrator)
Jade never ventures beyond the walls of her family's Inner Court; in seventeenth-century Korea, a girl of good family does not leave home until she marries. She is enthralled by her older brother's stories about trips to the market and to the ancestral grave sites in the mountains, about reading and painting, about his conversations with their father about business and politics and adventures only boys can have. Jade accepts her destiny, and yet she is intensely curious about what lies beyond the walls. A lively story with a vividly realized historical setting, Seesaw Girl recounts Jade Blossom's daring attempts to enlarge her world.
Retails:$4.50
ISBN: 0440416728
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THE RAINBOW PEOPLE
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Author:Lawrence Yep
"Culled from 69 stories collected in a [1930s] WPA project, [these 20] tales are organized into sections with themes like 'Tricksters' or 'Virtues and Vices,' each with a thoughtful introduction placing the individual stories in the context of feelings and background of the original tellers. Yep's telling is vigorous, often poetic, imbued with earthy humor and realism touched with fatalism. A handsomely designed collection."
Retails:$5.99
ISBN: 0064404412
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YEAR OF WONDERS
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Author:Geraldine Brooks
In 1666 the bubonic plague appeared in a small mountain village in England, where it took hold and spread. In a novel and courageous effort to keep the disease from extending beyond the village, the local minister and his congregation took a sacred oath to quarantine themselves until the illness was spent. Brooks has used this piece of history as a framework for her fictional account of what it might have been like to live through the event. Told by Anna Frith, the housemaid for the minister and his wife, this is a tale of devastation, grief, and madness as well as the attempts, both medicinal and spiritual, by the townspeople to combat the disease. The author has captured the various human responses to grief, fear, hopelessness, and exhaustion. Characters are well drawn, showing both the good and evil sides of human nature. Compelling and believable.
Retails:$14.00
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