Fiction+-+Multicultural

=// New Fiction Books at Cal Young ~ 2009-2010 //=

//** Multicultural stories **//
FIC Abd Abdel-Fattah, Randa //**Ten Things I Hate About Me**// 2009. Lebanese-Australian Jamilah, known in school as Jamie, hides her heritage from her classmates and tries to pass by dyeing her hair blonde and wearing blue-tinted contact lenses, until her conflicted feelings become too much for her to bear.

FIC Abd Abdel-Fattah, Randa //**Does My Head Look Big In This?**// 2007. Year Eleven at an exclusive prep school in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, would be tough enough, but it is further complicated for Amal when she decides to wear the hijab, the Muslim head scarf, full-time as a badge of her faith -- without losing her identity or sense of style. //YRCA nominee 2010//

FIC Ale Alexie, Sherman 2007. Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. //National Book Award 2009; YRCA nominee 2010//
 * //The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian//**

FIC Bur Burg, Shana //**A Thousand Never Evers**// 2008. As the civil rights movement in the South gains momentum in 1963--and violence against African Americans intensifies--the black residents, including seventh-grader Addie Ann Pickett, in the small town of Kuckachoo, Mississippi, begin their own courageous struggle for racial justice.

FIC Dow Dowd, Siobhan //**Bog Child** 2008.// In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles," eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog. MC/8th grade or parent permission //A 2009 Best Book for Young Adults//

FIC Eng Engle, Margarita //**Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba**// 2009. Escaping from Nazi Germany to Cuba in 1939, a young Jewish refugee dreams of finding his parents again, befriends a local girl with painful secrets of her own, and discovers that the Nazi darkness is never far away.

FIC Erd Erdrich, Louise //**The Porcupine Year**// 2008. In 1852, forced by the United States government to leave their beloved Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker, fourteen-year-old Omokayas and her Ojibwe family travel in search of a new home.

FIC Fro Frost, Helen 2008. In a remote area of Alaska, twelve-year-old Willow helps her father with their sled dogs when she is not at school, wishing she were more popular, all the while unaware that the animals surrounding her carry the spirits of dead ancestors and friends who care for her.
 * //Diamond Willow//**

FIC Hij Hijuelos, Oscar //**Dark Dude**// 2008. In the 1960s, Rico Fuentes, a pale-skinned Cuban American teenager, abandons drug-infested New York City for the picket fence and apple pie world of Wisconsin, only to discover that he still feels like an outsider and that violent and judgmental people can be found even in the wholesome Midwest. MC/8th grade or parent permission //A 2009 Best Book for Young Adults//

FIC Laf La Fevers, R. L. //**Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos**// 2007. Twelve-year-old Theo uses arcane knowledge and her own special talent when she encounters two secret societies, one sworn to protect the world from ancient Egyptian magic and one planning to harness it to bring chaos to the world, both of which want a valuable artifact stolen from the London museum for which her parents work.

FIC Laf La Fevers, R. L. 2008. When mummies go missing all over London, eleven-year-old Theodosia puts aside her fight against the Serpents of Chaos to save her father, who is suspected in the thefts, all the while avoiding a string of new governesses.
 * //Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris//**

FIC Les Lester, Julius 2008. In a rural southern town in 1946, a white man and his son witness the lynching of an innocent black man. Includes historical note on lynching. MC/8th grade or parent permission
 * //Guardian//**

FIC Lew Lewis, Richard //**The Killing Sea**// 2008. In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in Sumatra, two teenagers, American Sarah and Acehnese Ruslan, meet and continue together their arduous climb inland, where Ruslan hopes to find his father and Sarah seeks a doctor for her brother. Includes maps and author's note about the tsunami on which the story is based.

FIC Mar Marchetta, Melina //**Jellicoe Road**// 2008. Abandoned by her drug-addicted mother at the age of eleven, high school student Taylor Markham struggles with her identity and family history at a boarding school in Australia. MC/8th grade or parent permission 2009 Printz Award

FIC Mat Matthews, Andrew 2008. In 16th century Japan Jimmu Shimomura is raised to avenge his father's death caused by Lord Ankan, but after training as a samurai warrior and becoming a bodyguard for his sworn enemy he becomes sympathetic toward Ankan and is unsure what the right thing to do is.
 * The Way of the Warrior**

FIC Mcm McMullan, Margaret 2007. Ten years after the Civil War's end, twelve-year-old Addy, abandoned by her parents, is taken from the horrid town of No-Bob by schoolteacher Frank Russell and his bride, but when her father returns to claim her she must find another way to leave her O'Donnell past behind. //A 2009 Best Book for Young Adults//
 * //When I Crossed No-Bob//**

FIC Mic Michaelis, Antonia //**Tiger Moon**// 2008. Sold to be the eighth wife of a rich and cruel merchant, Safia, also called Raka, tries to escape her fate by telling stories of Farhad the thief, his companion Nitish the white tiger, and their travels across India to retrieve a famous jewel that will save a kidnapped princess from becoming the bride of a demon king.

FIC Nai Naidoo, Beverley 2007. Two boys -- one white, one black -- share an uneasy friendship in Kenya in the 1950s, a country shaken by a rebellion of Africans against white landowners, but suspicions and accusations are escalating, and an act of betrayal could change everything.
 * //Burn My Heart//**

FIC She Sheth, Kashmira //**Keeping Corner**// 2007. In India in the 1940s, thirteen-year-old Leela's happy, spoiled childhood ends when her husband since age nine, whom she barely knows, dies, leaving her a widow whose only hope of happiness could come from Mahatma Ghandi's social and political reforms. //A 2009 Best Book for Young Adults//

FIC Smi Smith, Sherri L. //**Flygirl**// 2008. During World War II, a light-skinned African American girl "passes" for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots. //2009 Teens' Top Ten Nominee//

FIC Ven Venkatraman, Padma 2008. In India, in 1941, when her father becomes brain-damaged in a non-violent protest march, fifteen-year-old Vidya and her family are forced to move in with her father's extended family and become accustomed to a totally different way of life. //A 2009 Best Book for Young Adults//
 * //Climbing the Stairs//**

FIC Woo Woodson, Jacqueline 2009. Through letters to his little sister, who is living in a different foster home, sixth-grader Lonnie, also known as "Locomotion," keeps a record of their lives while they are apart, describing his own foster family, including his foster brother who returns home after losing a leg in the Iraq War.
 * //Peace, Locomotion//**

FIC Wri Wright, Bil 2008. Adopted by white parents and sent to an exclusive Connecticut girls' school where she is the only black student, fourteen-year-old Lahni Schuler feels like an outcast, particularly when her parents separate, but after attending a local church where she hears gospel music for the first time, she finds her voice.
 * //When the Black Girl Sings//**