GO AND COME BACK: A NOVEL
by Joan Abelove
Alicia, a young tribeswoman living in an Amazonian village in the Andes, tells about the two American women anthropologists who arrive to study the way of life of her people.

BEFORE WE WERE FREE
by Julia Alvarez
Twelve-year-old Anita tries to live a normal life amidst a revolution in her native Dominican Republic in the 1960s.

HOME OF THE BRAVE
by Katherine Applegate
Kek, an African refugee, is confronted by many strange things at the Minneapolis home of his aunt and cousin, as well as in his fifth grade classroom, and longs for his missing mother, but finds comfort in the company of a cow and her owner.

FORGOTTEN FIRE
by Adam Bagdasarian
After witnessing the slaughter of his family, an Armenian teen struggles to survive the Turkish genocide of 1915.

MARISOL AND MAGDALENA: THE SOUND OF OUR SISTERHOOD
by Veronica Chambers
Separated from her best friend in Brooklyn, thirteen-year-old Marisol spends a year with her grandmother in Panama where she secretly searches for her real father.

BOUND FEET AND WESTERN DRESS
by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang
A young woman searches for the story of her renegade aunt.

DOWN TO THE BONE
by Mayra Lazara Dole
Laura, a seventeen-year-old Cuban American girl, is thrown out of her house when her mother discovers she is a lesbian, but after trying to change her heart and hide from the truth, Laura finally comes to terms with who she is and learns to love and respect herself.

A YELLOW WATERMELON
by Ted M. Dunagan
Growing up in poverty-stricken, racially segregated, rural Alabama in the late 1940s, a white boy named Ted and a black boy named Poudlum become secret friends, join forces to integrate the cotton field laborers, and try to stop evil forces from depriving Poudlum's family of their property and livelihood.

THE BREADWINNER
by Deborah Ellis
Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because Parvana's father has a foreign education, he is arrested by the Taliban. The family becomes increasingly desperate until Parvana conceives a plan.

MAP OF IRELAND
by Stephanie Grant
In 1974, the first year of busing in Boston, Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Ann Ahern's lesbianism, which has isolated her from other white students, draws her to her African French teacher and leads her to insights into Blacks' struggles in the post-Civil Rights era.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, AND A FEW WHITE LIES
by Justina Chen Headley
Fifteen-year-old Patty Ho, half Taiwanese and half white, feels she never fits in, but when her overly-strict mother ships her off to math camp at Stanford, instead of being miserable, Patty starts to become comfortable with her true self.

RED SCARF GIRL: A MEMOIR OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
by Ji-li Jiang
When China's Communist Party detains Ji-li's father, the 12-year-old is faced with a difficult choice.

THE COLOR OF MY WORDS
by Lynn Joseph
When life gets difficult for Ana Rosa, a twelve-year-old would-be writer living in a small village in the Dominican Republic, she can depend on her older brother to make her feel better–until the life-changing events on her thirteenth birthday.

MY MOST EXCELLENT YEAR: A NOVEL OF LOVE, MARY POPPINS, AND FENWAY PARK
by Steve Kluger
Three teenagers in Boston narrate their experiences of a year of new friendships, first loves, and coming into their own.

A STEP FROM HEAVEN
by An Na
A young Korean girl and her family find it difficult to learn English and adjust to life in America.

WAIT FOR ME
by An Na
As her senior year in high school approaches, Mina yearns to find her own path in life but working at the family business, taking care of her little sister, and dealing with her mother's impossible expectations are as stifling as the southern California heat, until she falls in love with a man who offers a way out.

TIES THAT BIND, TIES THAT BREAK: A NOVEL
by Lensey Namioka
Ailin's life takes a different turn when she defies the traditions of upper class Chinese society by refusing to have her feet bound.

WHEN MY NAME WAS KEOKO
by Linda Sue Park
With national pride and occasional fear, a brother and sister face the increasingly oppressive occupation of Korea by Japan during World War II, which threatens to suppress Korean culture entirely.

THE EVER-AFTER BIRD
by Ann Rinaldi
In 1851, thirteen-year-old Cecilia has her eyes opened to the horrors of slavery when she accompanies her ornithologist uncle on an expedition in search of the rare "Scarlet Ibis," and watches as he shows slaves the way to the Underground Railroad.

ESPERANZA RISING
by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

PERSEPOLIS
by Marjane Satrapi
A wise, funny and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, told in powerful black-and-white comic strip images.

TANGLED THREADS: A HMONG GIRL'S STORY
by Pegi Deitz Shea
After ten years in a refugee camp in Thailand, thirteen-year-old Mai Yang travels to Providence, Rhode Island, where her Americanized cousins introduce her to pizza, shopping and beer, while her grandmother and new friends keep her connected to her Hmong heritage.

PACIFIC CROSSING
by Gary Soto
When Lincoln and Tony take up the martial art of kempo, they never imagine that it will lead them to Japan as exchange students. They have little idea of what lies ahead when they fly from San Francisco to Tokyo, but when it comes time to return home, Lincoln has learned that his Japanese family, and people everywhere, are not unlike his family back in California.

HAVELI
by Suzanne Fisher Staples
Having relented to the ways of her people in Pakistan and married the rich older man to whom she was pledged against her will, Shabanu is now the victim of his family's blood feud and the malice of his other wives.

SHIVA'S FIRE
by Suzanne Fisher Staples
When a great guru invites Parvati to study with him, she devotes her life to the dance. Then she meets a gentle-eyed boy who turns her life upside down.

DOUBLE CROSSING: A JEWISH IMMIGRATION STORY
by Eve Tal
In 1905, as life becomes increasingly difficult for Jews in Ukraine, eleven-year-old Raizel and her father flee to America in hopes of earning money to bring the rest of the family there, but her father's health and Orthodox faith become barriers.

SKIM
by Mariko Tamaki
When her classmate Katie is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. The popular clique stars a club to boost school spirit, but Skim sinks into an ever-deepening depression.

CUBANITA
by Gaby Triana
Seventeen-year-old Isabel, eager to leave Miami to attend the University of Michigan and escape her overprotective Cuban mother, learns some truths about her family's past and makes important decisions about the type of person she wants to be.

FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER: A DAUGHTER OF CAMBODIA REMEMBERS
by Loung Ung
When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung's family fled their home and moved from village to village to hide their identity, their education, their former life of privilege.

MOTHERLAND: A NOVEL
by Vineeta Vijayaraghavan
Fifteen-year-old Maya is disgruntled when her mother impels her to visit India for the summer to reacquaint herself with her extended Indian family. Over the course of three months, Maya learns why a rift has always existed between her mother and herself, an understanding that allows her to bridge that gap. Maya also comes to realize that her home–her motherland–can be anywhere.

NAME ME NOBODY
by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
A powerful novel of friendship, family, sexuality and identity in which thirteen-year-old Emi-Lou struggles with coming of age and middle school in Hawaii.

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE
by Gene Luen Yang
Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in popular culture.

THE FRIENDS
by Kazumi Yumoto
Curious about death, three sixth-grade boys decide to spy on an old man waiting for him to die, but they end up becoming his friends.