River Readers

In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It's a decision that will alter her destiny...and it's a lie that will remain buried until the next century.

Nisha is given the diary as a gift from Kazi their cook. She lives in India in 1947 with her father, grandmother and twin brother. Her mother died in childbirth and Nisha writes letters to her in the diary. India is being given self-rule from England and is breaking apart into India and Pakistan. The Muslims will be going to Pakistan and the Hindus to India. Unfortunately, Nisha and her family live in what is to be Pakistan and are Hindus. Or more specifically half-Hindu, half-Muslim. Her mother was Muslim and her father Hindu.

Jingwen, his brother Yanghao and mother have just moved to Australia. The plan has always been to move but things were put on hold when dad died in a car accident. Now mom has decided to move them anyway. They leave behind grandma and grandpa and the family bakery. Mom starts working in a local bakery and the boys start school. Yanghao picks up English fairly quickly and starts to make friends. Jingwen is very different. He doesn't understand what anyone is saying and feels like he is on a different planet. He makes very little effort to learn English or to get along in school.

Vietnam has fallen to the Vietcong. The American forces have fled and many in Vietnam are afraid of what is to follow. That is why Lam and Dee Dee are put on a boat and sent out to see. Their family hopes they will find refuge and make their way to their father in America. The voyage is filled with danger as their boat experiences problems and they are not granted refuge. They are shuttled from one refugee camp to another and on one occasion sent back out to see on a sinking boat. They are helped along the way by a kind family who adopts them as their own.

Elise Sontag is American, but when WWII breaks out, the fact that her parents are German immigrants trumps that. Soon Elise and her family are sent to Crystal City, an internment camp in the Texas desert. Though there are unspoken divisions between prisoners of German and Japanese descent, Elise befriends Mariko, a fellow first-generation American with a vivid imagination. The two lose touch when their families are repatriated, and the focus shifts to Elise struggling to adjust to life in Germany, where she faces a language barrier and bombings in equal measures.

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years.

In the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. This is the story of Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated and may have been inspired by her own profound and very personal insight.

As the Great War continues to take its toll, headstrong twenty-one-year-old Emily Bryce is determined to contribute to the war effort. She is convinced by a cheeky and handsome Australian pilot that she can do more, and it is not long before she falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage.

It is 1914, and the world has been on the brink of war so often, many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest. Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. The two met years ago one summer in Paris and became close confidantes. Now, Eliza embarks on the trip of a lifetime, home with Sofya to see the splendors of Russia: the church with the interior covered in jeweled mosaics, the Rembrandts at the tsar's Winter Palace, the famous ballet.

Mia, a young Chinese immigrant, ran the front desk of the hotel her parents managed. Having immigrated from China, Mia's family was having a hard time adjusting to life in America. They were struggling to survive and were easy prey for those who would take advantage of the desperation of the immigrants who came to America with little money or knowledge of how to avoid such predators.

Guero is a kid living on the border between the U.S. and Mexico. He is an American citizen but his mom is from Mexico. So they travel the border frequently. Guero tells the story of his family life and his friends at school through a series of poems. These poems show the connections he has to the area around him and to his family. They also illustrate the racism he faces on a daily basis. One of the more heartbreaking poems was called Playoff Game where the girls' basketball team is in the playoffs and the opposing crowd shouts racist slurs throughout the game.

2019 Pura Belpré Honor Book
2019 Walter Honor Book for Outstanding Children's Literature
ALSC Notable Children's Book, 2019
A School Library Journal Best Book of 2018, Middle Grade
Shelf Awareness 2018 Best Children's & Teen Books of the Year
NCTE 2019 Notable Verse Novels

Twelve-year-old Güero is Mexican American, at home with Spanish or English and on both sides of the river. He’s starting 7th grade with a woke English teacher who knows how to make poetry cool.

Despite years on the run, Sophie Neumann is determined to care for two young children. She won't abandon them the way she thinks her older sisters abandoned her. But times are growing desperate, and when she falls in with the wrong crowd and witnesses a crime, she realizes fleeing 1850s New York is her only option.

Disappearing with her two young charges into a group of orphans heading west by train, Sophie hopes to find safety and a happy life. When the train stops in Illinois for the first placement of orphans, Sophie faces the most difficult choice of her life.

This book is set in India just prior to the exit of British rule in 1947. Nisha is a twelve year old who's deceased mother was Muslim and her father is Hindu. With the exit of the British, the religious factions are quarreling over representation and who will settle well. It is decided that they will partition India with the Muslims in part and the Hindu's in the other part. Thus is born India and Pakistan. Nisha's family, who practice Hinduism, will need to leave and travel to the "new India" in order to be safe.

Illegal is a graphic novel the tells the story of Ebo, a migrant from Niger, and his experiences trying to get to Europe as a refugee.