Children's Literature: Fiction (Young Adult)

Eleven-year-old Elijah is the first child born into freedom in Buxton, Canada, a settlement of runaway slaves just over the border from Detroit. When a former slave steals money from Elijah’s friend, who has been saving to buy his family out of captivity in the South, Elijah embarks on a dangerous journey to America in pursuit of the thief.

Esperanza thought she'd always live with her family on their ranch in Mexico--she'd always have fancy dresses, a beautiful home, and servants. But a sudden tragedy forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California during the Great Depression, and to settle in a camp for Mexican farm workers. Esperanza isn't ready for the hard labor, financial struggles, or lack of acceptance she now faces.

Abby will have to repeat sixth grade-unless she meets some specific conditions, including taking on an extra-credit project to find a pen pal in a distant country. As letters flow back and forth-between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of central Asia, across cultural and religious divides, through the minefields of different lifestyles and traditions-a small group of children begin to speak and listen to one another.

A GIRL NAMED DISASTER is the humorous and heartwrenching story of young girl who discovers her own courage and strength when she makes the dangerous journey from Mozambique to Zimbabwe.

At the heart of the story is Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in a Connecticut school who is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. Wanda claims she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn’t and bullies her mercilessly. The class feels terrible when Wanda is pulled out of the school, but by that time it’s too late for apologies. Maddie, one of Wanda’s classmates, ultimately decides that she is "never going to stand by and say nothing again."

This is the story of "Shorty"-a 15-year-old boy trapped in a collapsed hospital during the earthquake in Haiti. As he waits in darkness for a rescue that may never come, a mystical bridge seems to emerge between him and Haitian leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, uniting the two in their darkest suffering-and their hope.

Faced with the prospect fo a disagreeable arranged marriage or a journey across the barren Alaskan tundra, 13-year-old Miyax chooses the tundra. She finds hersilf caught between the traditional Eskimo ways and the modern ways of the whites.