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Immigrants and Refugees

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A Day's Work

Eve Bunting

When Francisco, a young Mexican American boy, tries to help his grandfather find work, he discovers that even though the old man cannot speak English, he has something even more valuable to teach Francisco.
A Different Pond

Bao Phi

As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.
All the Lights in the Night

Arthur A. Levine

Two brothers celebrate Hanukkah on a true and unforgettable journey to freedom as they escape from Tsarist Russia and travel on to Palestine. "The narrative is convincing; the characterizations are natural; and the resolution is touching.
All We Can Do Is Wait

Richard Lawson

In the hours after a bridge collapse rocks their city, four teens are forced to face their pasts and the prospect of very different futures as they wait at Boston General Hospital for news of their loved ones.
Amira's Family (All Kinds of Families)

Elliot Riley

Easy reader introduces a refugee and her family, highlighting their family dynamics and celebrating diversity.
An Ellis Island Christmas

Maxinne Rhea Leighton

Papa has already left Poland, and Krysia longs to see him again. "First we must cross the ocean to get to Ellis Island in America," says Mama. "That's where Papa is waiting for us." Saying goodbye to her home is hard, and the ocean voyage is long and stormy, but finally, on Christmas Eve, Krysia sees the Statue of Liberty! Dennis Nolan's richly rendered illustrations powerfully evoke the uncertainty, wonder, and hope of this young immigrant's experience. An Ellis Island Christmas is a holiday story to treasure, year after year.
A Path of Stars

Anne Sibley O'Brien

A refugee from Cambodia, Dara's beloved grandmother is grief-stricken when she learns her brother has died, and it is up to Dara to try and heal her.
A Piece of Home

Jeri Watts

When Hee Jun’s family moves from Korea to West Virginia, he struggles to adjust to his new home. His eyes are not big and round like his classmates’, and he can’t understand anything the teacher says, even when she speaks s-l-o-w-l-y and loudly at him. As he lies in bed at night, the sky seems smaller and darker. But little by little Hee Jun begins to learn English words and make friends on the playground. And one day he is invited to a classmate’s house, where he sees a flower he knows from his garden in Korea — mugunghwa, or rose of Sharon, as his friend tells him — and Hee Jun is happy to bring a shoot to his grandmother to plant a “piece of home” in their new garden. Lyrical prose and lovely illustrations combine in a gentle, realistic story about finding connections in an unfamiliar world.
A Very Important Day

Maggie Rugg Herold

Two-hundred nineteen people from thirty-two different countries make their way to downtown New York in a snowstorm to be sworn in as citizens of the United States.
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

Ibi Zoboi

Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi and featuring some of the most acclaimed best-selling black authors writing for teens today - Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it's like to be young and black in America.
Bread Song

Frederick Lipp

Hoping to make Chamnan, a seven-year-old immigrant from Thailand, feel more at home, the owner of a Portland, Maine, bakery invites him and his grandfather to hear her bread sing.
Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan

Mary Williams and R. Gregory Christie

Eight-year-old Garang is tending cattle far from his family's home in southern Sudan when war comes to his village. Frightened but unharmed, he returns to find everything has been destroyed. Soon Garang meets other boys whose villages have been attacked. Before long they become a moving band of thousands, walking hundreds of miles seeking safety — first in Ethiopia and then in Kenya. The boys face numerous hardships and dangers along the way, but their faith and mutual support help keep the hope of finding a new home alive in their hearts. Based on heartbreaking yet inspirational true events in the lives of the Lost Boys of Sudan, Brothers in Hope is a story of remarkable and enduring courage, and an amazing testament to the unyielding power of the human spirit.
Calling the Water Drum

LaTisha Redding

A young boy loses both parents as they attempt to flee Haiti for a better life, and afterward is only able to process his grief and communicate with the outside world through playing the drums.
Coolies

Yin .

A young boy hears the story of his great-great-great-grandfather and his brother who came to the United States to make a better life for themselves helping to build the transcontinental railroad.
Darius the Great is Not Okay

Adib Khorram

Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He's a Fractional Persian -- half, his mom's side -- and his first ever trip to Iran is about to change his life. Darius has never really fit in at home, and he's sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn't exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they're spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city's skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush the original Farsi version of his name -- and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he's Darioush to Sohrab. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Adib Khorram's brilliant debut is for anyone who's ever felt not good enough then met a friend who makes them feel so much better than okay.
Drawn Together

Minh Lê

A boy and his grandfather cross a language and cultural barrier using their shared love of art, storytelling, and fantasy.
Dreamers

Yuyi Morales

An illustrated picture book autobiography in which award-winning author Yuyi Morales tells her own immigration story.
Drita, My Homegirl

Jenny Lombard Lombard

When ten-year-old Drita and her family, refugees from Kosovo, move to New York, Drita is teased about not speaking English well, but after a popular student named Maxine is forced to learn about Kosovo as a punishment for teasing Drita, the two girls soon bond.
Echo After Echo

Amy Rose Capetta

Zara Evans has come to the Aurelia Theater, home to director Leopold Henneman, to play a dream role in Echo and Ariston, the Greek tragedy that taught her everything she knows about love. When the director asks Zara to promise that she will have no outside commitments, no distractions, it's easy to say yes. But are the deaths at the theater accidents, or murder, or a curse that always comes in threes? When assistant lighting director Eli Vasquez, a girl made of tattoos and abrupt laughs and every form of light, looks at Zara it's hard not to fall in love.
Either the Beginning or the End of the World

Terry Farish

For sixteen years, it's been just Sofie and her father, living on the New Hampshire coast. Her Cambodian immigrant mother has floated in and out of her life, leaving Sofie with a fierce bitterness toward her-and a longing she wishes she could outgrow. "To me she is as unreliable as the wind." Then she meets Luke, an army medic back from Afghanistan, and the pull between them is as strong as the current of the rushing Piscataqua River. But Luke is still plagued by the trauma of war, as if he's lost with the ghosts in his past. Sofie's dad orders her to stay away; it may be the first time she has ever disobeyed him. "A ghost can't love you." When Sofie is forced to stay with her mother and grandmother while her dad's away, she is confronted with their memories of the ruthless Khmer Rouge, a war-torn countryside, and deeds of heartbreaking human devotion. "I don't want you for ancestors. I don't want that story." As Sofie and Luke navigate a forbidden landscape, they discover they both have their secrets, their scars, their wars. Together, they are dangerous. Together, they'll discover what extraordinary acts love can demand.
Escape from Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy

Andrea Warren

Chronicles the experiences of an orphaned Amerasian boy from his birth and early childhood in Saigon through his departure from Vietnam in the 1975 Operation Babylift and his subsequent life as the adopted son of an American family in Ohio.
Finding Langston

Lesa Cline-Ransome

Discovering a book of Langston Hughes' poetry in the library helps Langston cope with the loss of his mother, relocating from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration, and being bullied.
Front Desk

Kelly Yang

After emigrating from China, ten-year-old Mia Tang's parents take a job managing a rundown motel, despite the nasty owner, Mr. Yao, who exploits them, while she works the front desk and tries to cope with fitting in at her school.
Golden Boy

Tara Sullivan

Light eyes, yellow hair and white skin-- Habo is an albino, strange and alone. His father, unable to accept Habo, abandons the family. When they are forced from their small Tanzanian village, Habo knows he is to blame. The family seeks refuge with an aunt in Mwanza....
Grandfather's Journey

Allen Say

A Japanese American man recounts his grandfather's journey to America, which he later also undertakes, and describes the feelings of being torn by a love for two different countries.