"Arriving in Canada, Ace finds himself living in a basement apartment, having to integrate into a new community where he is the 'African.' Struggling with his grades and his self worth, he finds ignorance and bullying at school until he falls in with a crew of international misfits who understand what he’s going through.
With their support, Ace starts to regain the confidence he lost in the move and his subsequent troubles. He wants to show himself and his misfit friends that he has the tools to make it in his new life. This book tackles self esteem and how it can be easily lost when one feels alone.
At the core of this story is the isolation a child feels after his world is snatched from him, and the journey of self worth and self confidence he must undertake to rise above it."
"Huda and her sisters can’t believe it when her parents announce that they’re actually taking a vacation this summer . . . to DISNEY WORLD! But it’s not quite as perfect as it seems. First Huda has to survive a 24-hour road trip from Michigan to Florida, with her sisters annoying her all the way. And then she can’t help but notice the people staring at her and her family when they pray in public. Back home in Dearborn she and her family blend right in because there are so many other Muslim families, but not so much in Florida and along the way.
It's a vacation of forced (but unexpectly successful?) sisterly bonding, a complicated new friendship, a bit more independence, and some mixed feelings about her family's public prayers. Huda is proud of her religion and who she is, but she still sure wishes she didn’t care so much what other people thought."
"Seventh grade begins, and Kareem’s already fumbled it.
His best friend moved away, he messed up his tryout for the football team, and because of his heritage, he was voluntold to show the new kid—a Syrian refugee with a thick and embarrassing accent—around school. Just when Kareem thinks his middle school life has imploded, the hotshot QB promises to get Kareem another tryout for the squad. There’s a catch: to secure that chance, Kareem must do something he knows is wrong.
Then, like a surprise blitz, Kareem’s mom returns to Syria to help her family but can’t make it back home. If Kareem could throw a penalty flag on the fouls of his school and home life, it would be for unnecessary roughness.
Kareem is stuck between. Between countries. Between friends, between football, between parents—and between right and wrong. It’s up to him to step up, find his confidence, and navigate the beauty and hope found somewhere in the middle."
"On the surface, thirteen-year-old Kaya leads a charmed life. She lives in beautiful, beachy Lihiwai. She has ride-or-die best friends. She’s ultrasmart and killing it at school. She even works with a super-cute boy at her parents’ restaurant.
But she also has anxiety—serious anxiety, the kind that makes you scratch and pick—and she’s always had bad luck around the ocean. It’s hard to enjoy Hawaiian beaches when you’ve almost drowned more than once.
But as stranger and stranger things happen to Kaya around the sea, she realizes that—wanted or not—she has a special connection to it. Waves rise when she’s angry. Surf smooths when she’s calm. Fish come when she calls them. And when she learns the truth about her family and her divine ancestor, Mazu, she knows that she will need to connect with her most difficult emotions ASAP—or her potent powers may become dangerous to the people she loves.
Thirteen-year-old Samim is a refugee, forced to make a long, dangerous journey from his home in Afghanistan to the UK. But even then his safety isn't guaranteed: Samim must tell his story to convince the authorities to let him stay for good.
Samim relives the perils he faced and remembers the many friends he made and lost – the intrepid girl who dressed as a boy for safety, the courageous grandmother seeking a new home for her nine grandchildren, and especially his funny, spirited, best friend Zayn. Samim is one of the lucky ones, but has he really found a safe new home?
Two Palestinian teenagers discover secrets that change all they thought they knew about their family histories, and their own futures.
Farida is a talented young painter who recreates European masterpieces under the patronizing eye of a Parisian art dealer. Mazen just arrived in France to hunt for a lost family heirloom. When the two meet during a chance encounter at the Louvre, they discover that both their grandmothers fled Palestine during the Nakba in 1948. Drawn to one another, Mazen and Farida begin to piece together their past, but a shadowy ring of art forgers has different plans for Farida. Will she discover the truth before it’s too late?
Exploring what it means to live in diaspora, Hooda Shawa’s US debut moves from Paris to Haifa, from Aleppo to Tangier, conjuring the jewel tones of the Mediterranean and the bittersweet taste of memory.
"Ajay has lived his life dutifully following the rules set by his Tamil parents.
Rule #3: Straight As only
Rule #5: There is no such thing as a no-homework day.
Rule #10: Never watch scary movies.
However, moving to a new school gives Ajay a new rule to follow: Get on seventh-grade all-star Jacob Underson’s good side.
When Jacob asks him to steal a Mercury bar from Scary Al’s convenience store, Ajay feels this is his chance to finally “get cool” and stop eating alone. But Jacob rejects the stolen chocolate bar, leaving Ajay to unwrap it and discover that it contains Mercury’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Grand Prize…one million dollars.
Faced with an extreme dilemma, Ajay will have to bear the weight of his actions and battle his morality in deciding whether to claim the prize that may change the life of his family forever."
"When her grandmother comes off the airplane in Houston from Pakistan, Mahnoor knows that having Dadi move in is going to disrupt everything about her life. She doesn’t have time to be Dadi’s unofficial babysitter—her journalism teacher has announced that their big assignment will be to film a documentary, which feels more like storytelling than what Maha would call “journalism.”
As Dadi starts to settle into life in Houston and Maha scrambles for a subject for her documentary, the two of them start talking. About Dadi’s childhood in northern India—and about the Partition that forced her to leave her home and relocate to the newly created Pakistan.
As details of Dadi’s life are revealed, Dadi’s personal story feels a lot more like the breaking news that Maha loves so much. And before she knows it, she has the subject of her documentary."
Immediately after high school graduation, eighteen-year-old Maya is kicked out of her wealthy dad's NYC home; he prides himself on forcing his kids to "make their own way in the world." Maya's mom lives in Guatemala, so Maya crashes with friends while working and trying to land freelance writing gigs.
Maya struggles to find her footing until she gets access to a "writing room," a shared workspace where she can focus―and get to know the intriguing neighbor, Jake, who's often there.
When she discovers her dad is bankrolling a virulently anti-immigrant candidate for governor, Maya―the daughter of an immigrant―realizes she can’t continue quietly accepting his choices. She’ll have to take a stand, using the voice she's found in the writing room.