In this imagination-awakening, sympathetic picture book about homesickness and becoming your own heroine, Ren is crushed when she learns that her family is going to emigrate, leaving her grandmother, whose story times are a highlight of... Read More
Sharp-minded Carrasco can be a bit literal for his own good in this curiosity-lauding picture book about untangling metaphors for oneself. When a space-invading neighbor he’s avoiding declares him a “strange bird,” it’s enough to... Read More
Nou, a Hmong girl, loves her home, though some people are determined to make her family feel unwelcome. Following an act of vandalism, Nou reflects on the racism that they, and other Hmong people in their community, face. She begins to... Read More
A tender tale about seeing the world differently and loving one another all the same, this picture book is a hug put to paper. A boy visits his grandmother in her small house that holds an even smaller world: the miniature Tiny Town the... Read More
Featuring lush photography and innovative recipes, Chef Julian Lopez’s "The New Cafe Beaujolais Cookbook" captures the history and ambiance of a popular Northern California restaurant. Highlighting the café’s fifty-year history, the... Read More
Generations of women wrestle with an inherited legacy of trauma in Celeste Mohammed’s sprawling novel-in-stories "Ever Since We Small". Split into two sections, “Then” and “Now,” the novel does a masterful job of capturing the... Read More
An elder shares her story in Chi Zijian’s reflective novel "The Last Quarter of the Moon". An unnamed Evenki woman laments the loss represented by her home’s emptiness. Her family voted to leave their mountains; modernization... Read More
Samantha Ellis’s powerful memoir "Always Carry Salt" exemplifies diaspora yearning and determination. Ellis grew up in the United Kingdom, hearing snippets of the Judeo-Iraqi Arabic of her parents and ancestors. By adulthood, though,... Read More