Arturo and Alma Rivera have lived their whole
lives in Mexico. One day, their beautiful fifteenyear-
old daughter, Maribel, sustains a terrible
injury, one that casts doubt on whether she’ll ever be the same. And so,
leaving all they have behind, the Riveras come to America with a single
dream: that in this country of great opportunity and resources, Maribel
can get better.
When Mayor Toro, whose family is from Panama, sees Maribel in a Dollar
Tree store, it is love at first sight.
Set during the harrowing, final moments of World War II, Polish resistance fighter Jakób Kowalski is planting a bomb on the tracks intending to destroy a German troop transport, but six-year-old Gretl Schmidt’s unscheduled train bound for Auschwitz reaches the bomb first. Gretl is the only survivor.
Though spared from the concentration camp, the orphaned German Jew finds herself now lost in a hostile country. When Jakób discovers her, guilt and compassion prompt him to hide and protect Gretl in his home concealed from his Catholic family. For years, the young man and little girl form a bond over the secrets they must hide from the world.
An investigative journalist uncovers a hidden custom that will transform your understanding of what it means to grow up as a girl.
In Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune. A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as “dressed up like a boy”) is a third kind of child – a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times,
An epic tale of one man’s courage in the face of genocide and his granddaughter’s quest to tell his story
In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian’s world becomes undone. He is separated from his family as they are swept up in the government’s mass deportation of Armenians into internment camps. Gradually realizing the unthinkable—that they are all being driven to their deaths—he fights, through starvation and thirst, not to lose hope. Just before killing squads slaughter his caravan during a forced desert march, Stepan manages to escape, making a perilous six-day trek to the Euphrates River carrying nothing more than two cups of water and one gold coin.
A gripping, inspiring, and eye-opening memoir of fortitude and survival—of a twelve-year-old boy’s traumatic flight from Afghanistan to the West—that puts a face to one of the most shocking and devastating humanitarian crises of our time.
“To risk my life had to mean something. Otherwise what was it all for?”
In 2006, after his father was killed, Gulwali Passarlay was caught between the Taliban who wanted to recruit him, and the Americans who wanted to use him. To protect her son, Gulwali’s mother sent him away. The search for safety would lead the twelve-year-old across eight countries,
A bestselling author and distinguished critic goes back to high school to find out whether books can shape lives
It’s no secret that millions of American teenagers, caught up in social media, television, movies, and games, don’t read seriously-they associate sustained reading with duty or work, not with pleasure. This indifference has become a grievous loss to our standing as a great nation–and a personal loss, too, for millions of teenagers who may turn into adults with limited understanding of themselves and the world.
Can teenagers be turned on to serious reading? What kind of teachers can do it,
