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Back home, nine-year-old Anaïs was the best English student in her class, but here in Crazy America it feels like she doesn’t know English at all. Nothing makes sense (chicken fingers?), and the kids at school have some very strange ideas about Africa. Anaïs misses home and the family left behind. So she writes letters to her grandmother and tells her all about the weird things Crazy Americans do, and how she just might be turning into a Crazy American herself. Inspired by the author’s work with students learning English, this sweet, often funny middle-grade novel explores differences and common ground across cultures.

Jude never thought she’d be leaving her beloved older brother and father behind, all the way across the ocean in Syria. But when things in her hometown start becoming volatile, Jude and her mother are sent to live in Cincinnati with relatives. At first, everything in America seems too fast and too loud. The American movies that Jude has always loved haven’t quite prepared her for starting school in the US — and her new label of “Middle Eastern,” an identity she’s never known before. But this life also brings unexpected surprises — there are new friends, a whole new family, and a school musical that Jude might just try out for. Maybe America, too, is a place where Jude can be seen as she really is.

This young people’s version of the adult bestseller, Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference, is a complex and inspirational story about the Fugees, a youth soccer team in Clarkson, Georgia made up of diverse refugees from around the world, and their formidable female coach, Luma Mufleh. The author explores how the community changed with the influx of refugees and how the dedication of Luma Mufleh and the entire Fugees soccer team inspired an entire community.

An allegorical picture book about the hardships and struggles of immigration. 

A young rabbit named Pancho eagerly awaits his papa’s return. Papa Rabbit left two years ago to travel far away north to find work in the great carrot and lettuce fields to earn money for his family. When Papa does not return home on the designated day, Pancho sets out to find him. He packs Papa’s favorite meal — mole, rice and beans, a heap of still-warm tortillas, and a jug full of fresh aguamiel — and heads north. He soon meets a coyote, who offers to help Pancho in exchange for some of Papa’s favorite foods. They travel together until the food is gone and the coyote decides he is still hungry … for Pancho!
 
Award-winning author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh brings to light the hardship and struggles facing families who seek to make better lives for themselves and their children by illegally crossing the borders.

Claire Wang, a wealthy 11th grader in Shanghai, is suddenly sent on her own or “parachuted” to California to finish private high school and finds herself boarding with Dani, a scholarship student at her new school.

It’s 1953 and 11-year-old Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice cream, swimming, and baseball. This coming-of-age story is populated by a cast of vivid family characters and it explores the things that tear them apart and the things that bring them back together. The book includes an Author’s Note with photographs and additional background on World War II, Internment camps, and 1950s America.

Persepolis is an autobiography by Marjane Satrapi that depicts her childhood up to her early adult years in Iran and Austria during and after the Islamic Revolution. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. 

Twelve-year-old Hanako and her family, reeling from their confinement in an internment camp, renounce their American citizenship to move to Hiroshima, a city devastated by the atomic bomb dropped by Americans at the end of World War II.

A winner of the Caldecott Award for Illustrators, Anita Lobel writes her memoir growing up in Krakow, Poland, during the Holocaust. She was only five when the Nazis invaded, and she is sent to live with their Catholic nanny in the country. Anita and her brother are eventually discovered and deported to a concentration camp where they live until the liberation. Art and books become her saving grace when she finally comes to America as a teenager.

Thirteen-year-old Indian American Reha feels torn between her American life and her family’s traditions and holidays. Reha feels disconnected from her parents, who have strict expectations, but when her mother is diagnosed with leukemia, Reha’s world changes again.

Josef is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world …

Isabel is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America …

Mahmoud is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe …

All three kids go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. All will face unimaginable dangers — from drownings to bombings to betrayals. But there is always the hope of tomorrow. And although Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are separated by continents and decades, shocking connections will tie their stories together in the end.

This action-packed novel tackles topics both timely and timeless: courage, survival, and the quest for home.

When Tyler’s father is injured in a tractor accident, the family decides to hire a family of Mexican migrant workers. For Tyler, the workers’ presence on the farm — as well as that of the three young daughters — is shrouded in mystery. As he develops a friendship with Mari, the eldest, he begins to wonder about the family’s immigration status and what it means to be patriotic. In the meantime, Mari struggles with her own complicated feelings and worries about her mother, who is missing. This unforgettable, award-winning novel, told from both the perspectives of Tyler and Mari, opens the door for discussing important questions about immigration, friendship, and family with students of all backgrounds.

It’s 2032, and in this near-future America, all citizens are chipped and everyone is tracked—from buses to grocery stores. It’s almost impossible to survive as an undocumented immigrant, but that’s exactly what sixteen-year-old Vali is doing. She and her family have carved out a stable, happy life in small-town Vermont, but when Vali’s mother’s counterfeit chip starts malfunctioning and the Deportation Forces raid their town, they are forced to flee. Now on the run, Vali and her family are desperately trying to make it to her tía Luna’s in California, a sanctuary state that is currently being walled off from the rest of the country. But when Vali’s mother is detained before their journey even really begins, Vali must carry on with her younger brother across the country to make it to safety before it’s too late. 

Life for immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was filled with challenges, documented here through the lives of five young people from different countries. Black & white photographs add riveting detail.

Six Words Fresh Off the Boat marries the phenomenon of Larry Smith’s successful Six-Word Memoirs with ABC and 20th Century Fox Television’s hit comedy Fresh Off the Boat. The book captures hundreds of takes on the immigration experience, from every-day people as well as world-famous celebrities including Aziz Ansari, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Julianne Moore, Mario Batali, George Takei, Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Billy Collins, Junot Diaz, Lac Su, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. This book will have you thinking in sixes and challenging others to share six words about their lives.

On the outside, Yumi Chung suffers from #shygirlproblems, a perm-gone-wrong, and kids calling her Yu-MEAT because she smells like her family’s Korean barbecue restaurant. On the inside, Yumi is ready for her Netflix stand-up special. Her notebook is filled with mortifying memories that she’s reworked into comedy gold. All she needs is a stage and courage. Instead of spending the summer studying her favorite YouTube comedians, Yumi is enrolled in test-prep tutoring to qualify for a private school scholarship, which will help in a time of hardship at the restaurant. One day after class, Yumi stumbles on an opportunity that will change her life: a comedy camp for kids taught by one of her favorite YouTube stars. The only problem is that the instructor and all the students think she’s a girl named Kay Nakamura—and Yumi doesn’t correct them. As this case of mistaken identity unravels, Yumi must decide to stand up and reveal the truth or risk losing her dreams and disappointing everyone she cares about. 

The extraordinary memoir of an orphan who danced her way from war-torn Sierra Leone to ballet stardom, most recently appearing in Beyonce’s Lemonade and as a principal in a major American dance company.

Eight teenagers who fled from Ethiopia and Rwanda tell how they got to America and Canada only to receive more prejudicial treatment.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants yearly scramble across the U.S.-Mexican border and into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil’s Highway. Many do not make it out alive. This is the human story of those border crossings told with facts, anger, and poetry.

In 1890, seventeen-year-old Chinese American Jo Kuan works by day as a lady’s maid for the cruel Caroline Payne, the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, “Dear Miss Sweetie.”

Based on his father’s immigration files from Angel Island, Laurence Yep and his niece Dr. Kathleen S. Yep bring us the story of a ten-year-old boy from China who must prepare for his interrogation at Angel Island. The young boy memorizes everything from the layout of his village to the number of doors in the house, and continues his study on the sea voyage to San Francisco with his father. The Yeps provide a powerful account of the intensity and challenge Chinese immigrants faced at Angel Island, as well as the complexity of the relationships for those families who were spread between China and the U.S.

Sixteen-year-old Sonia Ocampo was born on the night of the worst storm Tres Montes had ever seen. And when the winds mercifully stopped, an unshakable belief in the girl’s protective powers began. Sonia knows she has no special powers, but how can she disappoint those who look to her for solace? When she gets a chance to travel to the city and work in the home of a wealthy woman, she seizes it. But when news arrives that her beloved brother has disappeared while looking for work, she learns to her sorrow that she can never truly leave the past or her family behind.

Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was harvested. His DNA came from El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium — a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster — except for El Patrón. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn’t even suspect.

The tale of a young Irish-American who aspires to be a reporter, while supporting his widowed mother and siblings by selling newspapers. From the My Name is America series.