young adult Archives - Page 48 of 103

House Without Walls
by Ching Yeung Russell (Author)

Booktalk: For most people, home is a place with four walls. It’s a place to eat, sleep, rest, and live. For a refugee, the concept of home is ever-changing, ever-moving, ever-wavering. And often, it doesn’t have any walls at all.

Eleven-year-old Lam escapes from Vietnam with Dee Dee during the Vietnamese Boat People Exodus in 1979, when people from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fled their homelands for safety. For a refugee, the trip is a long and perilous one, filled with dangerous encounters with pirates and greedy sailors, a lack of food and water, and even the stench of a dead body onboard. When they finally arrive at a refugee camp, Lam befriends Dao, a girl her age who becomes like a sister–a welcome glimmer of happiness after a terrifying journey.

Snippet:

A 2019 Cybils Poetry nominee

Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir
by Nikki Grimes (Author)

Booktalk: Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night – and discovered the magic and impact of writing.

Snippet:
ON OUR OWN

No one warned me
the world was fill of
ordinary hazards
like closets with locks and keys.

I learned this lesson when Mom,
without her cousin to fall back on,
left us daily with
a succession of strangers
while she went to work.
One woman was indisputably
a demon in disguise,
full lips grinning slyly
as Mom waved goodbye
each morning.
“See you after work,”
Mom said on the first day.
The second she was out of sight,
Demon’s smiles melted like
hot paraffin.
Snatching up Carol and me,
she dragged us, kicking, to
the bedroom closet.
She shoved us in, quick as the witch
in “Hansel and Gretel”
jamming the key in the lock.

A 2019 Cybils Poetry nominee

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!