Contemporary World Fiction for Young Readers
Discover captivating contemporary world fiction for young readers! Explore a curated list of must-read books that inspire, entertain, and broaden horizons. Perfect for young book lovers.
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Child of Dandelions
by Shenaaz Nanji
In Uganda in 1972, fifteen-year-old Sabine and her family, wealthy citizens of Indian descent, try to preserve their normal life during the ninety days allowed by President Idi Amin for all foreign Indians to leave the country, while soldiers and others terrorize them and people disappear.
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Koyal Dark, Mango Sweet
by Kashmira Sheth
Jeetaâs family is caught up in the whirlwind of arranging marriages for her two older sisters, but the drama and excitement leave Jeeta cold. Even though tradition demands the parade of suitors, the marriage negotiations and the elaborate displays, sixteen-year old Jeeta wonders what happened to the love and romance that the movies promise? She dreads her turn on the matrimonial circuit, especially since Mummy is always complaining about how Jeetaâs dark skin and smart mouth will turn off potential husbands. But when Jeetaâs smart mouth and liberal ideas land her in love with her friendâs cousin Neel, she must strike a balance between duty to her tradition-bound parents, and the strength to follow her heart.
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Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party
by Ying Chang Compestine
Starting in 1972 when she is nine, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists' Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed "bourgeois," and people of laughter.
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Chanda's Secrets
by Allan Stratton
A young adult novel set in modern Africa tells the story of Chanda, a 16-year-old girl who must confront the realities of HIV/AIDS, as well as the corrosive nature of secrets and the healing power of truth.
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Secret Keeper
by Mitali Perkins
When Asha's father goes off to America and leaves his two daughters behind in Calcutta, their traditional uncle and his family put pressures on the two like none before, but a new friendship with a local boy helps ease Asha's pain until her father finally comes calling and an important decision must be made.
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Go and Come Back
by Joan Abelove
When the two old white ladies come to live in the Peruvian jungle village of Poincushmana, everyone makes a fuss--everyone but Alicia, who is baffled by the reaction of her tribe, the Isabo. But as the days pass, she too is drawn in--because the ladies (who are really in their twenties, and anthropologists) are stingy, stupid, and fun to watch. They don't understand the Isabo. Someone needs to set them straight. And that someone, surprisingly, is Alicia.
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Swimming in the Monsoon Sea
by Shyam Selvadurai
Although life for Amrith in 1980 Sri Lanka seems rather uneventful and orderly, things change in a hurry when his male cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith finds himself completely enamored with his new visitor. The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it isthe season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life before, when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school's production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky's tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada andAmrith's ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy. Othello, with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed. Shyam Selvadurai's brilliant novels, Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens, have garnered him international acclaim. In this, his first young adult novel, he explores first love with clarity, humor, and compassion.
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Beneath My Mother's Feet
by Amjed Qamar
"Our lives will always be in the hands of our mothers, whether we like it or not." Nazia doesn't mind when her friends tease and call her a good beti, a dutiful daughter. Growing up in a working-class family in Karachi, Pakistan, Nazia knows that obedience is the least she can give to her mother, who has spent years saving and preparing for her dowry. But every daughter must grow up, and for fourteen-year-old Nazia that day arrives suddenly when her father gets into an accident at work, and her family finds themselves without money for rent or food. Being the beti that she is, Nazia drops out of school to help her mother clean houses, all the while wondering when she managed to lose control of her life that had been full of friends and school. Working as a maid is a shameful obligation that could be detrimental to her future -- after all, no one wants a housekeeper for a daughter-in-law. As Nazia finds herself growing up much too quickly, the lessons of hardship that seem unbearable turn out to be a lot more liberating than she ever imagined.
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Keeping Corner
by Kashmira Sheth
Ba slipped the gold bangles from my wrists. The gold ones were plain so I didnât mind taking them off, but I loved wearing my milk-glass bangles and the lakkh bracelets. "A widow can't wear bangles,â she said. "They are signs of a woman's good fortune. When your husband dies it's over." "What if my good fortune comes back?" âIt doesnât.â/DIV Pretty as a peacock, twelve-year-old Leela had been spoiled all her life. She doesn't care for school and barely marks the growing unrest between the British colonists and her own countrymen. Why should she? Her future has been planned since her engagement at two and marriage at nine. DIVLeela's whole life changes, though, when her husband dies. She's now expected to behave like a proper widow: shaving her head and trading her jewel-toned saris for rough, earth-colored ones. Leela is considered unlucky now, and will have to stay confined to her house for a yearâkeep cornerâin preparation for a life of mourning for a boy she barely knew. When her schoolteacher hears of her fate, she offers Leela lessons at home. For the first time, despite her confinement, Leela opens her eyes to the changing world around her. India is suffering from a severe drought, and farmers are unable to pay taxes to the British. She learns about a new leader of the people, a man named Gandhi, who starts a political movement and practices satyagrahaânon-violent protest against the colonists as well as the caste system. The quiet strength ofsatyagraha may liberate her country. Could she use the same path to liberate herself?
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Chu Ju's House
by Gloria Whelan
One girl too many . . . When a girl is born to Chu Ju's family, it is quickly determined that the baby must be sent away. After all, the law states that a family may have only two children, and tradition dictates that every family should have a boy. To make room for one, this girl will have to go. Fourteen-year-old Chu Ju knows she cannot allow this to happen to her sister. Understanding that one girl must leave, she sets out in the middle of the night, vowing not to return. With luminescent detail, National Book Award-winning author Gloria Whelan transports readers to China, where law conspires with tradition, tearing a young woman from her family, sending her on a remarkable journey to find a home of her own.
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Homeless Bird
by Gloria Whelan
Gloria Whelan's National Book Awardâwinning novel, chronicles the breathtaking story of a remarkable young woman who dares to defy fate. Like many girls her age in India, thirteenâyearâold Koly faces her arranged marriage with hope and courage. But Koly's story takes a terrible turn when in the wake of the ceremony, she discovers she's been horribly misled; her life has been sold for a dowry. In prose both graceful and unflinching, this powerful novel relays the story of a rare young woman, who even when cast out into a brutal current of timeâworn tradition, sets out to forge her own remarkable future.Inspired by a newspaper article about the real thirteenâyearâold widows in India today, this universally acclaimed bestâselling novel, characterized by spare, lyrical language and remarkable detail, transports readers into the heart of a gripping tale of hope. Ages 10+
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Tree Girl
by Ben Mikaelsen
They call Gabriela Tree Girl. Gabi climbs trees to be within reach of the eagles and watch the sun rise into an empty sky. She is at home among the outstretched branches of the Guatemalan forests. Then one day from the safety of a tree, Gabi witnesses the sights and sounds of an unspeakable massacre. She vows to be Tree Girl no more and joins the hordes of refugees struggling to reach the Mexican border. She has lost her whole family; her entire village has been wiped out. Yet she clings to the hope that she will be reunited with her youngest sister, Alicia. Over dangerous miles and months of hunger and thirst, Gabriela's search for Alicia and for a safe haven becomes a search for self. Having turned her back on her own identity, can she hope to claim a new life? Ages 12+
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The Disappeared
by Gloria Whelan
Silvia tries to save her brother, Eduardo, after he is captured by the military government in 1970s Argentina.
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A Million Shades of Gray
by Cynthia Kadohata
A boy and his elephant escape into the jungle when the Viet Cong attack his village immediately after the Vietnam war.
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The Color of My Words
by Lynn Joseph
Twelve-year-old Ana Rosa is a blossoming writer growing up in the Dominican Republic, a country where words are feared. Yet there is so much inspiration all around her -- watching her brother search for a future, learning to dance and to love, and finding out what it means to be part of a community -- that Ana Rosa must write it all down. As she struggles to find her own voice and a way to make it heard, Ana Rosa realizes the power of her words to transform the world around her -- and to transcend the most unthinkable of tragedies.
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The Killer's Tears
by Anne-Laure Bondoux
A young boy, Paolo, and the man who murdered his parents, Angel, gradually become like father and son as they live and work together on the remote Chilean farm where Paolo was born.
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Tonight, by Sea
by Frances Temple
This acclaimed fourth novel from the late Frances Temple tells the harrowing account of one family's escape from political persecution in Haiti.
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Blue Mountain Trouble
by Martin Mordecai
Tucked high in the Jamaican Blue Mountains is Top Valley, home to 12-year-old twins Polly and Jackson Gilmore. Both are too smart for their own good, and they'll need their wits when a Rasta thug named Jammy arrives and begins to harass their family.
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Escaping the Tiger
by Laura Manivong
When you're so skinny people call you Skeleton Boy, how do you find strength for the fight of your life? Vonlai knows that soldiers who guard the Mekong River shoot at anything that moves, but in oppressive Communist Laos, there's nothing left for him, his spirited sister, Dalah, and his desperate parents. Their only hope is a refugee camp in Thailandâon the other side of the river. When they reach the camp, their struggles are far from over. Na Pho is a forgotten place where life consists of squalid huts, stifling heat, and rationed food. Still, Vonlai tries to carry on as if everything is normal. He pays attention in school, a dusty barrack overcrowded with kids too hungry to learn. And, to forget his empty stomach, he plays soccer in a field full of rocks. But when someone inside the camp threatens his family, Vonlai calls on a forbidden skill to protect their futureâa future he's sure is full of promise, if only they can make it out of Na Pho alive. In her compelling debut, Laura Manivong has written an evocative story that is vividly real, strongly affecting, and, at its heart, about hope that resonates in even the darkest moments.
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Boys Without Names
by Kashmira Sheth
For eleven-year-old Gopal and his family, life in their rural Indian village is over: We stay, we starve, his baba has warned. With the darkness of night as cover, they flee to the big city of Mumbai in hopes of finding work and a brighter future. Gopal is eager to help support his struggling family until school starts, so when a stranger approaches him with the promise of a factory job, he jumps at the offer. But Gopal has been deceived. There is no factory, just a small, stuffy sweatshop where he and five other boys are forced to make beaded frames for no money and little food. The boys are forbidden to talk or even to call one another by their real names. In this atmosphere of distrust and isolation, locked in a rundown building in an unknown part of the city, Gopal despairs of ever seeing his family again. But late one night, when Gopal decides to share kahanis, or stories, he realizes that storytelling might be the boys' key to holding on to their sense of self and their hope for any kind of future. If he can make them feel more like brothers than enemies, their lives will be more bearable in the shopâand they might even find a way to escape.
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Silk Umbrellas
by Carolyn Marsden
Eleven-year-old Noi worries that she will have to stop painting the silk umbrellas her family sells at the market near their Thai village and be forced to join her older sister in difficult work at a local factory instead. By the author of The Gold-Threaded Dress. Reprint.
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The Garbage King
by Elizabeth Laird
This is the story of children who live on the very edge of destitution. Dani and Mamo, and the gang of street boys that they join, have nothing and share everything. Their courage, loyalty and determination enable them to survive in the harshest of worlds.
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Taste of Salt
by Frances Temple
Every Life Makes a Story Djo has a story: Once he was one of "Titid's boys," a vital member of Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide's election team, fighting to overthrow military dictatorship in Haiti. Now he is barely alive, the victim of a political firebombing. Jeremie has a story: Convent-educated Jeremie can climb out of the slums of Port-au-Prince. But she is torn between her mother's hopes and her own wishes for herself ... and for Haiti. Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide has a story: A dream of a new Haiti, one in which every person would have a decent life ... a house with a roof ... clean water to drink ... a good plate of rice and beans every day ... a field to work in. At Aristide's request, Djo tells his story to Jeremie -- for Titid believes in the power of all of their stories to make change. As Jeremie listens to Djo, and to her own heart, she knows that they will begin a new story, one that is all their own, together.
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Journey to Jo'burg
by Beverley Naidoo
If only Mma was here, Naledi wished over and over. . . Mma lives and works in Johannesburg, far from the village thirteen-year-old Naledi and her younger brother, Tiro, call home. When their baby sister suddenly becomes very sick, Naledi and Tiro know, deep down, that only one person can save her. Bravely, alone, they set off on a journey to find Mma and bring her back. It isn't until they reach the city that they come to understand the dangers of their country, and the painful struggle for freedom and dignity that is taking place all around them.
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Colibri
by Ann Cameron
When TzunĂșn was little, her mother nicknamed her ColibrĂ, Spanish for âhummingbird.â At age four, ColibrĂ is kidnapped from her parents in Guatemala City and ever since sheâs traveled with Uncle, the ex-soldier and wandering beggar, who renamed her Rosa. Uncle told Rosa that he looked for her parents, but never found them.
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Before We Were Free
by Julia Alvarez
In the early 1960s in the Dominican Republic, twelve-year-old Anita learns that her family is involved in the underground movement to end the bloody rule of the dictator, General Trujillo.
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The Baboon King
by Anton Quintana
Morengaru, a strong young hunter, has been cast out by both his motherâs people, the Kikuyu, and his fatherâs people, the Masai. Every day he misses human companionship, and soon he feels as though heâs becoming more like the animals around him. When Morengaru has the chance to belong again, he seizes the opportunity. Then he faces the greatest challenge of his life: living among the baboons, still clinging to his humanity, hoping someday to return to his people.
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No Turning Back
by Beverley Naidoo
When the abuse at home becomes too much for twelve-year-old Sipho, he runs away to the streets of Johannesburg and learns to survive in the post-apartheid world. By the author of Journey to Jo'burg. Reprint.
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The Middle of Somewhere
by Sheila Gordon
All over Rebecca's village everyone is talking about the bulldozers. She and her friends wonder if the government will really send bulldozers to destroy their homes to make way for a new whites-only town. The government says they must move and promises a modern new village -- but Rebecca's parents and her granny say this is their home and they will never leave.One day Rebecca sets out for school only to learn that her best friend's family has moved away in the middle of the night. The villagers who are left must take a brave stand, and Rebecca's family may be torn apart. Soon Rebecca and her family and friends find help from a surprising source -- and learn that the eyes of the entire world are on their tiny village.
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Shiva's Fire
by Suzanne Fisher Staples
In India, a talented dancer sacrifices friends and family for her art.
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The Turtle Watchers
by Pamela Powell
Three sisters on a Caribbean island witness how a giant leatherback turtle lays her eggs on the beach, and decide to guard and protect the eggs and make sure her offspring reach the sea. The girls soon discover the many obstacles in their way-including natural enemies and poachers. Text copyright 2004 Lectorum Publications, Inc.
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Grab Hands and Run
by Frances Temple
An El Salvadorian family flees political oppression in their homeland and takes a perilous journey north, through Mexico to America, where they hope they will find a better life. A âcompelling, provocative, and exciting novel.ââV. âDetails of the brutal realities in El Salvador are dexterously woven into the story of one familyâs struggle to beat the odds.ââPublishers Weekly. âNot to be missed.ââH.
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Asphalt Angels
by Ineke Holtwijk
Abandoned on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, thirteen-year-old Alex joins a group of children like him and finds himself adapting to his new life.
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The Whale Rider
by Witi Ihimaera
Eight-year-old Kahu, a member of the Maori tribe of New Zealand, fights to prove her love, her leadership, and her destiny when hundreds of whales beach themselves and threaten the future of the Maori tribe. Basis for the 2003 feature film.
