Best Children's Explore Middle East Fiction

In this Newbery Medal-winning novel, Daniel bar Jamin is fired by only one passion: to avenge his father's death by crucifixion by driving the Roman legions from his land of Israel. "A dramatic, deeply felt narrative whose characters and message will long be remembered."

The first book in Deborah Ellis’s riveting Breadwinner series is an award-winning novel about loyalty, survival, families and friendship under extraordinary circumstances during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan. The fifteenth anniversary edition includes a special foreword by Deborah Ellis as well as a new map, an updated author’s note and a glossary to provide young readers with background and context. Barred from attending school, shopping at the market, or even playing in the streets of Kabul, the heroine of Deborah Ellis's engrossing children's novel The Breadwinner is trapped inside her family's one-room home. Set in the early years of the Taliban regime, this topical novel for middle readers explores the harsh realities of life for girls and women in modern-day Afghanistan. A political activist whose first book for children, Looking for X , dealt with poverty in Toronto, Ellis based The Breadwinner on the true-life stories of women in Afghan refugee camps. Parvana's brother was killed years earlier by a land mine explosion and, for much of the story, her father is imprisoned, leaving only her mother, older sister and two very young siblings. There are some sympathetic moments, as when Parvana sees the effect on her mother when she wears her dead brother's clothes and realizes, while reading a letter for a recently widowed Taliban soldier, that even the enemy can have feelings.

Fadi never imagined he’d start middle school in Fremont, California, thousands of miles from home in Kabul—and half a world away from his missing six-year-old sister, Mariam. A photography contest with the prize of a trip to India seems to be his best means of finding a way back to Afghanistan to help in the search for his sister. Fadi is a likable hero who learns from his mistakes, and whose talent allows him to make a unique contribution to finding his sister, for the inevitable happy ending.— Kristin Anderson, Columbus Metropolitan Library System, OH Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Conversations often feel purposeful as Senzai educates readers about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Afghan cultural diversity, and the Qur'an's fundamental messages of peace. An abrupt but satisfying contrivance brings this illuminating docu-novel to a joyful conclusion, and young readers may well want to move on to the appended resources to learn more.

He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. and ultimately, as Jesus says to Daniel on page 224: “Can’t you see, Daniel, it is hate that is the enemy? Elizabeth George Speare (1908-1994) won the 1959 Newbery Medal for THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND, and the 1962 Newbery Medal for THE BRONZE BOW. She also received a Newbery Honor Award in 1983, and in 1989 she was presented with the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for her substantial and enduring contribution to children’s literature.

This moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing received four starred reviews, including one from Kirkus which proclaimed it "enlightening, poignant, and unexpectedly funny." Written in accessible, short free-verse poems, Hà’s immediate narrative describes her mistakes—both humorous and heartbreaking—with grammar, customs, and dress (she wears a flannel nightgown to school, for example); and readers will be moved by Hà’s sorrow as they recognize the anguish of being the outcast who spends lunchtime hiding in the bathroom. Eventually, Hà does get back at the sneering kids who bully her at school, and she finds help adjusting to her new life from a kind teacher who lost a son in Vietnam.

Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya’s in an astonishing and moving way. *Starred Review* After 11-year-old Salva’s school in Sudan is attacked by brutal rebel soldiers in 1985, he describes several terrifying years on the run in visceral detail: “The rain, the mad current, the bullets, the crocodiles, the welter of arms and legs, the screams, the blood.” Finally, he makes it to refugee camps in Ethiopia and then Kenya, where he is one of 3,000 young men chosen to go to America. In chapters that alternate with Salva’s story, Nya, a young Sudanese girl in 2008, talks about daily life, in which she walks eight hours to fetch water for her family. Then, a miracle happens: Salva returns home to help his people and builds a well, making fresh water available for the community and freeing Nya to go to school. The switching viewpoints may initially disorient some, but young readers will be stunned by the triumphant climax of the former refugee who makes a difference with the necessities that we all take for granted. Teachers may want to point out the allusion to Nelson Mandela’s A Long Walk to Freedom (1995) echoed in this moving book’s title.

Many made by ancient hands, the Inuksuit (inNUKsweet) purposes are varied, from earthly uses such as navigation and message centers to those of the spirit, as sites of reverence. Artist Melanie Rose's charming and lively oil paintings bring great variety and surprising bursts of color to this unique northern story.Mike lives in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada with his wife Agnes Bongers and their three daughters: Sadie, Hannah and Madalyn. Rose effectively uses blues, purples, and browns in her oil paintings to conjure up the cold and barren landscape and warmer tones for the expressive faces of the people. In a few places, Ulmer's poetic sentences ("a great storm drained the color from the earth") may initially confuse children, but her reverent story of a resourceful girl will encourage interest in Arctic cultures. Rose's thickly brushed acrylic paintings beautifully capture the blue Arctic light; the wide, sweeping snowscapes; and the deep relationship between humans and animals in the barren land.

America’s #1 radio talk-show host and multi-million-copy #1 New York Times bestselling author presents a book for young readers with a history teacher who travels back in time to have adventures with exceptional Americans. Talk about a rock star—this guy wanted to protect young America so badly, he rode through those bumpy, cobblestone-y streets shouting “the British are coming!” On a horse. But what if you could get the real picture—by actually going back in time and seeing with your own eyes how our great country came to be? Our exceptional nation is waiting to be discovered all over again by exceptional young patriots— like you ! After offering a wide-ranging definition of American exceptionalism that begins with the statement that the U.S. is a “land built on true freedom and individual liberty, and it defends both around the world,” Limbaugh goes on to explain that the Founders believed all people were born to be “free as individuals.” Really? The book’s premise is that a substitute history teacher, Rush Revere, who dresses like his hero, Paul, along with his talking horse, Liberty, can go back in time. The text is wordy, and many of the pages are spent on the banter between Rush and Liberty, occasionally amusing but mostly just filling space, as do the tedious explanations of the way time travel works. They hadn’t been spoiled by wall-to-wall carpets, central heating and microwave ovens.” The fact that many modern-day people do experience incredible hardships, albeit different from the Pilgrims, seems not to have occurred to Limbaugh. Apparently, the turnaround for the struggling colony came “when every family was assigned its own plot of land to work.” Rush Revere drives home the point that it was after the Pilgrims stopped sharing the profits that success was ensured. Even Squanto adds, “No more slaves to the Common House.” As for factual inaccuracies, Paul Revere never said, “The British are coming!” That was Mr. Longfellow.

Anna can't wait for her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a good job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. So she's not too thrilled when her father unexpectedly ships her off to boarding school in Paris - until she meets Etienne St. Clair, the perfect boy. Will a year of romantic near-misses end in the French kiss Anna awaits? “ Anna and the French Kiss charms [readers] with its Parisian setting and très bien boy.”. — MTV.com. --Lauren Myracle, New York Times bestselling author of Peace, Love and Baby Ducks and Let It Snow. Gr 9 Up–Anna Oliphant has big plans for her senior year in Atlanta: hang out with her best friend, Bridgette, and flirt with her coworker at the Royal Midtown 14 multiplex. Teens will feel like they are strolling through the City of Lights in this starry-eyed story of finding love when you least expect it.–Kimberly Castle, Medina County District Library, OH. Featuring vivid descriptions of Parisian culture and places, and a cast of diverse, multifaceted characters, including adults, this lively title incorporates plenty of issues that will resonate with teens, from mean girls to the quest for confidence and the complexities of relationships in all their forms. Despite its length and predictable crossed-signal plot twists, Perkins’ debut, narrated in Anna’s likable, introspective voice, is an absorbing and enjoyable read that highlights how home can refer to someone, not just somewhere.

It is 1910 and Maia, tragically orphaned at thirteen, has been sent from England to start a new life with distant relatives in Manaus, hundreds of miles up the Amazon. Maia, however, is resourceful enough to find herself smack in the middle of more excitement than she ever imagined, from a mysterious "Indian" with an inheritance, to an itinerant actor dreading his impending adolescence, to a remarkable journey down the Amazon in search of the legendary giant sloth. Ibbotson (Island of the Aunts) offers another larger-than-life adventure featuring lovable heroes and heroines, nasty villains, much hilarity and a deliciously gnarled plot. Her life would be dismal indeed, if she didn't sneak out every once in a while to meet up with two other orphans with whom she has crossed paths: Clovis, a traveling actor, who longs to return to England, and Finn, a rich heir, who would rather live with the "Indians" than be sent to the British estate where his grandfather eagerly awaits his arrival.

In the ancient South Pacific world of Oceania, Moana, a born navigator, sets sail in search of a fabled island.