Child of Dandelions
10 best books like Child of Dandelions (Shenaaz Nanji): Broken Memory: A Story of Rwanda, Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You, Wanting Mor, Boy Kills Man, This Thing Called the Future, Beneath My Mother's Feet, Ask Me No Questions, Climbing the Stairs, The Stone Goddess, The Humming of Numbers
Broken Memory: A Story of Rwanda
| Author | Elisabeth Combres |
| ISBN | 0888998929 |
Hiding behind a chair, five-year-old Emma can’t see her mother being murdered, but she hears everything. When the assassins finally leave, the terrified girl stumbles away from the scene, motivated only by the memory of her mother’s last words: "You must not die, Emma!" Eventually, Emma is taken...
Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You
| Author | Hanna Jansen |
| ISBN | 1575059274 |
Before that fateful April day, Jeanne lived the life of a typical Rwandan girl. She bickered with her little sister, went to school, teased her brother. Then, in one horrifying night, everything changed. Political troubles unleashed a torrent of violence upon the Tutsi ethnic group. Jeanne's family,...
| Author | Rukhsana Khan |
| ISBN | 0888998589 |
Jameela and her family live in a poor, war-torn village in Afghanistan. Even with her cleft lip and lack of educational opportunities, Jameela feels relatively secure, sustained by her Muslim faith and the love of her mother, Mor. But when Mor dies, Jameela’s father impulsively decides to start...
| Author | Matt Whyman |
| ISBN | 0060746653 |
In the South American town of Medellin, where drug dealers rule and hope is scarce, young assassins are in large supply. Take Shorty and Alberto: two hardened best friends from poor homes whose biggest dream is to see a live soccer match. These boys understand that the one true power they will ever possess...
| Author | J.L. Powers |
| ISBN | 1933693959 |
Khosi lives with her beloved grandmother Gogo, her little sister Zi, and her weekend mother in a matchbox house on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. In that shantytown, it seems like somebody is dying all the time. Billboards everywhere warn of the disease of the day. Her Gogo goes to...
| Author | Amjed Qamar |
| ISBN | 1416947280 |
"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,...
| Author | Marina Budhos |
| ISBN | 1416903518 |
Nadira is that fat daughter. She is also the slow daughter, the one who is slow to speak and quick to feel. She is constantly compared to her sister Aisha. Aisha is the perfect sister. She is the sister who is going places and the one who impressed everyone with her knowledge and her ability to adapt. After...
| Author | Padma Venkatraman |
| ISBN | 0399247467 |
A remarkable debut novel set in India that shows one girl's struggle for independence.
During World War II and the last days of British occupation in India, fifteen-year-old Vidya dreams of attending college. But when her forward-thinking father is beaten senseless by the British police,...
| Author | Minfong Ho |
| ISBN | 0439381983 |
Award-winning author Minfong Ho tells the story of Nakri's struggles during the Communist takeover of Cambodia in the 1980s.
Twelve-year-old Nakri's beloved home in Cambodia is shattered when the nation's capital is overrun by government rebels. Her family is forced to flee, and she and...
| Author | Joni Sensel |
| ISBN | 0805083278 |
Aidan is poised to take his monastic vows—until a girl enters the abbey, one who hums of the number eleven. Aidan has the ability to hear the humming of numbers, a buzzing energy given off by living things. He is captivated and tormented by the mysterious girl, Lana, who has some unusual abilities...
| Author | Kashmira Sheth |
| ISBN | 0786838590 |
Pretty as a peacock, twelve-year-old Leela has 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.Leela's whole...
A pampered child used to having her own way, Anneke Van Raalte lives outside Amsterdam, where her father is a cartoonist for the Amsterdam newspaper. Though Anneke's family is Jewish, her religion means little to her. Anneke's life changes in 1942 when the Nazis invade Holland, and she and her family...
| Author | Nancy Springer |
| ISBN | 0802796494 |
Dusie always knew puberty was going to be confusing, but she never realized it was going to be catastrophic--until she wakes up one morning to find that her hair has turned into a writhing mass of slithering snakes and discovers the real truth about her family: her mother is a Gorgon--right out...
| Author | Gail Sidonie Sobat |
| ISBN | 1926531116 |
Sometimes keeping a secret is harder than telling the truth.
Ian lives in a suburb where everything’s the same. The houses are the same, the cars are the same, and their aspirations are the same. But Ian is different. Openly gay in his bigoted high school, Ian doesn’t exactly fit in. But he’s...
| Author | Cathy Ostlere |
| ISBN | 1595143386 |
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi is gunned down by two Sikh bodyguards. The murder sparks riots in Delhi and for three days Sikh families are targeted and killed in retribution for the Prime Minister’s death. It is into this chaos that sixteen-year-old Maya and her Sikh father, Amar, arrive from...
| Author | Deborah Ellis |
| ISBN | 0888999739 |
Finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award
Orphaned and plagued with the grief of losing everyone he loves, fifteen-year-old Abdul has made a long, fraught journey from his war-torn home in Baghdad, only to end up in The Jungle -- the squalid, makeshift migrant community...
| Author | Anna Perera |
| ISBN | 0141326077 |
Khalid, a fifteen-year-old Muslim boy from Rochdale, is abducted from Pakistan while on holiday with his family. He is taken to Guantanamo Bay and held without charge, where his hopes and dreams are crushed under the cruellest of circumstances. An innocent denied his freedom at a time when Western...
| Author | Ellen Wittlinger |
| ISBN | 1416971017 |
October 1962. Juliet Klostermeyer's world is turning upside down. All she hears from her parents and teachers and on the news is the Russian threat and the Cuban Missile Crisis. And things aren't much better at home. Her best friend, Lowell, doesn't seem interested in being her friend anymore--he'd...
| Author | Mitali Perkins |
| ISBN | 0385733402 |
When her father loses his job and leaves India to look for work in America, Asha Gupta, her older sister, Reet, and their mother must wait with Baba’s brother and his family, as well as their grandmother, in Calcutta. Uncle is welcoming, but in a country steeped in tradition, the three women must abide...
| Author | Sharon E. McKay |
| ISBN | 0670067849 |
Sharon McKay sets her new novel in Uganda, where Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has, since 1987, abducted up to 30,000 children from their villages and homes for use as soldiers and slaves. It is in these nightmarish times that the fates of 5 boys and a girl are entwined. Captured from...
Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe
| Author | Doreen Baingana |
| ISBN | 0767925106 |
In her fiction debut, Doreen Baingana follows a Ugandan girl as she navigates the uncertain terrain of adolescence. Set mostly in pastoral Entebbe with stops in the cities Kampala and Los Angeles, Tropical Fish depicts the reality of life for Christine Mugisha and her family after Idi Amin's dictatorship.
Three...
| Author | Gloria Whelan |
| ISBN | 0803732759 |
A riveting tale about love and sacrifice by a National Book Award winner. The Disappeared. Los desaparecidos. This is the name given to those who opposed Argentina?s dictatorial government and were kidnapped to ensure their silence. With her hometown of Buenos Aires ensconsced in the political nightmare,...
No Turning Back: A Novel of South Africa
| Author | Beverley Naidoo |
| ISBN | 0064407497 |
Escaping from his violent stepfather, twelve-year-old Sipho heads for Johannesburg, where he has heard that gangs of children live on the streets. Surviving hunger and bitter-cold winter nights is hard'but learning when to trust in the ‘new' South Africa proves even more difficult.
No...
| Author | Andrea Alban Gosline |
Anya Rosen and her family have left their home in Odessa for Shanghai, believing that China will be a safe haven from Hitler's forces. At first, Anya's life in the Jewish Quarter of Shanghai is privileged and relatively carefree: she has crushes on boys, fights with her mother, and longs to defy expectations...
