"Marisol loves to paint. So when her teacher asks her to help make a mural for the school library, she can't wait to begin! But wait-how can Marisol ever make a sky without blue paint? After gazing out the bus window and watching from her porch as day turns into night, she closes her eyes and starts to dream"--

Vashti believes that she cannot draw, but her art teacher's encouragement leads her to change her mind.

Eleven-year-old Donald thinks nothing could be worse than missing a pop fly in a baseball game that most of his Montana town was watching, but through the end of 1947 and beginning of 1948, he suffers one humiliation after another.

Thirteen-year-old Siena's visions of the past intensify when her family moves to the Maine coast hoping her little brother will begin speaking, and she connects with residents of the house from many years earlier who faced a similar problem.

The first Christmas since Julie's parents' divorce is difficult for the whole family, but Julie finds comfort sharing the Chinese New Year traditions of her best friend, Ivy Ling, and thinking about new beginnings.

At the start of World War II, Japanese-American third-grader Aki and her family are sent to an internment camp in Poston, Arizona, while Mexican-American third-grader Sylvia's family leases their Orange County, California, farm and begins a fight to stop school segregation.

"As World War II raged, millions of young Jewish people were caught up in the horrors of the Nazis' Final Solution. Many readers know of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state's genocidal campaign against European Jews and others of so-called "inferior" races. Yet so many of the individual stories remain buried in time. Of those who endured the Holocaust, some were caught by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps, some hid right under Hitler's nose, some...

"Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti's debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations. The story begins in August 1947. Unrest plagues the streets of New Delhi leading up to the birth of the Muslim majority nation of Pakistan, and the Hindu majority nation of India. Sixteen-year-old Deepa navigates the changing...

When her family's forced into an internment camp, Mitsi Kashino is separated from her home, her classmates, and her beloved dog Dash; as her family begins to come apart around her, Mitsi clings to her one connection to the outer world--the letters from the kindly neighbor who's caring for Dash.

On April 1, 1945 with the battle of Okinawa beginning, fourteen-year-old native Okinawan Hideki, drafted into the Blood and Iron Student Corps, is handed two grenades and told to go kill American soldiers; small for his age Hideki does not really want to kill anyone, he just wants to find his family, and his struggle across the island will finally bring him face-to-face with Ray, a marine in his very first battle--and the choice he makes then will...