Go Global! Books Set Around the World
Travel the world from the comfort of your couch with these excellent reads!
Akata Witch
Author(s):
Description:
Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue, an American-born albino child of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Oko
Aya
Author(s):
Marguerite Abouet
Clément Oubrerie
Helge Dascher
Description:
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Abo
Boxers
Author(s):
Description:
In China in 1898 bands of foreign missionaries and soldiers roam the countryside, bullying and robbing Chinese peasants. Little Bao has had enough: harnessing the powers of ancient Chinese gods, he recruits an army of Boxers--commoners trained in kung fu who fight to free China from "foreign devils."
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Yan
City Of Saints And Thieves
Author(s):
Description:
In the shadows of Sangui City, there lives a girl who doesn't exist. After fleeing the Congo as refugees, Tina and her mother arrived in Kenya looking for the chance to build a new life and home. Her mother quickly found work as a maid for a prominent family headed by Roland Greyhill, one of the city's most respected business leaders. But Tina soon learns that the Greyhill fortune was made from a life of corruption and crime. So when her mother is found shot to death in Mr. Greyhill's personal study, she knows exactly who's behind it. With revenge always on her mind, Tina spends the next four years surviving on the streets alone, working as a master thief for the Goondas, Sangui City's local gang. It's a job for the Goondas that finally brings Tina back to the Greyhill estate, giving her the chance for vengeance she's been waiting for. But as soon as she steps inside the lavish home, she's overtaken by the pain of old wounds and the pull of past friendships, setting into motion a dangerous cascade of events that could at any moment cost Tina her life. But finally uncovering the incredible truth about who killed her mother - and why - keeps her holding on in this fast-paced nail-biting thriller.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC And
Endangered
Author(s):
Description:
Reluctantly accompanying her advocate mother to a bonobo sanctuary, a teen girl participates in a desperate effort to rescue the bonobos and survive in the jungle when a revolution breaks out and the sanctuary is attacked.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Sch
Every Falling Star : The True Story Of How I Survived And Escaped North Korea
Author(s):
Sungju Lee
Susan McClelland
Description:
Every Falling Star, a book for a young audience, is the memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju re-creates his story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his 'brothers'; to be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. Young readers learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist--From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA 951.9305 Lee
If You Could Be Mine : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
In Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, seventeen-year-olds Sahar and Nasrin love each other in secret until Nasrin's parents announce their daughter's arranged marriage and Sahar proposes a drastic solution.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Far
In A Perfect World
Author(s):
Description:
When her mother has the chance to establish an eye clinic for the poor in Cairo, Egypt, seventeen-year-old Caroline reluctantly gives up her plans for a summer spent with her best friend and boyfriend and instead moves to Cairo, where she encounters a culture and city that enchant her and a charming boy who challenges her thoughts on love, faith, and privilege.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Dol
La Bastarda
Author(s):
Trifonia Melibea Obono
Lawrence Schimel
Abosede A. George
Description:
"The story of an orphan, Okomo, who lives with her grandmother and dreams of finding her father. She enlists the help of outcasts in the village including a gang of girls. She finds herself falling in love with the gang leader and rebelling against the norms of Fang culture."-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Obo
Love From A To Z
Author(s):
Description:
"A marvel: something you find amazing. Even ordinary-amazing. Like potatoes—because they make French fries happen. Like the perfect fries Adam and his mom used to make together. An oddity: whatever gives you pause. Like the fact that there are hateful people in the world. Like Zayneb’s teacher, who won’t stop reminding the class how “bad” Muslims are. But Zayneb, the only Muslim in class, isn’t bad. She’s angry. When she gets suspended for confronting her teacher, and he begins investigating her activist friends, Zayneb heads to her aunt’s house in Doha, Qatar, for an early start to spring break. Fueled by the guilt of getting her friends in trouble, she resolves to try out a newer, “nicer” version of herself in a place where no one knows her. Then her path crosses with Adam’s. Since he got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in November, Adam’s stopped going to classes, intent, instead, on perfecting the making of things. Intent on keeping the memory of his mom alive for his little sister. Adam’s also intent on keeping his diagnosis a secret from his grieving father. Alone, Adam and Zayneb are playing roles for others, keeping their real thoughts locked away in their journals. Until a marvel and an oddity occurs... Marvel: Adam and Zayneb meeting. Oddity: Adam and Zayneb meeting.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Ali
Monsoon Summer
Author(s):
Description:
Secretly in love with her best friend and business partner Steve, fifteen-year-old Jazz must spend the summer away from him when her family goes to India during that country's rainy season to help set up a clinic.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Per
Never Fall Down : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
"Cambodian child soldier Arn Chorn-Pond defied the odds and used all of his courage and wits to survive the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge"--Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC McC
The Love And Lies Of Rukhsana Ali
Author(s):
Description:
Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali is looking forward to going to Caltech and getting away from her conservative Muslim parents' expectation that she will marry, especially since she is in love with her girlfriend Ariana--but when her parents catch her kissing Ariana, they whisk Rukhsana off to Bangladesh and a world of tradition and arranged marriages, and she must find the courage to fight for the right to choose her own path.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Kha
The Secret Sky : A Novel Of Forbidden Love In Afghanistan
Author(s):
Description:
Two teens from different ethnic groups in present-day Afghanistan must fight their culture, tradition, families, and the Taliban to stay together as they and another village boy relate the story of their forbidden love.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Aba
The Walled City
Author(s):
Description:
"As Jin Ling tries to save her sister, Mei Yee, from the Brotherhood of the Red Dragon in Hak Nam Walled City, one boy, Dai, can reunite them and save their lives--but only if he's willing to risk his own"--Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Gra
The Weight Of Our Sky
Author(s):
Description:
Melati Ahmad believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother's death unless she adheres to an elaborate ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied. On the evening of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated. With the city in flames and a curfew in effect, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati's arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn's surging power, if she wants to make it back to the one person she can't risk losing. -- Adapted from jacket
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Han
Up To This Pointe
Author(s):
Description:
Devastated when her dream of becoming a professional ballerina falls through, seventeen-year-old Harper Scott takes a job as a research assistant, wintering over at McMurdo, a U.S. science station at the tip of Antarctica where, for the first time, she considers other possible futures.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Lon
When Morning Comes
Author(s):
Description:
Johannesburg, South Africa. 1976. Zanele is secretly plotting against the apartheid government, while her best friend Thabo has troubles of his own with a local gang, and Jack, from the wealthy white suburbs, falls in love with a girl from the black township of Soweto.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Rai
Wild Life : Dispatches From A Childhood Of Baboons And Button-downs
Author(s):
Description:
Keena Roberts split her adolescence between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana and the even more treacherous halls of an elite Philadelphia private school. In Africa, she slept in a tent, cooked over a campfire, and lived each day alongside the baboon colony her parents were studying. She could wield a spear as easily as a pencil, and it wasn't unusual to be chased by lions or elephants on any given day. For the months of the year when her family lived in the US, this brave kid from the bush was cowed by the treacherous landscape of the preppy, private school social hierarchy. Most girls Keena's age didn't spend their days changing truck tires, baking their own bread, or running from elephants as they tried to do their schoolwork. They also didn't carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. Keena's parents were famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players. Here is the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there's any place where she truly fits in.-- From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
B Rob
