Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

Do you know what it means when your teacher tells you your writing has "voice"?  He or she is letting you know that they can hear your personality shining through your words.  It is as if the writer is speaking directly to the reader.  With Home of the Brave, Katherine Applegate speaks with the clear, heartwarming voice of her character Kek.  He is a young boy chased from his home in Africa by men "with their knives and their guns and their mysterious hate."  But despite all Kek has to be sad about, (he doesn't even know if his mother is still alive), he struggles to fit in to his new life in the cold winter of Minnesota and never gives up hope.  This is a "must read" book!  First you must read it, and second you must tell me if you loved it as much as I did!  And if you still need convincing, it's a fast read, written in short unrhymed poems.  K.A. Applegate is also the author of The One and Only Ivan and the Animorph series.

Reviewed by Mrs. Castro

Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai is one of the 2012 Newbery Award Honor books.  (It is a very fast read, for those of you trying to finish your 25 books this year!)  It is written in a poetry format.  It is a fiction book, but the story line follows the author's own life story pretty closely.  In the book, the main character is a young girl growing up in Saigon, during the Vietnam war.  She ends up making it out safely with her mother and brothers, to end up living in Alabama.  The story lets you feel how difficult it would be to move from one country to another, be the new kid in school, and the first Asian the other children had ever seen.  There is a definite bullying theme that runs throughout the book.  Read it to find out how the character survives and adapts to her new home.

Reviewed by Mrs. C.

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

I know that some of my fourth graders are currently learning about immigration.  Well, here's a book that will bring you from the beautiful countryside of Mexico, to the hard reality of the migrant worker's life here in the United States.  Esperanza is forced to leave the land she loves and has to learn to be brave and strong through all the hard times ahead.  Follow along with her in her travels, you won't regret it!

I've included a link to the author's website, if you want to check out more books by Ms. Ryan.  Just click on the title of the book above.