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Ghady and Rawan is a heartfelt and timely novel by the award-winning author Fatima Sharafeddine (The Servant, Cappuccino) and Samar Mahfouz Barraj. The novel follows the close-knit friendship of two Lebanese teenagers, Ghady, who lives with his family in Belgium, and Rawan, who lives in Lebanon. Ghady’s family travels every summer to Beirut, where Ghady gets to spend all his time with Rawan and their other friends, enjoying their freedom from school. During the rest of the year, he and Rawan keep in touch by email. Through this correspondence, we learn about the daily ups and downs of their lives in Brussels and Beirut, including Ghady’s homesickness and his struggles with racism at school, as well as Rawan’s changing relationship to her family. The novel offers a glimpse into the lives of Lebanese adolescents while exploring a range of topics relevant to young people everywhere: bullying, parental conflicts, racism, belonging and identity, and peer pressure. Through the connection between the two main characters, Sharafeddine and Mahfouz Barraj show how the love and support of a good friend can help you through difficulties as well as sweeten life’s triumphs and good times.

A true story of courage, family, and the challenges and triumphs of building a life in a new place and culture.
Mai Ya Xiong arrived in Wisconsin with her family when she was just seven years old. Born in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand after her family fled war-torn Laos, Mai Ya knew no English, had never lived in a home with running water, and had never seen snow before. The Xiong family was part of the early wave of Hmong refugees who came to the United States from Southeast Asia in the 1980s with hopes of building new lives. Through hardship and loss, joy and perseverance, young Mai Ya navigated growing up in two worlds—maintaining Hmong traditions while learning the American way of life.
Mai Ya’s Long Journey offers young readers an inspiring and insightful window into life as a refugee and the experience of adapting to a new home, a new language, a new country, and new friends. In addition to examining Mai Ya’s school years, this updated edition of a beloved biography expands the story with Mai Ya’s journey into adulthood and parenthood, while also highlighting the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Hmong settlement in the United States. An afterword by Mai Ya reflects on her evolving understanding of identity, revealing how her desire to fit in as a child has transformed into a commitment to honor her heritage and pass Hmong values and customs on to her own children.
Blending biography and history, Mai Ya’s Long Journey expands the learning experience by sharing information about the Hmong language, spiritual traditions, and folklore as well as about American involvement in the Vietnam War. The book helps readers ages 8–11 understand the immigrant experience while celebrating the strength, determination, and cultural pride that continue to shape Hmong communities across the United States.

In 1928, nine-year-old Teresa leaves everything she knows in San Antonio—including her beloved cat Diamante—and boards a train bound for Michigan, where her parents have found work in the vast sugar beet fields of Saginaw. The long train north is a source of fascination, but stepping into Michigan feels like entering a different world—the cold wind, the strange houses, and the long days helping on the farm instead of going to school. Teresa cares for her little sisters while her parents tend to the sugar beets. She learns to navigate a life shaped by hard work, migration, and constant change. After the harvest, a new season begins, and the whole family must pack up and make the long trip back to Texas, to plant new roots. Based on the stories the author’s grandparents told her about their lives as Texas migrants in Michigan’s Thumb, My Sugar Beet Summer pulls the reader into Teresa and her family’s life in a new land, on a sugar beet farm on the eve of the Great Depression.

A portrait of the Finnish immigrant experience in Minnesota during the early twentieth century

After journeying across the Atlantic with his mother and two sisters, young Otto Peltonen joins his father in the iron ore mines of northern Minnesota, experiencing the harsh labor conditions that were common at the time, as mining companies cared more about making a profit than for their workers’ safety. Writing in his journal about his family’s struggles and the hard life Finnish immigrants endured in the early twentieth century, Otto ultimately strengthens his resolve to find the freedom his family had first sought in America.

A Hmong girl tells the story of her beloved aunt and uncle’s first home in America—long gone, but still alive in the family’s memories
 

The Blue House I Loved centers on a family of newly arrived Hmong refugees who move into the lower level of a duplex in St. Paul, Minnesota. The narrator loves her aunt and uncle’s home with its mismatched furniture, but it is too small for the large family. The boy cousins sleep in the three-season porch, where their wet hair freezes in wintertime, and the rest of the family crowds into two bedrooms. Yet this is the cherished home where they live and love, their own small corner of a very large and unfamiliar place, and in this blue house a young girl learns about her new country. Eventually, the family moves in search of more space, and years later the house is torn down. Where it was, green grass now grows. But for this girl and her family, the ghost of the house remains, its memories a strong thread that holds time at bay and hearts close together.

Combining Kao Kalia Yang’s lyrical prose with ethereal illustrations by artist and architect Jen Shin, The Blue House I Loved speaks to the multitude of refugee experiences around the world, honoring the challenges they face and the homes they create together.

A portrait of the Finnish immigrant experience in Minnesota during the early twentieth century—now in paperback

After journeying across the Atlantic with his mother and two sisters, young Otto Peltonen joins his father in the iron ore mines of northern Minnesota, experiencing the harsh labor conditions that were common at the time, as mining companies cared more about making a profit than for their workers’ safety. Writing in his journal about his family’s struggles and the hard life Finnish immigrants endured in the early twentieth century, Otto ultimately strengthens his resolve to find the freedom his family had first sought in America.

Award-winning author Kao Kalia Yang delivers an inspiring tale of resourceful children confronting adversaries in a refugee camp

After lunch the Yang warriors prepare for battle. They practice drills, balance rocks on their heads, wield magical swords from fallen branches. Led by ten-year-old Master Me (whose name means “little”), the ten cousins are ready to defend the family at all costs. After a week without fresh vegetables , the warriors embark on a dangerous mission to look for food, leaving the camp’s boundaries, knowing their punishment would be severe if they were caught by the guards. 

In this inspiring picture book, fierce and determined children confront the hardships of Ban Vinai refugee camp, where the author lived as a child. Yang’s older sister, seven-year-old Dawb, was one of the story’s warriors, and her brave adventure unfolds here with all the suspense and excitement that held her five-year-old sister spellbound many years later. Accompanied by the evocative and rich cultural imagery of debut illustrator Billy Thao, the warriors’ secret mission shows what feats of compassion and courage children can perform, bringing more than foraged greens back to the younger children and to their elders. In this unforgiving place, with little to call their own, these children are the heroes, offering gifts of hope and belonging in a truly unforgettable way.