Year eleven at an exclusive Australian prep school would be tough enough, but it is further complicated for Amal when she decides to wear the hijab, the Muslim head scarf, full-time as a badge of her faith.
In the early 1960s in the Dominican Republic, Anita learns that her family is involved in the underground movement to end the bloody rule of the dictator General Trujillo.
When Sophia is told that she is the recipient of a special scholarship to an elite boarding school far away from her Texas home, she is both excited and fearful of all the unknowns that lie ahead.
Esperanza Cordero, a girl coming of age in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, uses poems and stories to express thoughts and emotions about her oppressive environment.
While journeying to Zimbabwe, Nhamo struggles to escape drowning and starvation and comes close to the luminous world of the African spirits in the process.
While obtaining a Western education at a prestigious Japanese boarding school in 1890, sixteen-year-old Toyo also receives traditional samurai training which has profound effects on his baseball game and his relationship with his father.
An Aleutian Islander recounts her suffering during World War II in American internment camps designed to “protect” the population from the invading Japanese.
Katie Takeshima worships her older sister, Lynn, who teaches Katie to appreciate the “kira-kira,” or glittering, in the world and cares for Katie while their parents work long hours in their small Georgia town in the 1950s. When Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering.
While traveling in Israel for the summer, seventeen-year-old Mitch decides to stay and pursue a life of Jewish orthodoxy, forcing him to make some important decisions about the family and life he is leaving in California.
Sixteen-year-old “Slam” Harris is counting on his noteworthy basketball talents to get him out of the inner city and give him a chance to succeed in life, but his coach sees things differently.
When fourteen-year-old Liyanne and her family move from St. Louis to a new home between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where her father was born, they face many changes and must deal with the tensions between Jews and Palestinians.
Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself.
Sixteen-year-old Sophie, frail and delicate since her premature birth, discovers her true strength during a journey through Mexico, where the six-year-old orphan her family hopes to adopt was born, and to Guatemala, where her would-be boyfriend hopes to find his mother and plans to remain.
In 19th century Iran, a young girl chooses a husband by setting a riddle for her three suitors in her wedding rug and holding a contest to determine the winner.
Tired of staying in seclusion since the death of her best friend, a fourteen-year-old Native American girl takes on a photographic assignment with her local newspaper to cover events at a summer youth camp.
When Shabanu, the daughter of a nomad in present day Pakistan, is pledged in marriage to an older man whose money will bring prestige to the family, she must either accept the decision, as is the custom, or risk the consequences of defying her father’s wishes.
When thirteen-year-old Koly enters into an ill-fated arranged marriage, she must either suffer a destiny dictated by India’s tradition or find the courage to oppose it.
Adopted by white parents and sent to an exclusive girls' school where she is the only black student, Lahni feels like an outcast, but after attending a local church where she hears gospel music for the first time, she finds her voice.
