I teach World Literature and I love the responsibility of introducing my students to literature from across time and across the world. Along with the canon literature that I am required to cover, I try to bring in as much multicultural YA as I can, through booktalks, book trailers, displays, and read-alouds. Over the past year I have been compiling a list of books that have caught the attention of my students and I am excited to share them today. This is by no means a complete list, as I focus on the areas of the world that my curriculum centers on.
Multicultural YA for Discerning Teen Reader
- Africa
- Purple Hibiscus: A Novel by Chimamanda Adichi
- Akata Witch Nnedi Okorafor
- Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You by Hanna Jansen
- A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beal
- Many Stones by Carolyn Coman
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba
- Asia
- A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata
- Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins
- Iqbal by Francesco D’Adamo
- Karma by Cathy Ostlere
- Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
- Sold by Patricia McCormick
- Europe
- Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
- Nothing by Janne Teller
- Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
- The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
- Middle East
- The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
- Words In The Dust by Trent Reedyhold
- Under the Persimmon Tree Suzanne Fisher Staples
- Where The Streets Had A Name by by Randa Abdel-Fattah
- 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Central/South America
- The Queen of Water by Laura Resau
- The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle
- The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan
- The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba by Margarita Engle
- Keeper by Mal Peet
Filed under: Book Lists, share a story-shape a future | Tagged: multicultural YA, share a story, world literature, YA |
[…] you recognize there and perhaps there are some others you’d be interested in checking out: link. We do have a number of these in our classroom library or in the […]
Thanks for sharing this list! I’m excited to check it out.
Wow, what a fabulous list, Sarah! Have you read Burn My Heart by Beverley Naidoo? It has some of the same personal interplay that Mitali captures in Bamboo People, but it is set in Kenya during the Mau Mau Rebellion
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