Clinton, Cathryn

A STONE IN MY HAND 11-year-old Malaak and her family are touched by the violence in Gaza between Jews and Palestinians when first her father disappears and then her older brother is drawn to a radical group.

2002

184 P.

Degens, T.

FREYA ON THE WALL Fourteen-year-old Freya, whose home has always been in East Germany, offers her view of the complex events leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall. 1989

1997

281 P.

Gewirtz, Adina Rishe

ZEBRA FOREST KIRKUS REVIEW Gewirtz’s emotionally intense debut novel about the complications of families offers a perceptive heroine and poetic, impressive prose. In the summer of 1980, 11-year-old Annie and her 9-year-old brother Rew live with their grandmother at the edge of the birch and oak forest they’ve nicknamed “the Zebra,” for its dark and light stripes. Annie shops and pays bills as Gran deteriorates bit by bit, retreating into depression and silence. When the father Annie and Rew believe dead shows up at the door, on the run after a breakout at the nearby state prison, anger, fear and longing envelop the small family. The graceful narrative is articulate and poignant, exploring through Annie’s eyes the complex grief of her family’s story—the mother who abandoned them, the grandfather who died of a broken heart when his son went to prison, the grandmother who takes the children into her own kind of anonymous witness protection program. A few unlikely elements—the nearly complete isolation of the household for weeks, the awkward expository dialogue between a store clerk and a town resident, Annie’s visits to the prison on her own—fade before the strength of the characters and the heartfelt punch of the story.

2014

208 P.

Nislick, June

ZAYDA WAS A COWBOY 1980. When a Jewish grandfather comes to live with his son's family, he relates his experiences fleeing Eastern Europe for America, his adventures as a cowboy, and his assimilation into American culture.

2005

65 p.