Reviews and Blog Posts: multicultural

"Skim" is Kimberly Keiko Cameron, private school student, semi-Goth, semi-Wiccan, prone to introspection in her diary. This graphic novel explores her thoughts on a classmates' boyfriend's suicide and her school's reaction to it (ranging from counselor lectures to the popular girls forming a club called Girls Celebrate Life! to bring...

TC, Augie, and Ale are the best of friends now, but it wasn't always that way. In a series of diary entries, instant messages, and e-mails from their freshman year of high school, they each look back at how they were brought together by a deaf kid with an obsession...

Eleven-year-old Brendan Buckley is a lot of things: an aspiring scientist, a tae kwon do warrior, and the child of a biracial marriage. He had a great relationship with his father's dad, but he's never even met his mother's father, and he's not sure why. When they accidentally meet up...

If you like bread, you will love this book! Learn the different kinds of bread all over the world. They have all kinds of different names, shapes, and flavors. The book exposes children to other cultures so that they can see the similarities and differences in how we live. This...

Ann Ahern has a crush on her French teacher. It doesn't disturb her that Mademoiselle Eugenie is a woman, but it does disturb her that she's Black. It's 1974, and Boston is still struggling with the Civil Rights movement, instituting busing between neighborhoods to desegregate the schools. Ann's Catholic Irish-American...

Laura thinks her life is over when she gets thrown out of Catholic school, and then her mother's house, after being found out as a "tortillera"–Cuban slang for lesbian–but these things are only the beginning for her. Over the course of the next year, Laura leaves school entirely, works full...

In Grace Lin's bright and simple picture book, the whole family gets involved to prepare for Chinese New Year. On each two-page spread, a member of the family demonstrates New Year duties. Jie-Jie sweeps the old year out, Ma-Ma makes the dumplings, Auntie wakes the dragon. Is it time for...

Adam and his family are Australians living in a fancy compound in the Middle East. Walid is an abused boy who rides camels in the popular sport of camel racing. When war breaks out, Adam is separated from his family and Walid manages to escape the camel masters. The two...

The stories of Jin Wang, new to his school but NOT new to the U.S., the Monkey King of Chinese Fable, and Danny and his cousin Chin-Kee all intertwine in this graphic novel. Jin wants to fit in at his new school not be made fun of for being Chinese-American....