All One World: Multicultural Fiction for Teens

Some great fiction has been written about teens from a different culture who have to deal with problems because of their ethnic background.

This booklist was contributed by Appleton Public Library Reference and Information Services Staff, 7/07 

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Ashes of Roses by Mary Jane Auch(2002)Sixteen-year-old Margaret Rose Nolan, newly arrived from Ireland, finds work at New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory shortly before the 1911 fire in which 146 employees died.

The braid by Helen Frost(2006)Two Scottish sisters, living on the western island of Barra in the 1850s, relate, in alternate voices and linked narrative poems, their experiences after their family is forcible evicted and separated with one sister accompanying their parents and younger siblings to Cape Breton, Canada, and the other staying behind with other family on the small island of Mingulay.

Eva underground by Dandi Daley Mackall(2006)In 1978, a high school senior is forced by her widowed father to move from their comfortable Chicago suburb to help with an underground education movement in communist Poland.

Hunter by Joy Cowley(2004)A Maori boy in 1803 and a plane crash survivor marooned on a deserted island in 2003 experience interconnecting visions.

The king of Mulberry Street by Donna Jo Napoli(2005)In 1892, Dom, a nine-year old stowaway from Naples, Italy, arrives in New York and must learn to survive the perils of street life in the big city.

Swimming to America by Alice Mead(2006)Eighth grader Linda Berati struggles to understand who she is within the context of her mother's secrecy about the family background, her discomfort with her old girlfriends, her involvement with the family problems of her Cuban-American friend Ramon, and an opportunity to attend a school for "free spirits" like herself.