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New Titles - books at the library

Stories with a cultural perspective

Mostly fiction with a couple of autobiographical works added in. These stories explore different cultures and what happens when cultures collide.

New Zealand

Settler’s Creek, by Carl Nixon
Box Saxton just wants to bury his teenage stepson's body in the churchyard near the farm where Box grew up. What happens, though, when the boy's biological father, a Maori leader, unexpectedly turns up in the days before the funeral and forcibly takes the boy's body?
Guardian of the Dead, by Karen Healey
Eighteen-year-old New Zealand boarding school student Ellie Spencer must use her rusty tae kwon do skills and new-found magic to try to stop a fairy-like race of creatures from Maori myth and legend that is plotting to kill millions of humans in order to regain their lost immortality.
Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff
Other Halves by Sue McCauley

Pacific / Polynesian

CoverBlood of the Lamb series, by Mandy Hager
Book 1 The Crossing
Book 2 Into the Wilderness
Three generations after the world is thrown into chaos after a huge solar flare, Maryam and her friends are living a sheltered and strictly controlled life on a remote Pacific island.  Crossing from childhood to adulthood, however, means Maryam must leave the island and her friends, and go to the Star of the Sea, a huge rotting hulk of a cruise ship where the elite leaders of the community live.  Things on the ship, however, are not the way they seem, and Maryam discovers that the leaders may not have her best interests at heart.
One-foot Island series, by Graeme Lay
Book 1 - Leaving One-foot Island
Book 2 – Return to One-foot Island
Book 3 – The Pearl of One-foot Island
In order to make a better life for herself, Tuaine has to leave her village in the Cook Islands and travel to Auckland to go to school.  Her life is about to change forever, as life in New Zealand is nothing like her old life in Aitutaki.
Mr Pip, by Lloyd Jones
Thirteen-year-old Matilda lives quietly with her mother on the Pacific island of Bougainville, until rebels start to try to make the local copper mine (which is poisoning their island) close down. Amid clashes with enemies from neighbouring Papua New Guinea, Matilda and her friends learn about life, love, the meaning of names and the power of words, while reading Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations with Mr Watts at the re-opened school.
Fast Talking PI, by Selina Tusitala Marsh
A collection of poems containing stories of Samoan life, family, community, ancestry, and history.  Well worth checking out — the book comes with a CD featuring Selina reading her poems and music composed and performed by Tim Page.

More titles

More Pacific writers and collections of poetry and short stories in our adult collection:

 

America

Two suns in the sky by Miriam Bat-Ami
In 1944, an Upstate New York teenager named Christine meets and falls in love with Adam, a Yugoslavian Jew living in a refugee camp.
Ask me no questions by Marina Tamar Budhos
Fourteen-year-old Nadira, her sister, and their parents leave Bangladesh for New York City, but the expiration of their visas and the events of September 11, 2001, bring frustration, sorrow, and terror for the whole family.
Towelhead by Alicia Erian
"Saddam Hussein has invaded Kuwait, and high school has become a lonely place for a "towelhead." When her father meets, and forbids her to see, her boyfriend, it becomes lonelier still." Conflict of generations - Lebanese in America.
Lipstick Jihad: a memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni
Non fiction
Monsoon summer by Mitali Perkins
U.S. girl spending summer in Pune, India. Secretly in love with her best friend and business partner Steve, fifteen-year-old Jazz must spend the summer away from him when her family goes to India during that country's rainy season to help set up a clinic.
Girls for breakfast by David Yoo
As he reflects back on his life in upscale Renfield, Connecticut, on his high school graduation day, Nick Park wonders how much being the only Asian American in school affected his thwarted quest for popularity and a girlfriend.

African American

Paul Volponi
Black and white: Two star high school basketball players, one black and one white, experience the justice system differently after committing a crime together and getting caught.
Rooftop: Still reeling from seeing police shoot his unarmed cousin to death on the roof of a New York City housing project, seventeen-year-old Clay is dragged into the whirlwind of political manipulation that follows.
New boy by Julia Houston
As a new sophomore at an exclusive boarding school, a young black man is witness to the persecution of another student with bad acne.
145th Street; Short stories by Walter Dean Myers
Ten stories portray life on a block in Harlem.
To kill a mockingbirdTo kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.
The color purple by Alice Walker
This book tells the story of Celie. Raped by the man she calls father, her two children taken from her and forced into an ugly marriage, she has no one to talk to but God, until she meets a woman who offers love and support.

Asia

Mao's last dancer coverMao's Last Dancer byLi Cunxin
Nonfiction. At the age of 10, Li Cunzin was chosen to train as a ballet dancer at Madam Mao's Peking Dance Academy. His selection was based purely on his physique and the fact that he came from a family that had been peasants for three generations - he knew nothing about the art form at all.
coverChinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah
The true story of a Chinese woman and how she suffered appalling emotional deprivation and rejection by her family as a child growing up in China and Hong Kong. She tells of the consequences in her adult life, above which she rose to make a happy marriage and become a successful doctor in the USA.
Koyal dark, mango sweet by Kashmira Sheth
Growing up with her family in Mumbai, India, sixteen-year-old Jeeta disagrees with much of her mother's traditional advice about how to live her life and tries to be more modern and independent.

Australia

The full story - coverThe full story by Brian Caswell
Cultural conflict - Australia / Vietnam.
Walk in my Shoes by Alwyn Evans
Refugees in Australia.
Does my head look big in this? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Muslim girls in Australia.
The Dons by Archimdede Fusillo
Italian / Australian.
Borderland: a trilogy by Rosanne Hawke
Australia / Pakistan / Afghanistan.
Melina Marchetta
Looking for Alibrandi: Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen, illegitimate and in her final year at a wealthy Catholic school. This year her father comes into her life, she falls in love and discovers her family's secret.
Saving Francesca: Australia/ Italian cultures.
Sky legs coverIrini Savvides
Sky legs After her mother's death, Eleni tries to get away from it all in Byron Bay, hoping to deal with the loss and rebuild her confidence. On her return the family leave Sydney for a small mountain community and Eleni finds more difficulties fitting in with the attitudes of the locals.
Willow tree and Olive: cultural conflict - Greek/Australia

Australia - Aborigines

Phillip Gwynne
Nukkin Ya
Deadly Unna
Meme McDonald
 
Njunjul the sun

England

Noughts & CrossesThe Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman
Blackman tackles the issues of racism and prejudice in a world set in an alternate historical reality.
Read our interview with Malorie Blackman.
How I live now by Meg Rosoff
Award winner. To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

Historical

Catherine Jinks
Pagan series
Susan Price
A Sterkarm kiss
 

Wars

Vinnie Moran, regularKen Catran
Red Leader Down: WW2 fighter pilot - read an excerpt here.
Moran series: Follows generations of soldiers from the Moran family from the First World War to the 2003 Iraq conflict.
Monsters of blood and honour
Generals die in bed by Charles Yale Harrison
A young soldier with the Canadian forces questions the meaning of heroism, of truth, and of good and evil as he describes life in the trenches during World War I.
See also If you like... War stories

Others

Divided City by Theresa Breslin
Catholic/Protestant church, divided city, Glasgow, soccer.
A taste of cockroach Aby llan Baille
"This streetwise collection from master storyteller Allan Baillie spans centuries of cross-cultural relationships, civil wars and expeditions."
First crossing: stories about teen immigrants ed. Donald R Gallo
Stories of recent Mexican, Venezuelan, Kazakh, Chinese, Romanian, Palestinian, Swedish, Korean, Haitian, and Cambodian immigrants reveal what it is like to face prejudice, language barriers, and homesickness along with common teenage feelings and needs. Short stories - young adult fiction.
Shabanu: the daughter of the wind by Suzanne Fisher Staples
When eleven-year old Shabanu, the daughter of a nomad in the Cholistan Desert of 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.

Updated August 2010