Literature Circle

1. Literature Circle Book Choices

2. Watson’s Go to Birmingham • The Watsons are a loving, funny family who live in Flint, Michigan in the early 1960's. When the oldest brother, Byron, continues down the path to trouble, his parents decide to take him to stay with his strict grandmother in Birmingham, Alabama. The entire family goes on the long car trip, and while they are in Birmingham, a church is bombed, killing several children. Kenny, the middle child, is traumatized by what he sees, and takes a while to recover, with the help of his big brother, Byron.

3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian • Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he thought he was destined to live.

4. Esperanza Rising • Esperanza Ortega is a young girl, who grows up in Mexico in the 1920's on Rancho de las Rosas, a vineyard her family owns. Mexico is recovering from the revolution of ten years earlier. There is still a great deal of animosity towards the rich landowners, who are seen to be uncaring of the peasants. The story opens, as she is anticipating the harvest of the grapes from their vineyard that always coincides with her birthday. At the end of the harvest, there is always a wonderful fiesta attended by the servants, vaqueros, campesinos, and many of the wealthy families in the area. The afternoon before the iLacosecha, or harvest ceremony, Esperanza cuts her finger on a rose thorn, while she is gathering roses for table decorations the next day. As she is thinking this is bad luck, the plot begins.

5. A Girl in Translation • When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family’s future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition. Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

6. Milkweed • Milkweed, a book by Jerry Spinelli, tells of a Polish boy during World War II from the point-of-view of an old man looking back on his life. Unaware of his past, the boy experiences a series of adventures, meeting interesting people along the way. These adventures and people seem to help give the boy an identity as they struggle through the war--and his later life.

7. Habibi • The day after Liyana got her first real kiss, her life changed forever. Not because of the kiss, but because it was the day her father announced that the family was moving from St. Louis all the way to Palestine. Though her father grew up there, Liyana knows very little about her family's Arab heritage. Her grandmother and the rest of her relatives who live in the West Bank are strangers, and speak a language she can't understand. It isn't until she meets Omer that her homesickness fades. But Omer is Jewish, and their friendship is silently forbidden in this land. How can they make their families understand? And how can Liyana ever learn to call this place home?