Here are 77 books that Anita and the Dragons fans have personally recommended if you like
Anita and the Dragons.
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As a mom and children’s author, I’ve seen how much children need reminders that they are already loved, already important, and already enough. I’ve written over 30 picture books that explore kindness, confidence, and emotional resilience, but my heart always comes back to one mission: helping kids see their worth.
I created this list because I believe books are powerful mirrors—they show children not only who they are but who they can grow to be. These stories encourage kids to embrace their differences, trust their voice, and carry the confidence that being themselves is the most beautiful thing of all.
This book is a favorite among many parents who can relate!
This book beautifully speaks to children who feel different or left out, and as we know, that's quite a common experience. It shows the courage it takes to share your story and the power of finding connection.
I admire how it encourages kids to embrace what makes them unique and see that their differences are what make them special.
There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you.
There are many reasons to feel different. Maybe it's how you look or talk, or where you're from; maybe it's what you eat, or something just as random. It's not easy to take those first steps into a place where nobody really knows you yet, but somehow you do it.
Jacqueline Woodson's lyrical text and Rafael Lopez's dazzling art reminds us that we all feel like outsiders sometimes and how brave it is that we go forth anyway. And that sometimes, when…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
When I first started writing in English, which is my second language, I was reluctant to share my work with others. I was terrified they would find it lacking. It takes a lot of effort and research to write authentically for a foreign audience. I studied creative writing at different universities around the world to gain knowledge and experience. I published short stories and poems in online and print journals. Bit by bit, I gathered the courage to submit my first picture book manuscript.
My Big Welcome illustrates how kindness can help children overcome anxiety when they’re starting at a new school, moving, meeting new people. The story introduces a number of classroom situations that a newcomer might face. Emilia, the new girl, is welcomed with warmth and kindness. And the bright illustrations give off such a positive vibe.
When she must go to a new school, Emilia becomes afraid.
Will her new class be everything she fears?
Or will she get a big surprise?
This heartwarming story reveals the anxiety children feel when faced with new situations and shows children that new experiences bring many possibilities.
My Big Welcome is the perfect book for every child moving to a new school, starting a new class, or dealing with change.
Inspired by actual events, My Big Welcome shows that life can offer much more…
When I first started writing in English, which is my second language, I was reluctant to share my work with others. I was terrified they would find it lacking. It takes a lot of effort and research to write authentically for a foreign audience. I studied creative writing at different universities around the world to gain knowledge and experience. I published short stories and poems in online and print journals. Bit by bit, I gathered the courage to submit my first picture book manuscript.
This picture book gives off such a positive feeling that it’s impossible not to let it fill you to the brim with excitement and joy. It’s perfect to read with children at the end of the holidays for a gentle but enthusiastic introduction to the new school year. It made me want to go back to school!
This exuberant celebration of the first day of school illustrated by award-winning illustrator Frank Morrison will have every kid cheering for school to begin!
Summer is over, and this little girl has got the school spirit! She hears the school spirit in the bus driving up the street--VROOM, VROOM!--and in the bell sounding in the halls--RING-A-DING! She sings the school spirit in class with her friends--ABC, 123!
The school spirit helps us all strive and grow. What will you learn today?
Don't miss these other exuberant titles: I Got the Rhythm I Got the Christmas Spirit
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
When I first started writing in English, which is my second language, I was reluctant to share my work with others. I was terrified they would find it lacking. It takes a lot of effort and research to write authentically for a foreign audience. I studied creative writing at different universities around the world to gain knowledge and experience. I published short stories and poems in online and print journals. Bit by bit, I gathered the courage to submit my first picture book manuscript.
We often fear change and it’s for this reason that we don’t dare try something new. We’re afraid we won’t be able to go back to the way things were before in case we don’t succeed. It’s important to realize that the people who truly appreciate and love us will always support our endeavors and welcome us back regardless of whether we succeeded or failed. The Bear and the Piano relates this message in a gentle and inspiring way for me.
The first book in the best-selling, award-winning 'Bear and the Piano' trilogy.
Winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, Illustrated Book Category for 2016
Over 120,000 copies have been sold of The Bear and the Piano in the UK.
One day, a young bear stumbles upon something he has never seen before in the forest. As time passes, he teaches himself how to play the strange instrument, and eventually the beautiful sounds are heard by a father and son who are picnicking in the woods. The bear goes with them on an incredible journey to New York, where…
I am passionate about historical facts, and fiction. My narrative has a universeal appeal making my work relevant to readers of diverse backgrounds. My books entertain and at the same time educate the reader, giving him/her a greater appreciation of the complex world of Latin America and the resilience of its people. I love reading diverse approaches to history and exploring ideas of how our personal interpretations of history shape our opinions.
This book by Mario Vargas Llosa explores the last days of the Dominican Republic's Trujillo dictatorship. I really enjoyed this novel for its blending of historical facts with fiction and for providing a detailed depiction of Rafael Trujillo's regime, its impact on the country, and his assassination in 1961.
The narrative combines three storylines: The character of Urania, who returns to the Dominican Republic after many years in the United States, and shows us the long-lasting psychological impact of Trujillo's rule on her and her family. Trujillo’s last days, personality, control over the country, and the loyalty and fear he commanded. Finally, the group of people plotting to assassinate Trujillo, their motivations, fears, and actions show us that freedom is one of our most valuable treasures worthy of risking our lives.
Vargas Llosa's detailed and compelling narrative profoundly examines how dictatorial regimes can distort societies and damage lives.
'The Feast of the Goat will stand out as the great emblematic novel of Latin America's twentieth century and removes One Hundred Years of Solitude of that title.' Times Literary Supplement
Urania Cabral, a New York lawyer, returns to the Dominican Republic after a lifelong self-imposed exile. Once she is back in her homeland, the elusive feeling of terror that has overshadowed her whole life suddenly takes shape. Urania's own story alternates with the powerful climax of dictator Rafael Trujillo's reign.
In 1961, Trujillo's decadent inner circle (which includes Urania's soon-to-be disgraced father) enjoys the luxuries of privilege while the…
I can’t guess how many great poems I have committed to memory. In waiting rooms, or in the checkout line, I recite them to myself. In this way, poetry helps me not only understand the world we live in, but live in it without going crazy. And while I love all poetry, I’ve always found that poetry in traditional forms—with meter and rhyme—is easier to remember. That’s one reason why I’ve always been drawn to formal verse. In my own poetry, I strive to uphold that tradition, while inventing new forms that spring organically from the subject at hand. I trust these books will demonstrate I’m not alone.
This book once again shows that dead white men do not hold a monopoly on great formalist verse. Espaillat hails from the Dominican Republic, and Spanish is her first language.
Many of the poems in this book deal directly with the difficulties, ambiguities, and opportunities of straddling two languages and cultures—particularly the troubling association with colonialism and imperialism inherent in both English and Spanish (conquistadors, anyone?).
I admire her easy handling of traditional forms—sonnets are apparently her favorite. What I love most is how these poems behave like the poems we knew as children, with satisfying rhyme and meter, while entertaining the themes we ponder as adults—power, history, exile, and language itself.
I find it interesting that this book—her first—was published relatively late in her life; perhaps that’s why it marries the energy of an author’s first book with the wisdom and understanding of an author’s last.
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
I grew up in Latin America (& briefly in Europe) and my connections and regard for the people, culture, and natural setting resulted in my novel, A Place in the World. I have lived in six countries and appreciate the experiences. I love languages and history and like to travel, at least vicariously with a good book. I hope you enjoy my book picks as much as I have! I am a writer, former university lecturer, and environmental scientist, with an MS in geology and a passion for botany. This background enabled me to weave aspects of natural science, as well as Latino culture, into my writing.
After a blogger in Thailand interviewed me, he told me I should meet the author Rita Gardner, “Her memoir is about growing up in a Latin culture like yourself.” Rita and I exchanged books and personal stories, but her upbringing was darker than mine.
The young family moves to a remote village on a beach in the Dominican Republic in the 1950s. The two daughters are not only isolated, but their alcoholic father rants and makes irrational demands while the mother does nothing to protect them. During the light of day the dad proclaims them a “happy family, living in Paradise.” The writing is honest and captivating. You will root for Rita and be flabbergasted at what a young girl accomplishes on her own.
Gold Medal Winner, Autobiography/Memoir, 2015 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.
Rita is an infant when her father leaves a successful career in the US to live in "paradise"-a seaside village in the Dominican Republic. The Coconut Latitudes is her haunting, lyrical memoir of surviving a reality far from the envisioned Eden-and of the terrible cost of keeping secrets.
A love of literature and a summer with relatives in Belgium—a country divided by language and culture—inspired me to travel to Santo Domingo in 1988 to learn Spanish and study the fraught dynamics of two countries speaking different languages but sharing an island. My time in the Dominican Republic and Haiti inspired a lifelong exploration of complex issues. Today I write about risk, drawing on psychology, culture, policy, and economics, as in Why the Cocks Fight. My third book, The Gray Rhino, calls for a fresh look at obvious, looming threats. The sequel, You Are What You Risk, explores risk perceptions and attitudes through a comparative, socio-cultural lens.
The Haitian writer narrates this 1955 novel about the 1937 massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic via a laborer, Hilarion, who is thrown into prison for petty theft and politically awakened by a fellow inmate (a stand-in for the author). After he is released, he meets his love, Claire-Heureuse. Political upheaval sends them across the Dominican border, where he cuts cane then joins in a strike. When the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo orders an ethnic cleansing, Hilarion is mortally wounded as he tries to return to Haiti across the Massacre River along the northern border.
An English translation of "Compere General Soleil", published in France in 1955. This novel depicts the nightmarish journey of a labourer and his wife from the slums of Port-au-Prince to the cane fields of the Dominican Republic, and personifies the sun as friend and leader of the workers.
Writer and essayist Agnes Borinsky called my debut novel The Seep, “A swift shock of a novel that has shifted how I see our world.” Here are five short, urgent novels that continue to live with me in the months and years after reading them. These are some of my most beloved books, all of which happen to be under 200 pages, which ache with the inner mystery of what is hidden, and what is revealed. These books are my teachers, each a precise masterclass in world building, suspense, and purposeful storytelling. Enjoy these ‘swift shocks!’
Electric, dystopic, magical, queer, Tentacle is the most exciting, genre-bending book I’ve gotten my little hands on in quite some time. Expansive in theme yet swiftly paced, it moves between three different connected time spans including futuristic Santo Domingo. Felt like a fever dream with seriously high stakes, I can’t believe how much world building happens in under 200 pages. Rita Indiana is also a brilliant musician based in the Dominican Republic, I was introduced to her revelatory music after reading her fiction. Her music now haunts all my playlists.
Plucked from her life on the streets of post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, young maid Acilde Figueroa finds herself at the heart of a voodoo prophecy: only she can travel back in time and save the ocean - and humanity - from disaster. But first she must become the man she always was - with the help of a sacred anemone.Tentacle is an electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision, plunging headfirst into questions of climate change, technology, Yoruba ritual, queer politics, poverty, sex, colonialism and contemporary art. Bursting with punk energy and lyricism, it's a restless, addictive trip:…
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
I have always loved realistic fiction that shows characters navigating tricky real-world situations and reaching inside themselves to be their best – as friends, children, siblings, etc. As a writer of stories for children, I write the kinds of books I love to read, the ones that make readers ask themselves, what would I do if I were in that situation? I think it’s important to show all our stories, past and present, from different places and viewpoints, so that we can learn from one another and become our best selves.
I was fascinated by this gripping story about a twelve-year-old girl living in the Dominican Republic in 1960 because, while it is fiction, it is based on a very real and scary time in the history of the DR. My parents grew up in the DR under the dictatorship that was still in place in 1960, and Julia Alvarez does a beautiful job showing readers how young people and their families were impacted by that regime, as well as the bravery and hopefulness of those who fought for their country’s freedom.
PURE BELPRÉ AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME • AN ALA-YALSA BEST BOOK FOR YOUNG ADULTS
From renowned author Julia Alvarez comes an unforgettable story about adolescence, perseverance, and one girl’s struggle to be free while living in the Dominican Republic under the rule of a dictator.
Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her twelfth birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have immigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her…
