Here are 100 books that Moon Over Manifest fans have personally recommended if you like
Moon Over Manifest.
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History has always fascinated me. I majored in history as an undergrad, but what really shaped me was listening to people tell their stories. My earliest memories are of sitting with my grandparents and listening to them share bits of their lives with me. Those stories helped me understand that history is not a list of events, but rather a sharing of the human experience. Each of the stories in this book list highlights a moment in history, but they also show readers our humanity across time; that people have the same hopes and dreams no matter where they came from and what they experienced.
This is a historical fiction graphic novel and a time-travel story that pulled me in immediately.
The main character, Kiku, goes back in time and experiences her grandmother’s time in the Japanese Internment camps. Even though I have read several novels about this topic, the illustrations accompanying the story proved very powerful for me and led to a new level of understanding.
This story is timely and impactful and draws connections to the present. It is a reminder that history is cyclical and that displacement can happen to any group of people.
Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II.
These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself 'stuck' back in time. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive.
This biography for middle-grade readers and up explains who Jane Addams was and why she caused such a stir worldwide. The story follows Addams' first childhood realization of how poverty limits lives, livelihoods, and health to her becoming one of the most beloved―and disliked―women of her day. She worked to…
Father-daughter relationships have always fascinated me. I wrote my first book to explore what it might be like for a girl to have a father with whom communication is, if not easy, possible. Although my own father was around when I was growing up, he was a distant figure. A mechanical engineer, he lost himself in ruminations on machines and mathematics and was made still more distant by his alcoholism. As a kid, I tried to glean from books what having a “regular” father might be like. I still haven’t figured it out, but I love seeing other authors capture the formative effects of this particular parental relationship.
This historical novel has been heralded as a fresh look at the era of the Little House books, and it does a wonderful job of looking at frontier life in Dakota Territory in 1880 from the perspective of Chinese-American Hanna. It’s also an examination of a daughter trying to navigate an often prickly relationship with her white father, made even more difficult after the death of Hanna’s Chinese-Korean mother. I love Hanna’s careful study of everyone around her—observances that are borne from a need to protect herself from racism, but which are also windows to empathy and understanding. Despite her father’s resistance to Hanna following her dream to become a dressmaker, Hanna prevails, using her knowledge of her father’s own nature to win him over.
Prairie Lotus is a powerful, touching, multilayered novel about a girl determined to fit in and realize her dreams: getting an education, becoming a dressmaker in her father’s shop, and making at least one friend.
Acclaimed, award-winning author Linda Sue Park has placed a young half-Asian girl, Hanna, in a small town in America’s heartland, in 1880. Hanna’s adjustment to her new surroundings, which primarily means negotiating the townspeople’s almost unanimous prejudice against Asians, is at the heart of the story.
Narrated by Hanna, the novel has poignant moments yet sparkles with humor, introducing a captivating heroine whose wry, observant…
As an author, I love telling stories set on the frontier and populated by pioneers. That has a lot to do with the books I read long ago. My characters tend to have their heads in the clouds, like Ken from Mary O’Hara’s My Friend Flicka. They dream of towering peaks, promising paths, and opportunities beyond the world they grew up in. Back in high school, I took an elective class—Historical Fiction—I wasn’t even sure what that was! We read The Source by James Michener. When I’m not hiking or dreaming about horses, there’s nothing I love more than making up wilderness stories set in the 1800s.
It’s hard to believe this classic is celebrating fifty years on television. And, of course, long before that, it was a treasure of a book that delighted generations of young people. The worst-kept secret is: you don’t outgrow this beloved author’s work.
It’s probably her fault that just thinking about covered wagons makes me long for the good old days—ones that came and went long before I was born. It’s not just the kind of book you want to read over and over again; it’s the kind of book you want to read aloud to others.
Classic tales by Laura Ingalls Wilder about life on the frontier and America's best-loved pioneer family.
The sun-kissed prairie stretches out around the Ingalls family, smiling its welcome after their long, hard journey across America. But looks can be deceiving and they soon find that they must share the land with wild bears and Indians. Will there be enough land for all of them?
The timeless stories that inspired a TV series can now be read by a new generation of children. Readers who loved Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, and Heidi will be swept up by…
Reeni is wild about birds so naturally, when she and her friend Yasmin have to pick a topic for a school assignment, birds in the city are an obvious choice. But when the upcoming bird count is threatened, Reeni has to detour from birding to activism. This is a global…
I’m a former high-school and middle-school English teacher and a current instructor in the Writing Program at Rutgers University. I live in hilly New Jersey, but I’ve always been fascinated by the flat, treeless American prairie and the people who have lived there, from the Native American tribes of the Great Plains to the early homesteaders. I believe that to understand where we are, you need to understand where we’ve been, which is why I love to read and write historical fiction.
Apparently I’m not the only kidlit author who loves both the American prairie and all things British. When her Pa is accused of thieving, young Louisa is taken in by his accusers, the appropriately named Smirch family. Sour, mean-spirited Mrs. Smirch looks forward to seeing Pa hang. Louisa solves the mystery of the stolen items when she meets a gruff but sensitive... well, I won’t say, but he’s one of the Wee Folk from the Auld Country, far from home on the Colorado plains. A cute and lively read with a satisfying conclusion.
I’m a former high-school and middle-school English teacher and a current instructor in the Writing Program at Rutgers University. I live in hilly New Jersey, but I’ve always been fascinated by the flat, treeless American prairie and the people who have lived there, from the Native American tribes of the Great Plains to the early homesteaders. I believe that to understand where we are, you need to understand where we’ve been, which is why I love to read and write historical fiction.
This historical novel in verse brings the Kansas prairie alive in all its beauty and harshness. The story is tense with few light moments as young May B is stranded alone in a sod house as blizzards rage outside. She’s a realistic heroine, tempted to despair but ultimately finding hidden sources of strength. Oh, and she suffers from dyslexia. Sometimes I think novels in verse will be too artsy or literary, but they’re actually easy to read, right? Perfect for a struggling reader, perhaps one with dyslexia.
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"If May is a brave, stubborn fighter, the short, free-verse lines are one-two punches in this Laura Ingalls Wilder-inspired ode to the human spirit." — Kirkus Reviews, Starred
I've known it since last night: It's been too long to expect them to return. Something's happened.
May is helping out on a neighbor's Kansas prairie homestead—just until Christmas, says Pa. She wants to contribute, but it's hard to be separated from her family by 15 long, unfamiliar miles. Then the unthinkable happens: May is abandoned. Trapped in a tiny snow-covered sod house, isolated from family and neighbors, May must prepare for…
My passion for novels about war with a love-related component is rooted in my upbringing. My father served in the military and suffered from PTSD all his life as a result. He regaled me with stories of his time in the army during World War II, but those stories were wildly comic or compelling tales of adventure in exotic, faraway lands. The darker aspects of his experience came out in his nightmares, and later in life, in the flashbacks he experienced after his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. My mother’s life was also impacted by war. Her first marriage ended when her husband was killed in battle, and she had her own kind of PTSD as a result.
Here is another book about strong women who supported each other as they served in battle, not as soldiers, but as nurses.
Reading The Women, I got to experience the evacuation hospitals designed to provide rapid trauma care near combat zones. The war-torn love represented in these pages is both platonic and romantic.
This is not a YA novel, but it is a very accessible read, and it raises important ethical questions. What makes a good war, exactly?
From master storyteller Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds, comes the story of a turbulent, transformative era in America: the 1960s. The Women is that rarest of novels—at once an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics, of a generation both fueled by dreams and lost on the battlefield.
“Women can be heroes, too.”
When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these unexpected…
A gay retelling of the classic fairy tale--a scrumptious love story featuring ungrateful stepsiblings, a bake-off, and a fairy godfather.
Cinderelliot is stuck at home taking care of his ungrateful stepsister and stepbrother. When Prince Samuel announces a kingdom-wide competition to join the royal staff as his baker, the stepsiblings…
History has always fascinated me. I majored in history as an undergrad, but what really shaped me was listening to people tell their stories. My earliest memories are of sitting with my grandparents and listening to them share bits of their lives with me. Those stories helped me understand that history is not a list of events, but rather a sharing of the human experience. Each of the stories in this book list highlights a moment in history, but they also show readers our humanity across time; that people have the same hopes and dreams no matter where they came from and what they experienced.
This is a story that shows just how far-reaching the tides of war are.
Told in dual POV and spanning two continents, Werner begins his story in 1939, in Germany, and escapes with the help of his friend Dahlia and her family. He safely immigrates to Ecuador with them, but without any member of his own family.
What struck me most about this book is the friendship and love between Dahlia and Werner and how it grows over time. Dahlia’s love helps Werner through the pain of not knowing the fate of his loved ones.
I loved this book; it shows a perspective of WWII we do not often give our attention to.
"Powerful, moving, and well-written." -Greg Fields, National Book Award nominated author of The Bright Freight of Memory
When Dahlia, the courageous daughter of an Ecuadorian embassy official, sees how Germany is changing as Adolf Hitler's reign takes hold, she knows she must act.
Her best friend, Werner, and his family have been ostracized and endangered, and she can't stand to see them suffer. With a new identity, Werner hesitantly finds a new beginning as part of the Aviles family back in Ecuador.
He and Dahlia must balance the typical growing pains of youth with the distance in culture and geography…
History has always fascinated me. I majored in history as an undergrad, but what really shaped me was listening to people tell their stories. My earliest memories are of sitting with my grandparents and listening to them share bits of their lives with me. Those stories helped me understand that history is not a list of events, but rather a sharing of the human experience. Each of the stories in this book list highlights a moment in history, but they also show readers our humanity across time; that people have the same hopes and dreams no matter where they came from and what they experienced.
What I liked most about this story was that it was written from a child’s point of view.
In this historical fiction novel about WWI, Alfie’s father suffers from shell-shock (what today we call PTSD). Alfie’s father is hospitalized, and the story is a journey of discovery, pain, healing, and the long-term impact war has on soldiers and families.
The story could be set in any place and time because these themes transcend all wars.
The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield's father promised he wouldn't go away to fight - but he broke that promise the following day.
Four years later, Alfie doesn't know where his father might be, other than that he's away on a special, secret mission.
Then, while shining shoes at King's Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father's name - on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realises his father is in a hospital close by - a hospital treating soldiers with an unusual condition.
I write in the speculative fiction genre where an overwhelming event, seemingly beyond the control of the main characters, underpins what happens to those characters. Exploring scenarios about how society would change as a result of cyber controlled multiple personality overlays, for example, is a great opportunity for considered thought. I believe that a mind without a question is dead. As a writer, I imbue my characters with this philosophy and then set them free to navigate the vast plane of destiny for themselves.
In my novels, the quiet depth of character development runs parallel to the action. This is the only way to make fighting for one's life mean anything. Shootings, explosions, high body counts, or a countdown to chaos may hold momentary interest but will not create any lasting memory or take-away useful in real life. This story spends quite a lot of time on backstory and the emotional well from which the main characters spring. Some might desire a quicker path through this. Some might not. And quite a few false paths are developed as you’d expect in a who-done-it type novel. The story reaches a driving and satisfying conclusion but some might leave wondering about the author’s opinion of law enforcement as is spoken through her protagonist.
A young mother has done everything possible to put the past behind her, but it might not be enough in a gripping novel of suspense by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Jane Doe novels.
Abandoned by her fugitive ex-husband, Lily Brown is rebuilding her life on the edge of a Kansas town that still feels the sting of his crimes. Lily lies low, managing the isolated storage facility where she lives with her twelve-year-old son, Everett, and planning a better future for them both. That requires keeping secrets. Everett has them too.
Lois Lowry looks back at history through a personal lens as she draws from her own memories as a child in Hawaii and Japan, as well as from historical research, in this stunning work in verse for young readers.
On the Horizon tells the story of people whose lives were…
I’m an avid reader and writer of children’s literature, though I find it difficult to read anything that isn’t diverse these days. Being able to experience the world from the perspectives of other cultures is a true delight, and I learn something every time. After having read dozens of these diverse books, especially diverse fantasies, I find that nothing inspires my creative soul more. That’s why I’m able to speak on this topic for large conferences and schools, spreading this inspiration to others. And, as a published author of diverse children’s literature, I’ve done the same in my writing with praise from Kirkus, Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, and many others.
Khan’s Pakistani-inspired heroine Nura proves uniquely cunning as she goes from being a child laborer to discovering an entrance into the world of the jinn.
If you don’t know anything about the jinn, it is that they are tricksters who will try and trap you, and that’s exactly what happens to Nura. Only, what makes Nura so special is that she is cunning too.
I loved watching her outsmart the immortal beings in this supernatural world.
A magical adventure rooted in Muslim culture and tradition, Nura and the Immortal Palace follows a young girl's journey from modern-day Pakistan into the world of the jinn.
Nura has worked all her life in the mica mines, earning just enough to keep her family afloat - and enjoy the odd delicious gulab jamun from the market. Some day she's going to find the Demon's Tongue, a legendary treasure buried deep in the mines, and her family will never have to worry about money again.
But when a terrible accident buries her best friend below ground, Nura goes in search…
