Here are 100 books that Pew fans have personally recommended if you like
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Everyone knows what it’s like to be the “odd man out”—the despair of being shunned or isolated or ridiculed by the “crowd.” For some, it can last their whole life. I’ve always been curious as to why this occurs, both from the side of those “pointing” and from that of the recipient. Strangeness attracts us by its very uniqueness, and to me, that’s something to be celebrated and marveled over. To some, it is also feared.
There’s a reason this book is a classic. I read it a number of years ago and reread it last year—it holds up exceedingly well.
The author’s depiction of the parents who take drugs with the intention of having malformed children they can showcase is a great setup, but it’s the character of Arturo the Aquaboy, in all his grandiosity, power, and neediness, that is compelling and resonates so today.
A National Book Award Finalist: This 'wonderfully descriptive' novel from an author with a 'tremendous imagination' tells the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias have bred their own exhibit of human oddities. (The New York Times Book Review)
The Binewskis arex a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities (with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes). Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan, Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins, albino hunchback Oly, and…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
Everyone knows what it’s like to be the “odd man out”—the despair of being shunned or isolated or ridiculed by the “crowd.” For some, it can last their whole life. I’ve always been curious as to why this occurs, both from the side of those “pointing” and from that of the recipient. Strangeness attracts us by its very uniqueness, and to me, that’s something to be celebrated and marveled over. To some, it is also feared.
Part and parcel of being different and strange is perhaps being otherworldly. Emma Donaghue’s book, like her other books I’ve read, is a propulsive page-turner that also makes you think.
Is eleven-year-old Anna O’Donnell, who is said to have eaten nothing for months but appears to be thriving miraculously, a fraud? The question probes deep into our view of the miraculous, including religious conundrums that have always intrigued me: would there be Christ without miracles? Do we treasure and fear what we simply don’t understand?
Set in the author’s homeland of Ireland, this is a tale of two strangers who transform each other’s lives in a setting defined by a people intimate with hunger.
Now a Netflix film starring Florence Pugh: In this “old-school page turner” (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review) by the bestselling author of Room, an English nurse is brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle—a girl said to have survived without food for months—and soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life.
Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired…
Everyone knows what it’s like to be the “odd man out”—the despair of being shunned or isolated or ridiculed by the “crowd.” For some, it can last their whole life. I’ve always been curious as to why this occurs, both from the side of those “pointing” and from that of the recipient. Strangeness attracts us by its very uniqueness, and to me, that’s something to be celebrated and marveled over. To some, it is also feared.
There’s something about the grittiness of turn-of-the-century New York that seems especially well-suited to the different and strange, including the depictions in this novel of the Coney Island seashore, the tenements of the Lower East Side, and a brutal asylum.
The characters include a “night-soiler” cleaning out tenement privies, an undertaker’s wife, and estranged twin sisters, and the way their stories weave together is a Dickens-esque plot full of intrigue, deception, heroism, and forgiveness. Over it all is a sense of magic and possibility, including people who aren’t who or what they claim to be.
'A SKILLFUL TRIUMPH' Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist - 'IRRESISTIBLE' Emma Donoghue, author of Room
New York, 1895. It's late on a warm city night when Sylvan Threadgill, a young night soiler who cleans out the privies behind the tenement houses, pulls a terrible secret out from the filthy hollows: an abandoned newborn baby. An orphan himself, Sylvan was raised by a kindly Italian family and can't bring himself to leave the baby in the slop. He tucks her into his chest, resolving to find out where she belongs.
Odile Church is the girl-on-the-wheel, a second-fiddle act in a…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
Everyone knows what it’s like to be the “odd man out”—the despair of being shunned or isolated or ridiculed by the “crowd.” For some, it can last their whole life. I’ve always been curious as to why this occurs, both from the side of those “pointing” and from that of the recipient. Strangeness attracts us by its very uniqueness, and to me, that’s something to be celebrated and marveled over. To some, it is also feared.
This biography is a fascinating look at the guy who kept one sideshow or another going for some fifty years, weathering every kind of catastrophe imaginable and, in the process, meeting all sorts of people others might consider odd. Working with monkey girls, half-people, sword swallowers, and fire eaters, Ward was the talker who brought the crowds in, as well as the one who made the numbers work and ran the show.
Like life itself, Ward’s shows were full of fakery, illusion, and the real thing—dwarfs, bearded ladies, and others seen as human oddities. His take on entertaining the masses, and the humanity of the “freaks” by which he did this, is an interesting view of both our attraction to and revulsion by the different and the strange.
Ward Hall ran across town and joined the circus for a part time gig in 1944 when he was a "kid" living in Colorado. A year later, as a 15 year old 10th grade dropout, he ran away for good, joining the Dailey Bros. Circus. He never looked back. By 16 he was performing in a sideshow and by age 21, he owned a sideshow! Today, 70 years later and countless circus and side show, vaudeville and burlesque house performances under his belt, Ward Hall is still in the business. Ward has worked with a monkey girl, a half-lady/half man,…
I’ve been fascinated by the Civil War my entire life. As a boy, I met a man in my Ohio hometown who spent his own youth visiting with the last, wrinkled survivors of the Union armies. His memories at once made the Civil War real and immediate for me. I soon devoured every book and walked every battlefield I could find. After earning an undergraduate degree in Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College, I completed my Ph.D. at Yale. I have authored six books on the conflict—one of which was a runner-up for the Pulitzer in History—and teach courses on the Civil War at Sam Houston State University.
This book recovers—through diligent archival spadework and keen historical empathy—the human realities of emancipation for freedom-seeking enslaved persons. Emancipation, Taylor demonstrates, was a humanitarian refugee crisis acted out amidst the uncertainties of civil warfare. Embattled Freedom supplies a sweeping survey of a complex historical process, but it does so on a human scale—tracking a small group of protagonists as they wind their way to the uncertain asylum of slave refugee (“contraband”) camps. The author’s close attention to the material realities of “contraband” camps—hunger, shelter, and clothing—builds a sense of intimacy and emotional connection. Scholars have established that emancipation was a process, and that the enslaved played a vital role in their own liberation; here is the best account of how that struggle was lived.
The Civil War was just days old when the first enslaved men, women, and children began fleeing their plantations to seek refuge inside the lines of the Union army as it moved deep into the heart of the Confederacy. In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands more followed in a mass exodus from slavery that would destroy the system once and for all. Drawing on an extraordinary survey of slave refugee camps throughout the country, Embattled Freedom reveals as never before the everyday experiences of these refugees from slavery as they made their way through the vast landscape of…
My maternal great-grandparents were Irish immigrants. My paternal grandfather left Liverpool in the late 19th century to go to Australia. I’d love to know their children’s stories! Some of the families I visited as a social worker (mid-1960s) were immigrants, struggling to make sense of a new language and a new culture. I met a child who had come here alone as an illegal immigrant and had been a house slave until the social services settled her with a foster family. I met author Hanna Jansen and her many adopted children from war-torn countries. Fiction gives us many powerful stories about children forced to flee from their homes because of war, tyranny, hunger, poverty, natural disasters.
The Crossing really moved me. It’s an unforgettable story of two young people who suffer extreme trauma and struggle to find their way to a better future. Nat is in England, her mother has died, and in her honour Nat sets herself the task of raising money for refugees by swimming the Channel. Sammy, in Eritrea, has witnessed the political murder of his father and is soon to be drafted into the army, where he knows he will be tortured. I love the way the author weaves their first-person stories together, till we feel the two must meet. Sammy’s desperate journey, with its horrors, hunger, despair, and unimaginable hardship, is particularly graphically told.
I found this story of bravery shocking and frightening, but not without hope.
Powerful, compassionate and ultimately hopeful. Observer
WINNER OF THE COSTA CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD 2021 and the Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week - a trailblazing novel about two teenagers from opposite worlds; The Crossing is a profound story of hope, grief, and the very real tragedies of the refugee crisis.
The sea carries our pain. The stars carry our future.
Natalie's world is falling apart. She's just lost her mum and her brother marches the streets of Dover full of hate and anger. Swimming is her only refuge.
Sammy has fled his home and family in Eritrea for the…
As you get to know the characters I create, you'll be imbued with a sense of hope and possibility–with the magic that can happen when someone pokes a toe out of her comfort zone and makes things happen. You'll relate to discrete characters, who like most women, desire and deserve true love, authentic relationships—whether they be friends, mothers, daughters, or lovers–and meaningful work. You'll care about their emotional hurts, the misunderstandings that cause them to stumble, and cheer them on as they make choices that ultimately lead them to create empowered, fulfilling lives. Hooking you from the first sentence, I'll ignite your brain's hardwired desire to learn what happens next.
This masterpiece will compel anyone who's not yet a lover of historical fiction with elements of fantasy to jump the broom into Remembrance, a voodoo-induced world refuge for 18th and 19th century enslaved people. The lives of a trio of women separated by place and time are deftly braided by this debut author. Evocative escapism at its best.
"Stunning. ... Family is at the core of Remembrance, the breathtaking debut novel by Rita Woods." -- The Boston Globe. This breakout historical debut with modern resonance is perfect for the many fans of The Underground Railroad and Orphan Train.
Remembrance…It’s a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy…if you can make it there.
Ohio, present day. An elderly woman who is more than she seems warns against rising racism as a young nurse grapples with her…
The refugee story is deeply rooted in my family, as my (great-/) grandparents fled Europe for a safer life in America. I grew up listening to their stories of escape and trying to integrate in their new land. Human rights were also a focus of my graduate studies – and later in founding the Human Rights Watch Committee NL and joining the Save the Children Board of Trustees. I am a writer and poet, Board member, and former strategy consultant who always wanted to write refugee stories for children. Their stories are difficult. But children should understand that although the world is not always safe or fair, there is always hope.
Although this picture book is a bit dark and bleak for very young readers, Stepping Stones is a uniquely beautiful depiction of the refugee’s journey. The illustrations were inspired by the stone artwork of Syrian artist Nizar Ali Badr. Stones, like trees, appear to have an ancient power to tell difficult stories like no other. I love that this book focuses not only on the hardships and horrors, but also on the beauties and rituals of the life and culture left behind. So many children will have known only conflict in their short lives, and it is important that they – and the rest of us, too – learn that there was so much more, before. The story is poetically told in both English and Arabic.
Rama and her family, are forced to flee their once-peaceful village to escape the ravages of the civil war raging ever closer to their home
With only what they can carry on their backs, Rama and her mother, father, grandfather and brother, Sami, set out to walk to freedom in Europe. This unique picture book was inspired by the stone artwork of Syrian artist Nizar Ali Badr, discovered by chance by Canadian children’s writer Margriet Ruurs. The author was immediately impressed by the strong narrative quality of Mr. Badr’s work, and, using many of Mr. Badr’s already-created pieces, she set…
In 2010, I met a Somali refugee in Cape Town. His name was Asad Abdullahi. He told the tale of his life with a richness bordering on genius and I was hooked. I spent the next two years tracing his childhood footsteps through the Horn of Africa, looking for anyone and everyone he had encountered. In the course of writing a book about him, I read countless other books about exile, migration, and human beings on the move. My five recommendations are among the books that helped me imagine the experience of exile best.
My mother read this book to me over the course of several weekday afternoons. I was nine, maybe ten. The book’s protagonist, David, is a boy who escapes from a concentration camp somewhere in Eastern Europe and walks to Denmark in search of his mother. Lying next to my own mother, on her bed, listening to her voice, cocooned by her love, I identified so very powerfully with this unrooted, solitary, questing boy. It stirred me more than anything else I read as a child. There is something in a refugee’s tale that is so primal, so hard to shake off. There but by the grace of God go I, I thought, every time my mother opened the book to read some more.
This is the story of a young boy's journey through Europe after escaping from the camp where he has lived all his life. Faced with a host of new experiences, David gradually begins to understand the world around him.
I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. I lived there until I was six. I was a child from America’s Secret War in Laos, a child who knew very little of the outside world before my family sought refuge in America. Much of my life’s work has been devoted to a search for peace, to understand the forces that put families in situations like mine. I have published widely on the topic, written of it in books for both adults and children.
Hosseini's book is timely and important. It is a story inspired by the image of a child washed up on the beach of a foreign shore. It tells the story of another child, whose parent send them off on a vessel across a wide ocean in search of a less turbulent future. The art is sweeping. The words travel far into the heart.
An illustrated book on the refugee crisis that will break your heart in under 48 pages, from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed.
"Intensely moving. . .Powerfully evocative of the plight in which displaced populations find themselves."– Kirkus, STARRED Review
"Hosseini's story, aimed at readers of all ages, does not dwell on nightmarish fates; instead, its emotional power flows from the love of a father for his son."– Publishers Weekly, STARRED BOX Review
A short, powerful, illustrated book written by beloved novelist Khaled Hosseini in response to…
