Here are 47 books that Property of the Revolution fans have personally recommended if you like
Property of the Revolution.
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I am obsessed with books about people fighting for social justiceâparticularly around racism and the climate crisis (which are definitely interconnected). I have two main approaches: people with longstanding commitments to making change who take increasingly bold steps to fight for justice, and the accidental activists, who had no intention of taking on injustice, but found themselves in unexpected circumstances and rose to the occasion. I write stories about peopleâmostly women of colorâwho are part of teams and movements who fight to make the world right, and win. I think of myself as trying to create roadmaps for us to win in the fight against racism and the climate crisis in the real world.
When fifteen-year-old Cuban American Mariana Ruizâs father runs for president, Mari starts to see him with new eyes. Throughout his successful political career, he has always had his daughterâs vote, but the campaign brings a whole new level of scrutiny to Mariana and the rest of her Cuban American family. As Mari begins to learn about the details of her fatherâs political positionsâparticularly some very questionable stances on the environmentâ she realizes that her father is not the man she thought he was. As the climate crisis escalates around them in Florida, she begins to connect with activist teens.
I love how this novel traces a young womanâs political awakening, and how sometimes standing up for what you believe in begins with standing up to your family.
When fifteen-year-old Cuban American Mariana Ruiz's father runs for president, Mari starts to see him with new eyes. A novel about waking up and standing up, and what happens when you stop seeing your dad as your hero - while the whole country is watching. In this thoughtful, authentic, humorous, and gorgeously written novel about privacy, waking up, and speaking up, Senator Anthony Ruiz is running for president. Throughout his successful political career he has always had his daughter's vote, but a presidential campaign brings a whole new level of scrutiny to sheltered fifteen-year-old Mariana and the rest of herâŠ
I'm a Mexican writer and illustrator based in Los Angeles. I was always a bookish kid! Growing up I loved reading contemporary books, mostly about fearless girls trying to change the world! In my career, Iâve had the privilege to work creating cover artwork for a lot of middle-grade books, which in turn leads me to read a lot of really great stories. As a bonus, as the industry has become more diverse, so have the stories of outstanding girls, making the middle-grade space even more amazing than it was when I was a kid.
This book is absolutely brilliant, a wonderful commentary on really difficult current social issues that doesnât feel like a school lesson, it follows the story of Sofia Acosta, daughter of ballet-obsessed Cuban immigrants who have great hopes for her daughter, as she begins to question her place in ballet, her community and the world at large, and all the really complicated choices people make as they grow up.
A poignant, coming of age story about a Cuban-American girl trying to figure out where she belongs--both in her ballet-loving family and the wider world. Perfect for fans of Front Desk and Merci SuĂĄrez Changes Gears.
Itâs a good thing SofĂa Acosta loves dreaming up costumes, because otherwise sheâs a ballet disasterâunlike her parents, who danced under prima ballerina Alicia Alonso before immigrating to the suburbs of New York. Luckily, when the Acostas host their dancer friends from Cuba for a special performance with the American Ballet Theatre, SofĂa learns thereâs more than dance holding her family together. Between swappingâŠ
As a Jew that is both Ashkenazi and Persian that lives in Hong Kong where Iâm raising my Jewish Chinese children, I see Judaism for its rich diversity. Iâm passionate about changing peopleâs perceptions about what Jews look like and where we hail from. We are not a single story. To further that goal, in 2009, I founded Asian Jewish Life - a journal of spirit, society, and culture, have penned book chapters and articles on Jewish Asia, have written childrenâs books about communities that are Jewish&, and have lectured internationally on related topics. These books are about Jewish communities, but theyâre really about family and tradition. Read diverse books!
Thereâs a beautiful rhythm to this book that will keep readers coming back.
Spanish and Ladino are woven into the English text in a way that reflects what itâs like to live within several identities. It is a wonderfully told story about the meaning of home and the importance of tradition. The brightly-colored, rich illustrations make this an easy story to get lost in though home is never far.
A poignant multicultural ode to family and what it means to create a home as one girl helps her TĂa move away from her beloved Miami apartment.
When Estrella's TĂa Fortuna has to say goodbye to her longtime Miami apartment building, The Seaway, to move to an assisted living community, Estrella spends the day with her. TĂa explains the significance of her most important possessions from both her Cuban and Jewish culture, as they learn to say goodbye together and explore a new beginning for TĂa.
A lyrical book about tradition, culture, and togetherness, TĂa Fortuna's New Home explores TĂaâŠ
The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram
by
Dean Snow,
An ordinary sailor named David Ingram walked 3600 miles from Mexico to Canada over the course of eleven months in 1568-9. There, he and two companions were rescued by a French ship on the Bay of Fundy. They were the first Englishmen to explore the interior of North America.
I fell in love with understanding cities toward the end of my college studies. It was the late 1960s and urban issues were foremost in the nationâs consciousness. The times were difficult for cities and many of the problems, seemingly intractable. That drew me to graduate work in urban studies and afterward, teaching about real estate development and finance. My work on public/private partnerships and the political economy of city building has drawn a wide audience. In explaining how cities are built and redeveloped, my goal has been to de-mystify the politics and planning process surrounding large-scale development projects and how they impact the physical fabric of cities.
In riveting prose and masterly reporting, Joan Didion describes the two profoundly different and separate cultures of Miami, a city of Cuban exiles and racial tension with a long history of fast money and luxury living.
This analysis of the politics of immigration and exile told with passion and drama is as relevant today as it was in the 1980s.
Miami is not just a portrait of a city, but a masterly study of immigration and exile, passion, hypocrisy, and political violence, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean.
It is where Fidel Castro raised money to overthrow Batista and where two generations of Castro's enemies have raised armies to overthrow him, so far without success. It is where the bitter opera of Cuban exile intersects with the cynicism of U.S. foreign policy. It is a city whose skyrocketing murder rate is fueled by the cocaine trade, racialâŠ
I grew up in a culture that both fears and embraces spirits or outrightly rejects the idea that spirits live on beyond death. I grew up on stories of rolling calves and duppies that caused havoc among the living. Since then, Iâve been fascinated by what haunts usâwhether it be our familial spirits that float among the living and continue to play a role in our lives, our memories, or our past actions. Iâve written three books that play with this idea of past actions lingering long into the charactersâ lives and returning in unexpected ways.
Ramon sets out to uncover stories about his missing aunt, and along the way, falls in love and uncovers his motherâs own secrets related to Marisolâs disappearance.
This book reminds me about the interconnectedness of family and how family stories get told and passed on from one generation to another. Â
Marisol vanished during the Cuban Revolution, disappearing with hardly a trace. Now, shaped by atrocities long-forgotten, her tenacious spirit visits her nephew, RamĂłn, in modern-day New Jersey. Her hope: that her presence will prompt him to unearth their painful family history.
RamĂłn launches a haphazard investigation into the story of his ancestor, unaware of the forces driving him on his search. Along the way, he falls in love, faces a run-in with a murderousâŠ
Raised in a Mexican-Italian family, I grew up traveling across the Arizona-Sonora borderlands to visit my extended family. As a kid, I took for granted movement across boundaries and cultural and racial mixture, but eventually, I came to see it framed my experience and outlook. In researching the Chinese in northern Mexico, I learned that Mexican women and Chinese-Mexican children followed their expelled men, whether by force or choice, and I became enthralled. I had to find out how these families fared after crossing not just borders but oceans. My passion for reading about how the long presence of Asians in the Americas complicates our understanding of history has only deepened.
I have read this book more than once and each time have found myself pulled into the life of the main character, a Chinese contract laborer, and his story, which spans several generations, set across the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The novel features an Afro-Chino Cuban family and shows how they become deeply part of Cuba. It also shows how the descendants of the mixed-race couple face trials in New York City and Vietnam, depicting complexities of race, gender, family, and heritage with beautiful, painful detail and emotion.
In this deeply stirring novel, acclaimed author Cristina GarcĂa follows one extraordinary family through four generations, from China to Cuba to America. Wonderfully evocative of time and place, rendered in the lyrical prose that is GarcĂaâs hallmark, Monkey Hunting is an emotionally resonant tale of immigration, assimilation, and the prevailing integrity of self.
A series of galactic empire building, space battles, and the personal struggle of an exiled war leader to bring down the Galactic Empire that killed his mother and destroyed the Keeno Order.
I love scary books for kids, and scary mysteries in particular. Iâm a strong advocate for literacy and reaching reluctant readers, and the author of the multi-award-nominated middle-grade mystery Daybreak on Raven Island and Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, among others. The recent resurgence of horror has brought a fresh new bunch of scary stories for kids. And I love reading these books, even though Iâm well out of the target age range. These new scary books for kids blend genres, tackle difficult issues, and show kids that even in the darkest, smallest hour of the night, you can solve the problem at hand and come out on the other sideâbetter, stronger, smarter.
This book starts with a prank gone wrong, when Rafa and his friend steal the school slushy machine and get busted. As punishment, Rafa is sent to Ranch Espanto in New Mexico for the summer.
Rafa makes a friend in Jennie, but his work at the ranch keeps being sabotaged⊠He has to solve the (supernatural) mystery of the ranch, and in the end the book has a cool plot twist to satisfy mystery readers like myself. Aside from the strong plot, this book also covers tougher topics affecting these kids, giving it depth and heart.
I loved the New Mexico feel of the book, and appreciated how there was a mystery as well as supernatural (and magical realism) elements. The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto is the perfect book for kids who like a blend of genres, not simply another ghost story.
Sometimes parents are creative when they punish you. But not Rafael's dad. He doesn't bother with a traditional punishment when he finds out Rafael and his friends tried to steal a slushie machine from the school cafeteria. He skips right over creative, too. He blasts all the way to completely unhinged and bonkers.
That's how Rafael ends up on a ranch in Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico, thousands of miles from home in Miami. He's content to keep his head down and do as he's told, but his work is inexplicably sabotaged by a strangely familiar man, one with theâŠ
Iâm an avid reader and writer of childrenâs literature, though I find it difficult to read anything that isnât 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. Thatâs why Iâm able to speak on this topic for large conferences and schools, spreading this inspiration to others. And, as a published author of diverse childrenâs literature, Iâve done the same in my writing with praise from Kirkus, Booklist, Publisherâs Weekly, and many others.
Itâs a timeless story of a kid healing, but with a twist where Sal can pull things out of alternate dimensions.
He navigates the weirdness of his abilities with a grace and humor that is as refreshing as it is endearing. Itâs hard not to root for this troublemaker with a heart of gold.
Not to mention, the book has a seriously great main character counterpart to Sal in Gabi Real.Â
"I love this book in every possible universe! With a surprise on every page and two of the most cosmically awesome, vividly unique heroes I've ever read, this sweet, hilarious book made me so happy."--Tui T. Sutherland, author of the New York Times best-selling Wings of Fire series
What would you do if you had the power to reach through time and space and retrieve anything you want, including your mother, who is no longer living (in thisâŠ
Iâm a Panamanian American author and mother of two bilingual and bicultural children. I live a life between two beautiful languages and cultures, but that intersection is not always easy. In Squawk of Spanish, I explore the issue some children face when they donât feel comfortable speaking the language of their grandparents. On this list, Iâve included a sample of books that celebrate some of the day-to-day joys and challenges of growing up Latine in the US. I hope you enjoy it!
Stories from our grandparents tie us to our roots if we are lucky enough to listen. This is a heartwarming book about a grandfather and his granddaughter sharing stories that drift out, all the way to Abueloâs past in his island home, and come back to the present beach day, like the coming and going of the waves and the seasons.
The sensory details in the writing instantly transported me to the sand and salty air of the Caribbean. By the end of this book, my heart was aglow with nostalgia.Â
When this grandchild visits her abuelo, he takes her to the ocean. In the summer, they kick off their shoes and let the cool waves tickle their toes. In the winter, they stand on the cliff and let the spray of the sea prick their nose and cheeks. No matter the season, hot or cold, their favorite place to spend time together is the beach.
It's here that Abuelo is able to open up about his youth in Havana, Cuba. As they walk along the sand, he recalls the tastes, sounds, and smells of his childhood. And with his words,âŠ
Wales between the wars, a place of poverty and a world full of anguish. Yet, there is hope. Within family, within community, and most of all in the brave heart of one young girl.
Set in the lush Dulais Valley; Carrie is fated to a life of hardship and sorrow,âŠ
In 1968, my white Jewish American mother married my Indian American Hindu father. I grew up in Connecticut and often felt othered in my mostly white Christian community. I also felt different than many of my extended family members, feeling not quite Jewish or Indian âenough.â These issues and questions I had and still have about my identity have fueled my writing ever since. I write about characters navigating multiple identities asking questions about racism, prejudice, and xenophobia often for the first time. The books on this list are books I wished I could have had around to keep me company during my youth.
Ruth Behar writes for both adults and children and is a multi-award-winning writer and a Cuban-American Anthropologist. Sheâs also Jewish with Ashkenazi and Sephardic roots. Based on the authorâs real experiences, we follow ten-year-old Ruthie and her family who are recent Jewish-Cuban immigrants trying to make a new home in 1960s Queens, NY after Castro comes to power. Just as Ruthie is adjusting to school and making new friends, a devastating car accident puts her in a body cast for a year. Itâs a beautiful, heartbreaking, and inspiring story. I particularly loved her friendship with recent Indian immigrant, Ramu, who has to endure a terrible family tragedy as well. There are some heavy themes here, but Ruthieâs innocent, bright, and brave voice brings the reader along in a hopeful way. Thereâs some great food (like guava pastries, flan, and samosas) mentioned here, too.Â
"A book for anyone mending from childhood wounds."-Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
In this unforgettable multicultural coming-of-age narrative-based on the author's childhood in the 1960s-a young Cuban-Jewish immigrant girl is adjusting to her new life in New York City when her American dream is suddenly derailed. Ruthie's plight will intrigue readers, and her powerful story of strength and resilience, full of color, light, and poignancy, will stay with them for a long time.
Ruthie Mizrahi and her family recently emigrated from Castro's Cuba to New York City.âŠ
