Here are 100 books that Abuelo, the Sea, and Me fans have personally recommended if you like
Abuelo, the Sea, and Me.
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I’m 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 don’t feel comfortable speaking the language of their grandparents. On this list, I’ve 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!
For lovers of dragons and action-packed adventures, this book is a great starting point for discussing machismo culture and family expectations.
I love that Miguel is an artist who fights for his family by forging his own path and resisting the legacy of the sword by using his mighty imagination. Sprinkled with Spanish and chock-full of cultural details, I found this book to be a celebration of boyhood and creativity—and so fun to read aloud!
A charming Spanish language story about a young artist in a family of sword fighters, whose passions are put to the test when a dragon attacks his village.
Miguel was like a paintbrush in a family of steely swords ...
All his life, Miguel's familia told him he must fight! But his family's art of sword fighting never captivated him as much as the sway of his colored pencils did.
When his village is threatened by El Dragon, Miguel must make a choice: will he stand with his familia and fight, or can he prove that the pencil is mightier…
I’m 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 don’t feel comfortable speaking the language of their grandparents. On this list, I’ve 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!
A vivid account of community activism. I learned so much from this book, which is based on the real history of Chicano Park. The story is told from a child’s point of view and celebrates community engagement and the collective strength of Chicanos in the face of neglect and environmental racism. A book that stayed with me way past the last page.
A vivid historical fiction account of the community activism behind San Diego's Chicano Park-home to the largest outdoor mural collection in the U.S.-and just one example of the Mexican American community's rich history of resistance and resilience.
Barrio Logan, one of San Diego's oldest Chicane neighborhoods, once brimmed with families and stretched all the way to the glorious San Diego Bay. But in the decades after WWII, the community lost their beach and bayfront to factories, junkyards, and an interstate that divided the neighborhood and forced around 5,000 people out of their homes. Then on April 22, 1970, residents discovered…
I’m 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 don’t feel comfortable speaking the language of their grandparents. On this list, I’ve 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!
Mariana visits her extended family in Mexico for the first time and feels overwhelmed with new sounds, faces, smells, and words that are supposed to mean family.
I think this book depicts the experience of second and third generation kids perfectly, especially as they visit their parents’ childhood home. I love the message it sends that family and love transcends language and cultural divide.
A heartwarming picture book about a young girl on her first trip to visit family in Mexico, who learns there is no language barrier when it comes to love-from debut author Monica Mancillas and rising star illustrator Erika Meza. Perfect for fans of Where Are You From? and Mango, Abuela, and Me.
Mariana is visiting her abuelita and extended family in Mexico for the first time. Her tummy does a flip as she and Mami cross the frontera.
There are all new sights, smells, and sounds. And at Abuelita's house, Mariana is overwhelmed by new faces and Spanish phrases she…
I’m 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 don’t feel comfortable speaking the language of their grandparents. On this list, I’ve 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!
A beautiful book about preserving traditions. This book follows a girl who anticipates a beloved holiday but worries about not being able to celebrate it in her new home. Where will she find grass for the camels in the midst of the Midwest snow?
This book helped our family discuss the different traditions we celebrate and answer some of my children’s questions: Can the three kings visit us in the US? And will Santa find his way to us if we move? I appreciate how the book introduces Three Kings Day and serves as a reminder that we carry our heritage and traditions wherever life takes us.
In this story about Dia de los Reyes, or Three Kings' Day, a girl and her family discover new ways to celebrate their Puerto Rican heritage in Ohio.
It's eleven days after Christmas and Lucia yearns to be in lush Puerto Rico celebrating Dia de los Reyes with family and friends. But this year, instead of dancing and singing in the parrandas of her Puerto Rican neighborhood, she is surrounded by cold and silence in snow-blanketed Ohio. How will she ever be able to guide the Three Kings to her new home in the frosty Midwest? This picture book is…
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 “enough.” 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. She’s also Jewish with Ashkenazi and Sephardic roots. Based on the author’s 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. It’s 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 Ruthie’s innocent, bright, and brave voice brings the reader along in a hopeful way. There’s some great food (like guava pastries, flan, and samosas) mentioned here, too.
"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. Just when…
Growing up in Salt Lake City in the 1950s I was very soon aware that I was living in a world of borders, some permeable and negotiable, and some almost impossible to cross. It was a city of Mormons and a city of those who weren’t; a city of immigrants like my grandparents, and about whom my mother wrote (and wrote well); and a Jim Crow town where Black men and women couldn’t get into the ballroom to hear Duke Ellington play. Finally, it was a city haunted by its Indian past in a state keeping living Indians in its many bleak government reservations. What to make of those borders has been a life-long effort.
Early on David Levinsky, the immigrant Yeshiva boy, the budding intellectual, learns that America is the land of winners and losers, and if he is to be the former, he has to abandon his old self like the ear-locks he left on a barbershop floor in his first days in this new world. To be an alrightnik he must learn to dance the American dance. And dance he does, but his fabulous success as a garment manufacturer has left something unresolved in himself. His search for love at a Jewish resort in the Poconos is a chapter better than anything Philip Roth ever wrote.
Acclaimed by literary critic Carl Van Doren as "the most important of all immigrant novels," The Rise of David Levinsky takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early 20th century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. All the energy formerly focused on his religious studies now turns in the direction of rising to the top of the business world, where he discovers the high price of assimilation. Author Abraham Cahan founded and edited the Jewish Daily Forward,…
I’m a children’s book writer from Frisco, Texas. I’ve published two middle grade chapter books, Pippa Park Raises Her Game and Pippa Park Crush at First Sight. I’ve always been captivated by novels that make me hungry; you can blame formative children’s books like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie or Stone Soup for that. That’s why today I’m sharing my top 5 favorite middle grade books that have a foodie twist. Some of them revolve entirely around food; others simply offer a notable scene. Either way, I hope you’ll find them as delectable as I do!
This isn’t a book about food. Instead, it’s about middle grader Yumi Chung, who, in a case of mistaken identity, stumbles upon the opportunity to join a comedy camp taught by her favorite YouTuber.
Even so, I included it on this list because not only does Yumi’s family own a Korean barbeque restaurant, but the other kids at school even call her “Yu-MEAT” because of it. Comedy plus cooking? No wonder I had to include this gem!
One lie snowballs into a full-blown double life in this irresistible story about an aspiring stand-up comedian.
On the outside, Yumi Chung suffers from #shygirlproblems, a perm-gone-wrong, and kids calling her "Yu-MEAT" because she smells like her family's Korean barbecue restaurant. On the inside, Yumi is ready for her Netflix stand-up special. Her notebook is filled with mortifying memories that she's reworked into comedy gold. All she needs is a stage and courage.
Instead of spending the summer studying her favorite YouTube comedians, Yumi is enrolled in test-prep tutoring to qualify for a private school scholarship, which will help in…
I live in California and write novels based on my grandmother’s stories of our female ancestors. I love tales of everyday women who lived normal lives (according to them) but were quite remarkable to my 21st-century eyes. I wrote The Aloha Spirit about my husband’s grandmother, who was an amazing woman. His family is from Hawaii, and we visit there frequently. Anyone who spends time in the islands experiences the warm welcome of the people, which we know as the aloha spirit. I know Grandma had a difficult life, and I wrote the novel to explore how she might have overcome those difficulties to find her aloha spirit.
This is one of three historical novels by Alan Brennert set in Hawaii. I like this one best because it is set in 1914, not long before my own novel opens in Honolulu. It portrays a very different side of the city, however. Brennert’s novel features a Korean picture bride who is married off to a poor laborer who mistreats her. She and her fellow picture brides come together to improve their lives, resulting in a unique portrayal of Waikiki before the highrises, of the tenements in Chinatown, and the plantations before powerful unions.
'In Korea in those days, newborn girls were not deemed important enough to be graced with formal names, but were instead given nicknames, which often reflected the parents' feelings on the birth of a daughter: I knew a girl named Anger, and another called Pity. As for me, my parents named me Regret.' "HONOLULU" is the rich, unforgettable story of a young 'picture bride' who travels to Hawai'i in 1914. Instead of the affluent young husband and chance at an education that she has been promised, she is married off to a poor, embittered labourer who takes his frustrations out…
I am convinced that my life would be better if I had read more books by Latina/Latine authors while growing up. To be able to see oneself in a story is powerful. I didn’t have that for a long time. It made me feel invisible. It made me feel like being an author was as realistic as becoming an astronaut or a performer in Cirque du Soleil. Now, as a professor of Creative Writing and author of several books (and more on the way!), I dedicated my life to writing the books I needed as a young Latina. I hope others find something meaningful in my stories, too.
Oh my goodness—this book! I couldn’t see the pages in those final chapters because I was crying for these characters and all they went through crossing the southern border into the United States.
To this day, I still remember vivid images and moments from the novel. I won’t spoil the story for you, but here’s one: a female character wearing a baseball cap and jacket and pretending to be a male because the journey north is often much harder and riskier for women. I know I will think about this trio of characters for a long time.
A poignant novel of desperation, escape, and survival across the U.S.-Mexico border, inspired by current events.
A Pura Belpré 2021 Young Adult Author Honor Book! A BookPage Best Book of 2020! A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best of 2020! A School Library Journal Best Book of 2020! A New York Public Library 2020 Top 10 Best Book for Teens!
Pulga has his dreams. Chico has his grief. Pequeña has her pride.
And these three teens have one another. But none of them have illusions about the town they've grown up in and the dangers that surround them. Even…
I’m Irish, writing since 2001. I’m fascinated by the impulses that propel us towards or away from another person, the ways we are hurt or charmed or offended or beguiled by another, and how we react to all of the above. I’m not married or in a relationship myself; somewhere along the way I realised that I’m happier alone, and I think it puts me in a good position to observe the behaviours of friends and family, and sometimes strangers (yes, I’m that person sitting nearby on the train or at the airport or in the cafe, tapping furiously into her laptop as you converse with your partner).
I’m recommending this because it will break your heart, and everyone needs that experience now and again with a book. It tells the story of a unique and unlikely love that blossoms slowly between a 104-year-old woman (whom you will learn to adore) and a young boy scout who calls to her house to fulfill one of his tasks. There’s a tragic twist early on that introduces us to the boy’s parents, and there are some lovely subsequent turns in this most magical tale. It’s the first Monica Wood book that I read, but I must hunt her down and read more.
She may be 104 years old, but Ona Vitkus is on a mission and it's all because of THE ONE-IN-A-MILLION-BOY...
Monica Wood's unforgettable novel about a boy in a million and the 104-year-old woman who saves his family is not to be missed by readers who loved THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY, ELIZABETH IS MISSING or THE SHOCK OF THE FALL.
'A lovely, quirky novel about misfits across generations' Daily Mail
'A bittersweet story about finding friendship in the most unlikely of places' Good Housekeeping.
The story of your life never starts at the beginning. Don't they teach you…
