Here are 100 books that How Mirka Got Her Sword fans have personally recommended if you like
How Mirka Got Her Sword.
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I lived an isolated and sometimes nomadic adolescence. My struggling single mother had untreated paranoid schizophrenia and believed herself to be a prophet. The world, as she saw it, was a strange and scary place, and she raised me and my sister to believe as she did. But being an avid reader and artist, I would escape into my own fantasy worlds to find hope and meaning. Now, as an adult, I use my art and writing to make sense of trauma, and I hope my stories can inspire and empower the people who read them.
Even though I’m not a Chinese immigrant, I found this book to be so relatable. It’s all about navigating the adolescent need to fit in while also being true to yourself.
The innovative story structure follows three different threads that eventually come together unexpectedly. The combination of a realistic school-kid, a legendary Monkey King, and a sit-com stereotype antagonist is so creative.
Gene Luen Yang was the fifth the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and is a MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of what's popularly known as the MacArthur "Genius" Grant.
A tour-de-force by New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Gene Yang, American Born Chinese tells the story of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he's the only Chinese-American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who…
When I was five, my family moved from Morocco to France. We were Jewish in a very homogeneously Catholic world. My French upbringing didn’t include much exposure to other cultures and I often felt uncomfortably different. I would have liked to know more about various lifestyles, cultures, and traditions than those I observed around me. I now love to learn about other cultures through personal accounts, stories, and memoirs. I feel engaged and interested in a way I never experienced with textbooks. Reading about people who live a different life from our own can be an eye-opening experience.
I love learning about life in another time period through a story. This one transported me to a logging camp in 1885. I learned about the life of the camp, the hard and dangerous work, and the treatment of the Chinese workers.
Mei is the daughter of a Chinese cook. She dreams of studying at the university, but doubts she will ever be able to, because of her Chinese origins.
I loved the deep but complex friendships between Mei and the foreman’s daughter and between Mei’s father and the foreman himself. I loved the affection between Mei and her father, their observance of Chinese traditions, and I loved Mei’s story-telling, re-casting Paul Bunyan as a benevolent Auntie Po.
Part historical fiction, part fable, and 100 percent adventure. Thirteen-year-old Mei reimagines the myths of Paul Bunyan as starring a Chinese heroine while she works in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in 1885.
Cover may vary.
Aware of the racial tumult in the years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Mei tries to remain blissfully focused on her job, her close friendship with the camp foreman's daughter, and telling stories about Paul Bunyan--reinvented as Po Pan Yin (Auntie Po), an elderly Chinese matriarch.
Anchoring herself with stories of Auntie Po, Mei navigates the…
Growing up in the South Wales Valleys during the 1970s and 80s, I witnessed firsthand the effects of multiple adversities on the lives of those around me. Life was difficult for many families in the area as they battled with poverty, ill health, and lack of opportunity. I watched many amazing, creative, and talented young people fail to realise their potential. This sparked a passion and a career for supportive intervention with families and young children. It is my aim to help equip the workforce to better understand and respond to childhood adversity, be trauma aware, advocate for children’s rights, and make a positive difference in the lives of children and young people.
It is difficult to imagine a more adverse childhood experience than growing up in a refugee camp.
In 2016 and 2017, I was privileged to spend some time working with children and families in a refugee camp in North France. The living conditions were very difficult, with regular food shortages, ill health, uncertainty, and ever-present danger. However, I was continually amazed by the resilience, creativity, generosity, and humour shown by the children, even in the face of such difficulties.
When Stars Are Scattered is a beautiful children’s book that tells the true story of Omar and his brother Hassan as they grow up in a Kenyan refugee camp. Filled with beautiful illustrations and thoughtful insights into daily life in the camp, this book exemplifies hope in the face of adversity.
A National Book Award Finalist, this remarkable graphic novel is about growing up in a refugee camp, as told by a former Somali refugee to the Newbery Honor-winning creator of Roller Girl.
Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar knows his nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future . . . but it would…
When I was five, my family moved from Morocco to France. We were Jewish in a very homogeneously Catholic world. My French upbringing didn’t include much exposure to other cultures and I often felt uncomfortably different. I would have liked to know more about various lifestyles, cultures, and traditions than those I observed around me. I now love to learn about other cultures through personal accounts, stories, and memoirs. I feel engaged and interested in a way I never experienced with textbooks. Reading about people who live a different life from our own can be an eye-opening experience.
Cici’s family is settling in Seattle. They come from Taiwan and want their daughter to study hard in the US in order to have a better life than theirs. But Cici is missing her beloved grandmother and worries about not fitting in at school. Deciding to sign up for a cooking contest will not only give her the chance to do what she likes doing the most, but will also make her meet a new friend. Or is it a rival?
I always love stories centered around the themes of trying to fit in and trying to please parents. Cici is a brave young girl with a quietly strong personality and I was rooting for her during mouth-watering cooking rounds.
An ALA Top 10 Graphic Novel of 2021 * A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection * Fall 2020 Kids Indie Next List * Featured in Today Show's AAPI Heritage Month List * Amazon Best Books November Selection * Cybils Awards Finalist * An NBC AAPI Selection * Featured in Parents Magazine Book Nook October issue * A CBC Hot off the Press October Selection * WA State Book Awards Finalist * Texas Library Association Little Maverick Selection
For fans of American Born Chinese and Roller Girl, Measuring Up is a don't-miss graphic novel debut from Lily LaMotte and Ann…
I grew up reading books that featured strong women, including Little Women and Anne of Green Gables so it only made sense that I would go on to write a book featuring four strong women. As much as I love reading fiction, since I am a professor, my writing is mainly academic and/or non-fiction and I aim to make research translatable and interesting to all – including mainstream audiences. Currently, I am working on a new book about evangelical Christian women and politics, which I started in 2020 right before the presidential election. No matter where I live or work, exploring the various facets of women’s lives will remain my driving pursuit.
I read this book as a graduate student and found Fader’s ability to make academic research readable and interesting – yes, interesting! – hugely attractive. Ever since I’ve aimed to do the same in my own writing.
This book is a fascinating insight into a community many of us know nothing about, featuring young women’s voices, and relayed by Fader.
Mitzvah Girls is the first book about bringing up Hasidic Jewish girls in North America, providing an in-depth look into a closed community. Ayala Fader examines language, gender, and the body from infancy to adulthood, showing how Hasidic girls in Brooklyn become women responsible for rearing the next generation of nonliberal Jewish believers. To uncover how girls learn the practices of Hasidic Judaism, Fader looks beyond the synagogue to everyday talk in the context of homes, classrooms, and city streets. Hasidic women complicate stereotypes of nonliberal religious women by collapsing distinctions between the religious and the secular. In this innovative…
Reseda, California plays an important part in my novels. I grew up there in a middle-class Jewish family, and we experienced the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s. My parents got divorced, and my brother and I were raised by our working mom until she became paralyzed by a stroke. I found refuge in writing. I wrote The Remainders in 2016 during a tumultuous time when issues of family conflict, homelessness, and the growing cruelty of society came into focus. Still, I believe decency and compassion will prevail. The books I write and enjoy reading seek to find light in the darkest of circumstances.
A girl’s discomfort with puberty is only part of the story. The other part is 11-year-old Margaret growing up in an interfaith family with a Jewish father and Christian mother.
Margaret struggles to find a religious identity. She must contend with her father’s mother who hopes she embraces Judaism and her conservative Christian maternal grandparents who reject their daughter’s interfaith marriage. This powerful coming-of-age story has gotten recent attention from a recent film and challenges from book bans. For me, it’s another example of Judy Blume’s insight, humor, and humanity.
Meet Margaret. She's going through all the same things most teenage girls have to face; fitting in, friendship and first bras.
Life isn't easy for Margaret. She's moved away from her childhood home, she's starting a new school, finding new friends - and she's convinced she's not normal. For a start she hasn't got a clue whether she wants to be Jewish like her father or Christian like her mother. Everyone else seems really sure of who they are. And, worst of all, she's a 'late developer'. She just knows that all her friends…
The world is an amazing, diverse place that needs stories that represent everyone. I identify as gender fluid and am part of my city’s LGBTQIA+ community. For kids, there aren’t enough stories that feature non-straight cis protagonists where that identity isn’t the focus. LGBTQIA+ kids exist. They are normal. Let a gay kid go into space. Let a teenage lesbian solve a mystery. Let a trans girl defeat a dragon. Let an ace teen be a witch. Everybody deserves their adventure.
Hazel Hill thinks she’s the only girl in the 7th grade who likes girls thatway, until Tyler tells her that Ella Quinn told him she likes Hazel.
But Ella Quinn is pretty and popular, and she’s Hazel’s biggest rival in the upcoming speech contest. They talk. Ella confesses she only told Tyler that to stop his sexual harassment. It turns out, Tyler has been harassing a lot of girls.
They tell the school, but the teachers won’t do anything about it, even blaming the girls and punishing them. It is not a coincidence that Tyler’s mom is the superintendent of schools. Determined not to let Tyler get away with it, Hazel comes up with a plan.
Girls in Hazel's school are being harassed by an anonymous person online, someone who seems to know all about their insecurities and dreams. With no one willing to stand up and face the bully, how will Hazel be able to prove her suspicions? Hazel Hill is Going to Win This One confronts bullying, both online and in person, to give children the power to stand up for themselves and speak out against harassment.
As a clinical psychologist, I listen to thoughts all the time. I’m also having my own, constantly. We rely on our thoughts to help us navigate the world. However, our thoughts can also be a source of suffering. At times, they're not such reliable guides or helpers. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a way of thinking about thinking. ACT captured my imagination early in my clinical career. I trained with ACT’s originator, Steven Hayes, in the early 1990’s. I’ve come to believe that being more aware of our own thoughts, and our relationship to them is key to creating positive change and living a life grounded in our values.
This poetic book by a literary scholar looks at the way we think about and experience not only the lives we lead, but those alternative lives that we do not lead.
Our thoughts can lead us to obsessively regret our choices or focus on “the road not taken.” Miller looks at the sense of loss that can accrue as the potential transitions to the actual.
He describes our unled lives as “part of this world as shadows are part of things…”
A captivating book about the emotional and literary power of the lives we might have lived had our chances or choices been different.
We each live one life, formed by paths taken and untaken. Choosing a job, getting married, deciding on a place to live or whether to have children-every decision precludes another. But what if you'd gone the other way? It can be a seductive thought, even a haunting one.
Andrew H. Miller illuminates this theme of modern culture: the allure of the alternate self. From Robert Frost to Sharon Olds, Virginia Woolf to Ian McEwan, Jane Hirshfield to…
Most drunks struggle to accept that they have a disease called “alcoholism” and feel shame, intertwined with fear, having to admit it. I, on the other hand, embraced it. Being alcoholic meant I wasn’t “crazy” after all like Grandma. At 21, I embraced the disease along with 12 Step recovery, thanking my lucky stars that there was something I could do about my chaotic hippied lifestyle. “Don’t pick up the first fix, pill, or drink and you can’t get drunk.” Could the solution be so simple? It is. From the moment I set down the drink and drugs, I knew I had to share this amazing revelation with others and my writing career began.
Full disclosure, I know Bill Hanlon and we exchanged books at one of several speaking engagements together.
I cherish this book and have a signed copy featured in my collection. It is a simple straightforward ingenious way to disrupt destructive patterns in all relationships. And it works! Being in the mental health field, I would make this wonderful book mandatory for all counselors to read, if I had that power.
Full of examples on how to modify micro-behaviors, results could not be more life-changing. I found that I had the power to alter destructive patterns in my life by reacting differently in any given situation! Bill’s book explains how to do it.
"If you do one thing different, read this book! It is filled with practical, creative, effective, down-to-earth solutions to life's challenging problems."-Michele Weiner-Davis, author of Divorce Busting
The 20th anniversary edition of a self-help classic, updated with a new preface: Tapping into widespread popular interest in highly effective, short-term therapeutic approaches to personal problems, author Bill O'Hanlon offers 10 Solution Keys to help you free yourself from "analysis paralysis" and quickly get unstuck from aggravating problems.
Tired of feeling stuck all the time when you're trying to solve a problem or are facing conflict? Do you get easily flustered or…
Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls of Atomic City, the Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods. She has devoted her last three books to the history of Thanksgiving and gratitude, writing separate books for all ages.
This is a sweet picture book for kids that gets them thinking about the concept of gratitude in ways that they can understand.
Through the story of Betsy and her magic stone, they learn, for example, that there are lots of things in life to be grateful for, and sometimes the little happy moments are just as powerful as the big ones. As a picture book, it’s appropriate for children who are not reading on their own yet. Available as a hardcover, paperback, or audiobook.
Do you want to teach your children how to be grateful for the things they already have?
Little Betsy will learn that happiness is made up of simple things in life, both small and big. With the help of the magic stone, she will begin to feel gratitude for her parents, friends, and toys. But what happens when little Betsy forgets to use the magic of her stone? She will realize that the power of gratitude is hidden in her heart.
"Gratitude is my superpower" will teach your little ones to appreciate the warmth of home, time spent playing with…
