Here are 100 books that The Space Between fans have personally recommended if you like
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As far as I can remember, I have been obsessed with death! Maybe it’s because my mom, who died four years ago at the age of 86, was a Holocaust survivor. Anyway, what I’ve noticed is that all kids' stories deal with death. Think, for instance, of how Harry Potter is an orphan. Or how so many characters in fairy tales have a parent who is dead. I think dealing with death – talking about it openly --- helps us live our lives in a more meaningful way. For my own novel, Planet Grief, I did a ton of researcher and befriended an amazing grief counselor named Dawn Cruchet. You can look her up on the web and learn about her too. Dawn taught me that there is no one, correct way to grieve, that grief is a life-changing journey.
This story takes place on an exotic trek in Thailand. The setting is amazing. But what is even more amazing is the stuff going on inside the sixteen-year-old narrator Valentine’s head! She is trying to cope after the tragic, senseless death of her boyfriend. There is a lot that is sad and serious in this story, but it’s also life-affirming and beautifully written.
After the death of her boyfriend, sixteen-year old Valentine stops going to school, quits seeing her friends and, finally, won’t leave her bed. Desperate for her daughter to recover, Valentine’s mother takes her on a trek in Thailand. In the mountains north of Chiang Mai, Valentine finds a world she didn’t know existed, where houses are on stilts and elephants still roam wild. She learns about the Burmese civil war and the relentless violence against the Karen and Rohingya peoples. Then she meets Lin, a mysterious young elephant keeper tormented by his hidden past, and an orphaned elephant calf, pursued…
As far as I can remember, I have been obsessed with death! Maybe it’s because my mom, who died four years ago at the age of 86, was a Holocaust survivor. Anyway, what I’ve noticed is that all kids' stories deal with death. Think, for instance, of how Harry Potter is an orphan. Or how so many characters in fairy tales have a parent who is dead. I think dealing with death – talking about it openly --- helps us live our lives in a more meaningful way. For my own novel, Planet Grief, I did a ton of researcher and befriended an amazing grief counselor named Dawn Cruchet. You can look her up on the web and learn about her too. Dawn taught me that there is no one, correct way to grieve, that grief is a life-changing journey.
One of my favourite books of all time! Not only because the author is Dutch (like me!!). The narrator Kiki is a worrier. She worries most of all about her dad who is a doctor who works in dangerous war zones. This book manages to be funny and sad and beautiful at the same time. Read it!
'It's about something called the odds,' said my mother. 'For instance, the odds that you'll become a millionaire are very, very small. The odds that you'll find a coin in the street are a lot bigger. And it's the same thing with fathers. The odds of having a father are big, and the odds of not having a father are small. So you don't have to worry too much about not having a father."Can you make the odds of something smaller?' I asked. 'Or bigger?' 'Yes,' my mother said. 'Sometimes.'Kiki's father, a doctor, is always putting himself in danger by…
I think about the positive identity development of Native youth all the time and not just because I am an educator and author. I love my Ojibwe language and culture, but I want to turn Native fiction on its head. We have so many stories about trauma and tragedy with characters who lament the culture that they were always denied. I want to show how vibrant and alive our culture still is. I want gripping stories where none of the Native characters are drug addicts, rapists, abused, or abusing others. I want to demonstrate the magnificence of our elders, the humor of our people, and the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Cherie Dimaline's book really spoke to me because, in addition to great story-telling, it sets Native people in a post-apocalyptic setting.
As Native people, we are so often portrayed as ancient rather than modern. So this work connected the ancient and the modern in a novel way. With relatable characters searching for family and community, it was relatable and real even in the world the book describes.
Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden-but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.
As far as I can remember, I have been obsessed with death! Maybe it’s because my mom, who died four years ago at the age of 86, was a Holocaust survivor. Anyway, what I’ve noticed is that all kids' stories deal with death. Think, for instance, of how Harry Potter is an orphan. Or how so many characters in fairy tales have a parent who is dead. I think dealing with death – talking about it openly --- helps us live our lives in a more meaningful way. For my own novel, Planet Grief, I did a ton of researcher and befriended an amazing grief counselor named Dawn Cruchet. You can look her up on the web and learn about her too. Dawn taught me that there is no one, correct way to grieve, that grief is a life-changing journey.
Because I love how this book combines crazy humour and deep feeling. Because I am friends with the author I know that this book comes from somewhere deeply personal in his life – Silberberg’s mom died when he was a kid. This book needs to be read by anyone coping with the death of a loved one. Like all great books for kids, it’s for adults too!
1
author picked
Milo
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
9,
10,
11, and
12.
What is this book about?
Loveable thirteen-year-old geek Milo Cruikshank finds reasons for frustration at every turn, from the annoying habits of his neighbors to his futile efforts to get Summer Goodman to realize his existence. The truth is, ever since Milo’s mother died, nothing has gone right. Now instead of the kitchen being full of music, his whole house has been filled with Fog. Nothing’s the same. Not his Dad. Not his sister. And definitely not him. Milo achieves a rare and easy balance of poignancy and awkward, natural humor, making it deeply accessible—this is the kind of book that can change lives.
The first time I visited a vineyard was as a child with my mother and grandparents. Driving to San Francisco from Oregon, we stopped to tour a Sonoma vineyard and winery there. Later, as a young adult touring Western Europe, I became intrigued by the vineyards there. Something about the beauty of gently rolling slopes of green vines tugged on me. And I found the science and art of winemaking fascinating. Even the history of wine-making is noteworthy. And I love that Jesus’ first miracle was transforming ordinary water into extraordinary wine. So using the setting of a vineyard for my novel just felt right. And it was a fun adventure!
This is a beautiful story set in Post WW 2 era about a young woman on her way home from college. She is ‘in trouble’ and in need of a good friend. Her family of Spanish/Mexican heritage owns a vineyard in California and is very traditional. She meets up with a young soldier, also on his way home. He offers to help her... and the magic, as well as the trouble, begins. This is a lovely romantic story... a celebration of fate and true love.
This is a magical romance about a soldier returning from war in 1945 to a broken marriage, who meets a woman sobbing by the side of the road. She is pregnant, her boyfriend has left her and she doesn't know how she is going to face her parents and family. He accompanies her and becomes involved.
I grew up in Mexico listening to my father´s stories about the Mexican revolution. His storytelling abilities drew me in as he described his childhood memories and those of his father, who lived through the revolution. That's why I became a historian writing about the Mexican Revolution with a preference for biographies. As the Latin Americanist historian at St. John's University in New York City, I've written two books: Maximino Avila Camacho and the One Party State, Pancho Villa: A Biography, and edited A Brief History of Mexico by Lynn V. Foster. I hope you enjoy the list of books on significant personalities that shaped the first major social revolution of the twentieth century.
This book is one of my all-time favorites. The Death of Artemio Cruz is a historical novel by one of the most acclaimed literary figures of the Spanish language, Carlos Fuentes. It is a captivating narrative of intertwined memories experienced by Cruz while on his deathbed; this novel is a harsh condemnation of the post-revolutionary political class. It shows the path of idealist revolutionaries becoming corrupt politicians once in power. While a work of fiction, the book describes real corrupt and abusive attitudes and straight-out crimes committed by numerous revolutionary leaders turned politicians. There were many Artemio Cruz among the revolution leaders, which helps explain why the revolution failed to achieve real social change.
As the novel opens, Artemio Cruz, the all-powerful newspaper magnate and land baron, lies confined to his bed and, in dreamlike flashes, recalls the pivotal episodes of his life. Carlos Fuentes manipulates the ensuing kaleidoscope of images with dazzling inventiveness, layering memory upon memory, from Cruz's heroic campaigns during the Mexican Revolution, through his relentless climb from poverty to wealth, to his uneasy death. Perhaps Fuentes's masterpiece, The Death of Artemio Cruz is a haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico.
Growing up in a sheltered environment on Long Island, NY, I had little sense of a larger world, except for seeing images of the Vietnam War. Going to college in the early 70s and becoming an anthropology major, the world began to open up, yet I hadn't experienced life outside the U.S. until my mid-20s as a graduate student living in Mexico to do dissertation research. That experience and travels to Guatemala, Peru, Cuba, and Costa Rica helped me to see how diverse Latin America is, and how real poverty and suffering are as well. Coming into my own as a historian, teacher, and writer, my fascination with women’s voices, experiences, and activism only grew.
Like Silverblatt’s book on native women in prehispanic and colonial Peru, this edited volume on early Mexico was and remains a gamer changer in bringing to light women’s work, including ways women accumulated and distributed wealth, their varieties of social and political identities they held, and their power and influence.
With chapters by experts in Aztec/Nahua women’s, social, and cultural history, the chapters represent a variety of approaches and methodologies to women’s and gender history even in areas where the documentation on women is sparser than in central Mesoamerica, especially for northern Mexico and Maya women further south.
This volume counters the stereotype that Indian women are without history. Neither silent nor invisible, women of early Mexico were active participants in society and critically influenced the direction history would take. This collection of essays by leading scholars in Mexican ethnohistory, edited by Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, examines the life experiences of Indian women in preconquest and colonial Mexico.
I am fascinated by the places where cultures intersect and the means by which they do so. I am an American lucky to live in gorgeous San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and previously in Hirakata, Japan; Shanghai, China; Suva, Fiji; and Oxford, England. Each move entailed a challenging but rewarding effort to absorb a new set of unwritten societal rules. A great way to grow is to immerse yourself in the unknown and have things you took for granted about how the world works suddenly come into question. Another is to learn from those who have gone before us, so I am delighted to share these wonderful books with you.
I read The Old Gringo in college before I had any inkling that I would one day be a not-too-old gringa making her home in San Miguel de Allende.
Fuentes imagines meaningful final days for Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist who in 1913 headed off into Mexico at the age of 71, never to be heard from again. I love this book for the way Fuentes captures and probes profound differences and lingering mistrust between our cultures as well as the universal human struggles for meaning, opportunity, security, and belonging.
While Fuentes’ old gringo, we are told, came to die a worthy soldier’s death in Mexico, the gringos of my generation are here to live fully and well.
One of Carlos Fuentes's greatest works, The Old Gringo tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, and journalist, and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa's soldiers, particularly his encounter with General Tomas Arroyo. In the end, the incompatibility of the two countries (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both men, in a novel that is, most of all, about the tragic history of two cultures in conflict.
I have always had an interest in reading factual information about other people’s lives. I am a realist, and prefer reading non-fiction that is true. I am especially interested in reading inspirational stories from people that have overcome adversity, illness, or discrimination.
We all need a laugh from time to time, and this book is pleasant light-hearted reading. ‘Ladies of a certain age’ look back with amusement and sometimes embarrassment at their younger selves. All women of a certain age can identify with this group of authors and the silly things we did during our youth way back when there was no internet or mobile phones and we had to actually talk to people face to face!
Remember ironing your hair? Rolling it in soda cans to straighten it? Lacquering it with enough spray that it could ward off bullets? Ever slather on cement-colored lipstick so heavy, you looked like a zombie princess? Remember hot pants and platform heels? The danger of patent-leather shoes? Were you a secretary, nurse, or teacher, but only, as our mothers urged us, until you found “Mr. Right.” In her new book, LAUGH OUT LOUD: 40 WOMEN HUMORISTS CELEBRATE THEN AND NOW…BEFORE WE FORGET, Allia Zobel Nolan and 40 funny ladies from the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop chronicle these blips in time…
If five gentlemen from Mexico, a colored/negro woman from Eatonville, Florida, a former President who happened to be white, with historical privilege, from Plains, Georgia, and two Professors of History can use their knowledge, training, God’s gifts to help us to understand history better, why shouldn't I also be passionate and excited to write. Telling stories, writing, contributing, and unearthing lies and truths so that a child who looks like me – or who does not look like me – is provided a better world. Let me hokey about this – maybe the word is dorky – whatever, the privilege is mine.
Texas schools do an incredible job of acculturating their students in Texas history. The school system starts by telling the story of true Texans. Unfortunately, some of those tales were what we called “stories.”
In college, I took a course called The History of Mexico. The course book used by Professor Macias (if I remember his name correctly) was a small book, less than 200 pages, called The Compact History of Mexico. What a wonderful course and wonderful book.
I have not looked at the book in years, even though I ordered a copy when writing this. I felt like a child reading the book, being told a different story than I had been told over the years, providing to me – a black student – the why and how history and both sides of a story are so important. Always feeling left out of the discussion, hearing a distorted…
Esta obra contiene la dosis mínima de conocimiento sobre la historia de nuestro país. Destinada a todos cuantos quieran una historia verdadera, interesante y escrita en un lenguaje sencillo y claro.
