Wonder World Book Cafe'

Join 13 year-old Pandita as she adapts to MANY changes while honoring her ma's memory and attempting to right a wrong in her community. Set in the 1980s in California's Silicon Valley, a community is divided over affordable housing. Transcript here

Seventh-grader Mimi loves living on a beautiful island in Florida, but is appalled at all the plastic and styrofoam she finds on the beach. Inspired by the true story of the Wijsen Sisters of Bali (Bye Bye Plastic Bags), Mimi is determined to ban plastic bags in her community, but frustratingly discovers how many people, locally and online, don't support her. Transcript here

✨✨Welcome to Season 5! ✨✨ Written with so much heart, this middle grade novel, Across So Many Seas , spans more than 500 years and follows four girls from generations of Sephardic Jewish families. Incredibly woven together, each girl's story is part of hundreds of years of family history, heartbreak, and so, so much love. Transcript here

YA. Written in verse. Persian American, Omid, speaks Farsi and English and LOVES words, but he can't seem to find the right ones when he needs them, yet. A new found interest in listening to and writing Rap music (with a little help from Shakespeare) makes it possible for Omid to talk about his first crush, communicate with his Iranian grandparents, and share what it's like living in Arizo...

YA. Narrative nonfiction. Unputdownable. There are plenty of WWII and Holocaust stories for teens, though none quite like Impossible Escape. This is the true story of two men who survived an escape from Birkenau concentration camp intent on sharing with the world the atrocities of concentration camps. In doing so, Rudi Vrba and Adolph Wetzler saved 200,000 lives. Transcript here

1948. Historical fiction. Twelve-year old Amil and his family are settling into their new and hopefully safer home in Bombay, India after fleeing their homeland, just after India's Partition. Riots continue. Gandhi is assassinated. Amil is dealing with quite a lot on top of everything else. His relationship with his papa is strained, school is difficult, and he'd love to have a friend. Com...

It seems 13 year-old Ruby has lost or is losing everything she has loved: her Ye-Ye, the beloved neighborhood bakery, her friends, and now her summer freedom. Set in San Francisco's Chinatown, Ruby is navigating a whole lot of change in her young life. Multigenerational love wrapped around these pages. (Transcript unavailable)

1989 Dan’s first year of high school is a few short months away, and he’s about to embark on the biggest “out of his comfort zone” experience of his life, a 3 week study abroad program in Europe. Mix tapes, Kodak cameras, first love...come along with Dan Santat in his graphic novel memoir. This is one for all-ages. Transcript here

YA memoir written in verse. Raw. Honest. Real. A gift to readers. Jiordan is looking toward her first high school year, while trying to understand the crime her dad committed: googling money-laundering, defraud, schemed, and "how to survive prison." Transcript here

Tempers flare. Social media posts fly. Friendships severed. Cleverly crafted , Mascot follows a group of six diverse students through their 8th grade year in a town near Washington D.C. as they along with their community hotly debate a controversial, long-standing tradition. Transcript here

What can ten-year old Amelia, her twenty-one year old chinchilla, Calvin, and a sugar apple tree possibly have in common? Turns out, quite a bit. Join Amelia as she navigates her life: desperate to find Calvin and deal with a friend who’s turned her world topsy-turvy.  Transcript here

What can 12 year-old Josh do after his middle school is stained with freshly painted swastikas and antisemitic messages especially given that he doesn't want to reveal his Jewish identify? The Do More Club is fast-paced, written in verse with not only hate, but courage and kindness. Transcript here

Step into the life of twelve-year old Tuesday Beals whose story is nearly a love letter to Zion National Park, located in Utah, and her beloved sky. Transcript here

Featuring two graphic fictionalized memoirs. Huda, a freshman and new to her high school, is a riot. She will have you laughing out loud while tugging at your heart as she grows up and navigates her place in the world, defining herself as a Muslim Arab American. Transcript here

2020 : A Zelda loving 13 year old boy and his 100 year old great grandmother living in New Jersey during the pandemic 1930’s : A deadly famine in Ukraine, a privileged Communist girl living in Kyiv, and a girl from Brooklyn, New York Masterfully written, these intertwining stories all come together.  Based on a true historical event and the author’s own family.  Transcript here

Cuba, 2018. Soleida, 16, is growing up in a place where art is illegal and sea levels are rising. Her family of artists hides their sculpture garden, but it's discovered during a hurricane which leads to the arrest of her parents leaving Soleida on her own. She ends up in a Costa Rican refugee camp where she meets Dariel, a Californian, who endures all too frequent wildfires. Together they wan...

It's 1996. 13 year-old Sarai is a first generation Puerto Rican who's trying to grow up with her Mami and older sister in Bushwick, a borough in Brooklyn, New York, a  neighborhood riddled with drugs and crime. Sarai grapples with her Puerto Rican identity, hunger, poverty, frequent moves and looming neighborhood gentrification. Yet, Sarai is curious and questions the here and now and her...

Sixth grader Ziggy lives in New Mexico with his dad and sister. When Ziggy was a baby, his mom vanished, a tragic all-too-common occurrence among Native American females. Since nobody is looking for his mom anymore, Ziggy and his friends venture into the desert one night looking for any clue that will lead them to his mom. During this fantastical night, they meet talking animals who have much to t...

🌟Cheers to 60 episodes! 17 year-old Lilah is born to hearing parents who aren't interested in learning sign language, but Lilah wants to improve hers. She can do this by being a summer counselor at Camp Gray Wolf, a place she attended and loved as a child. Not expecting to meet Isaac, romance was the last thing on her mind. Aside from enjoying Isaac’s attention, camp fires, and lake visits, L...

In this middle grade graphic memoir, Mexikid , readers will love Pedro whose family of 11 is leaving their home in Watsonville, California to travel to Jalisco, Mexico in Apa's Winnebago where they'll pick up Abuelito and bring him back to CA. Their 2,000 mile journey is adventurous, hilarious, historic, and heartwarming. Pedro and his siblings are entirely relatable to a wide audience. Tr...

Through 12 year-old Nat's perspective about synchronized swimming and life , Barely Floating offers several jumping-off points for rich conversations: body positivity, dealing with big emotions, activism, acceptance, and challenging societal "norms". Transcript here

Read The Probability of Everything and learn what happened when a family is faced with an asteroid that is on track to collide with the world. You'll meet and adore 11 year-old science and probability loving Kemi, but this book is far more than a book about science and asteroids. Transcript here

Twelve-year old Adnan lives for table tennis. In this sport, it doesn’t matter that he is left handed, color-blind, or even on the small side. He’s good. He’s competitive. He does not like to lose. Come along on a journey where Adnan, his family, and community face a loss far greater than a table tennis match. Transcript here

Sixth graders April and Zee are best friends though more like family. They are inseparable until Zee pursues his dream of being first chair in the Boston Symphony. This means a new school for Zee and gives April an opportunity to act on her drumming dreams. While he and April miss being at the same school, they are handling it until a tragic event occurs, and now April must live without Zee foreve...

Sixth grader, Andy Zhou agrees to bleaching his hair, joining the dance club, befriending a bully, navigating the culture gap with his grandparents who've just arrived from Shanghai, and being a good son and grandson to please everybody. Add in racial microaggressions, intentional and unintentional, and this causes us to feel deeply for Andy. Transcript here