Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

In a heartrending and astonishing novel, Eggers illuminates the history of the civil war in Sudan through the eyes of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee now living in the United States. We follow his life as he's driven from his home as a boy and walks, with thousands of orphans, to Ethiopia, where he finds safety — for a time. Valentino's travels, truly Biblical in scope, bring him in contact with government... (more)

Little Bee

by Chris Cleave

WE DON'T WANT TO TELL YOU TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS BOOK. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you... (more)

Home of the Brave

by K. A. Applegate

A man I helped to settle here taught me a saying from Africa. I’ll bet you would like it: A cow is God with a wet nose. Kek comes from Africa where he lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived. Now she’s missing, and Kek has been sent to a new home. In America, he sees snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like... (more)

Skeletons at the Feast

by Chris Bohjalian

In January 1945, in the waning months of World War II, a small group of people begin the longest journey of their lives: an attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine if necessary, to reach the British and American lines. Among the group is eighteen-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats. There is her lover, Callum Finella, a twenty-year-old Scottish prisoner... (more)

Diamonds in the Shadow

by Caroline B. Cooney

THE FINCH FAMILY did not know that five refugees landed from Africa on the day they went to the airport to welcome the family sponsored by their church. The Finch family only knew about the four refugees they were meeting - Andre, Celestine, Mattu, and Alake - mother, father, teenage son and daughter. Soon Jared realizes that the good guys are not always innocent, and he must make a decision that could change the... (more)

Exodus

by Leon Uris

An American nurse and an Israeli freedom fighter get caught up in the re-birth of Israel.

A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russell

Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author of The Sparrow and Children of God . It is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum is learning Italian with a suitcase in her hand. She and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to be safe at last,... (more)

Boy Overboard

by Morris Gleitzman

Other Hand

by Cleave Chris

We don't want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterwards that is most important. Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When... (more)

The Pianist

The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945

by Wladyslaw Szpilman

The true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist who survives the German invasion of Poland, the Warsaw ghetto and the ultimate destruction of the city.

The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky

The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky

by Mir Tamim Ansary, Farah Ahmedi

"I was late to school, and that's all I could think about. I started across the field. And then suddenly a fire flashed in my face and the earth seemed to move beneath my feet. I remember a shower of soil and then nothing. I woke up on the ground, surrounded by a crowd, men and boys...no women. They were all staring down at me with huge eyes. Their lips were moving, but I could hear no voices. All I heard was a... (more)

The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community

The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community

by Mary Pipher

Over the past decade, Mary Pipher has been a great source of wisdom, helping us to better understand our family members. Now she connects us with the newest members of the American family--refugees. In cities all over the country, refugees arrive daily. Lost Boys from Sudan, survivors from Kosovo, families fleeing Afghanistan and Vietnam: they come with nothing but the desire to experience the American dream.... (more)

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an... (more)

Once

by Morris Gleitzman

Tasting the Sky A Palestinian Childhood

by Ibtisam Barakat

Winner, Arab American National Museum Book Award for Children's/YA Literature, among other awards and honors. “When a war ends it does not go away,” my mother says.“It hides inside us . . . Just forget!” But I do not want to do what Mother says . . . I want to remember. In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it... (more)

Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

by Margarita Engle

Daniel has escaped Nazi Germany with nothing but a desperate dream that he might one day find his parents again. But that golden land called New York has turned away his ship full of refugees, and Daniel finds himself in Cuba. As the tropical island begins to work its magic on him, the young refugee befriends a local girl with some painful secrets of her own. Yet even in Cuba, the Nazi darkness is never far away... (more)

Under the Persimmon Tree

by Suzanne Fisher Staples

Intertwined portraits of courage and hope in Afghanistan and Pakistan Najmah, a young Afghan girl whose name means “star,” suddenly finds herself alone when her father and older brother are conscripted by the Taliban and her mother and newborn brother are killed in an air raid. An American woman, Elaine, whose Islamic name is Nusrat, is also on her own. She waits out the war in Peshawar, Pakistan, teaching... (more)

Tangled Threads: A Hmong Girl's Story

by Pegi Deitz Shea

For the Hmong people living in overcrowded refugee camps in Thailand, America is a dream: the land of peace and plenty. In 1995, ten years after their arrival at the camp, thirteen-year-old Mai Yang and her grandmother are about to experience that dream. In America, they will be reunited with their only remaining relatives, Mai"s uncle and his family. They will discover the privileges of their new life: medical... (more)

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (P.S.)

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (P.S.)

by Loung Ung

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the... (more)

Walk in My Shoes

by Alwyn Evans

We walked off the ferry along the wide, sloping gangplank, and when my feet hit the firm wooden planks of the jetty, I staggered, legs suddenly feeling like jelly. I took Mum's hand, whispering, 'Are we really safe here?' After a perilous and terrifying journey from war-torn Afghanistan, Gulnessa and her family find themselves in Australia, a place they know nothing about. They are exhausted and traumatised, but... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: refugees

by Dave Eggers

by Chris Cleave

by K. A. Applegate

by Chris Bohjalian

by Caroline B. Cooney

by Leon Uris

by Mary Doria Russell

by Morris Gleitzman

by Cleave Chris

The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945

by Wladyslaw Szpilman

by Mir Tamim Ansary, Farah Ahmedi

by Mary Pipher

by Khaled Hosseini

by Morris Gleitzman

by Ibtisam Barakat

by Margarita Engle

by Suzanne Fisher Staples

by Pegi Deitz Shea

by Loung Ung

by Alwyn Evans