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World on the Move: 250,000 Years of Human Migration May 26, 2025 - June 27, 2025 |
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They Call Me Güero: a Border Kid's Poems
by David Bowles
Twelve-year-old Güero, a red-headed, freckled Mexican American border kid, discovers the joy of writing poetry, thanks to his seventh grade English teacher.
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Do I Belong Here?
by René Colato Laínez
Award-winning children's book author René Colato Laínez teams up again with illustrator Fabricio Vanden Broeck to explore the experiences of newcomers in schools and affirm that yes, they do belong. With beautiful acrylic-on-wood illustrations depicting children at school, this bilingual kids' book by a Salvadoran immigrant tells an important story that will resonate with all kids who want nothing more than to belong.
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What Is a Refugee?
by Elise Gravel
Designed to help introduce children to a sensitive world issue, an accessible picture book combines bold, graphic artwork with comprehensive text explaining who refugees are, why they had to leave their homes and why they are not always welcomed elsewhere.
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Inside Out & Back Again
by Thanhha Lai
Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama.
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Dreamers
by Yuyi Morales
An illustrated picture book autobiography in which award-winning author Yuyi Morales tells her own immigration story.
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We Are a Garden: a Story of How Diversity Took Root in America
by Lisa Westberg Peters
A timely story about the role of migrants in the history of North America depicts a girl from a clan during the frozen era of the mammoths whose home is gradually transformed over time by gold-hunters, slavers and immigrants seeking a new home.
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A Different Pond
by Bao Phi
As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.
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Somewhere for Little Bear
by Britta Teckentrup
Escaping the blazing forest, Little Bear leaves behind his cozy cave, his friends and the comforts he knows as he journeys into the unknown where, in the most unfamiliar of places, he discovers the true meaning of home with the help and kindness of new animal friends.
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The Distance Between Us
by Reyna Grande
Adapted for younger audiences, the National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated memoir captures the struggles of a young Mexican girl who lives with a stern grandparent while waiting for her parents to establish lives as illegal immigrants in the United States before she embarks on the dangerous crossing herself.
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Out of Hiding: a Holocaust Survivor's Journey to America
by Ruth Gruener
Ruth Gruener was a hidden child during the Holocaust. At the end of the war, she and her parents were overjoyed to be free. But their struggles as displaced people had just begun. The family's perseverance is a classic story of the American dream, but also illustrates the difficulties that millions of immigrants face in the aftermath of trauma. This is a gripping and human account of a survivor's journey forward with timely connections to refugee and immigrant experiences worldwide today.
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In the Spirit of a Dream: Thirteen Stories of American Immigrants of Color
by Aida Salazar
In the spirit of a dream, many immigrants of color set out across continents, oceans, and borders, travelling to the United States in pursuit of opportunity. Celebratory, triumphant, and inspiring, In the Spirit of a Dream is a tribute to thirteen immigrant stories, from world-famous trailblazers to local heroes.
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Dear America: the Story of an Undocumented Citizen
by Jose Antonio Vargas
A young readers' adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's adult memoir traces his secret experiences as an undocumented immigrant while working with some of America's most prestigious news organizations.
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Teen Fiction and Graphic Novels
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Come On In: 15 Stories about Immigration and Finding Home
by Adi Alsaid
This exceptional and powerful anthology explores the joys, heartbreaks and triumphs of immigration, with stories by critically acclaimed and bestselling YA authors who are shaped by the journeys they and their families have taken from home, and to find home.
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Through Fences
by Frederick Luis Aldama
Short comics about immigration and life on the US–Mexico border convey a different perspective on the perils of living on the border.
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Brighter than the Sun
by Daniel Aleman
Leaving Tijuana, Mexico, behind to find a part-time job in San Diego to help her dad, 16-year-old Sol, with her life divided by an international border, grapples with loneliness and the part of her that may never want to return home.
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Manuelito: a Graphic Novel
by Elisa Amado
To avoid being forced into the drug gang that has taken control of his Guatemalan village, thirteen-year-old Manuelito sets out on a hazardous journey to America in search of asylum.
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Love in English
by Maria E. Andreu
Feeling blocked after moving from Argentina to New Jersey, a 16-year-old poet finds herself torn between a cute American boy in her math class and a Greek student who understands the struggles she is facing in an ESL class.
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Don't Ask Me Where I'm From
by Jennifer De Leon
Reinventing herself at a privileged white suburban high school to get by in the face of escalating racial tensions, a first-generation American-Latinx teen is forced to take a stand when she discovers that her absent father cannot legally return home.
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Someday We Will Fly
by Rachel DeWoskin
Fleeing 1940 Poland when her mother disappears, the 15-year-old daughter of circus performers struggles to care for a dangerously malnourished sibling in Shanghai, one of the few places that accepts Jewish refugees without visas, before the war arrives at the hands of the Japanese.
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The Freezies
by Farrukh Dhondy
A Syrian refugee arrives in a small village in western England. Three 12 year-olds from the village strike up a friendship and work to help him get refugee status.
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Lobizona
by Romina Garber
When her mother is arrested by ICE, sixteen-year-old Argentinian Manu--who thinks she is hiding in a Miami apartment because she is an undocumented immigrant--discovers that her entire existence is illegal.
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Refugee
by Alan Gratz
Although separated by continents and decades, Josef, a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany; Isabel, a Cuban girl trying to escape the riots and unrest plaguing her country in 1994; and Mahmoud, a Syrian boy in 2015 whose homeland is torn apart by violence and destruction, embark on harrowing journeys in search of refuge, discovering shocking connections that tie their stories together.
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Butterfly Yellow by Thanhha LaiA Vietnam War refugee in Texas partners with a rodeo aspirant to track down the younger brother she was forced to leave behind before discovering that he no longer remembers her. By the award-winning author of Inside Out & Back Again.
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When the Angels Left the Old Country
by Sacha Lamb
When a young emigrant from their tiny village goes missing while heading to America, angel Uriel and demon Little Ash set off to find her and encounter many humans in need of their help as they face obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they've left behind.
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Sanctuary
by Paola Mendoza
In 2032, when sixteen-year-old Vali's mother is detained by the Deportation Forces, Vali must flee Vermont with her little brother, Ernie, hoping to reach their Tía Luna in the sanctuary state of California.
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Bridge Across the Sky
by Freeman Ng
In 1924 at the Angel Island Immigration Station, teen Chinese immigrant Soo Tai Go is awakened to the political realities of his new home as he waits to find out if he and his family will be allowed into the country
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Never Look Back
by Lilliam Rivera
In an Own Voices retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a girl moves to the Bronx after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina and bonds with a talented bachata singer before their relationship is tested by the demons of the past.
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We Are Not from Here
by Jenny Torres Sanchez
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. And when those threats become all too real, the trio knows they have no choice but to run: from their country, from their families, from their beloved home. Crossing from Guatemala through Mexico, they follow the route of La Bestia, the perilous train system that might deliver them to a better life -- if they are lucky enough to survive the journey.
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The Grief Keeper
by Alexandra Villasante
Wanting to enjoy an amazing life in America like her favorite television characters, an undocumented 17-year-old bargains for her asylum by becoming a grief keeper to save someone else's life.
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Game Seven
by Paul Volponi
Idolizing the father who fled Cuba to pitch professionally in America, 16-year-old Julio dreams of playing for Cuba's national team only to have his prospects overshadowed by his father's defection. By the author of The Final Four.
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Teen Non-Fiction and Biographies
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The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees
by Don Brown
The Unwanted presents a graphic account of the events of Syrian refugees' attempt to escape the horrors of their country's civil war in search of a better tomorrow.
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A Hope More Powerful than the Sea: One Teen Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival
by Melissa Fleming
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea tells the story of Doaa Al-Zamel, a Syrian girl whose life was upended in 2011 by her country’s brutal civil war. She and her family escape to Egypt, but life soon quickly becomes dangerous for Syrians in that country. Doaa and her fiancé decide to flee to Europe to seek safety and an education, but four days after setting sail on a smuggler’s dilapidated fishing vessel along with five hundred other refugees, their boat is struck and begins to sink.
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Next Round: a Young Athlete's Journey to Gold
by John Spray
Tells the story of how a young Chechen refugee landed in Toronto and, though originally interested in soccer, became Canada's premier boxer and gold medal winner at the 2015 Pan Am Games.
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They Called Us Enemy
by George Takei
The iconic actor and activist presents a graphic memoir detailing his experiences as a child prisoner in the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, reflecting on the hard choices his family made in the face of legalized racism.
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The Other Side: Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border
by Juan Pablo Villalobos
These timely accounts of courage, sacrifice, and survival--including two fourteen-year-old girls forming a tenuous friendship as they wait in a frigid holding cell, a boy in Chicago beginning to craft his future while piecing together his past in El Salvador, and cousins learning to lift each other up through angry waters--offer a rare and invaluable window into the U.S.-Central American refugee crisis. In turns optimistic and heartbreaking, The Other Side balances the boundless hope at the center of immigration with the weight of its risks and repercussions.
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Adult Fiction and Graphic Novels
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Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives. By the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
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The Wind Knows My Name
by Isabel Allende
Traces the ripple effects of war and immigration on two children—5-year-old Samuel, whose mother puts him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England in 1938, and 7-year-old Anita, who boards another train eight decades later to the U.S., where she's separated from her mother.
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Carnegie's Maid
by Marie Benedict
An impoverished Irish immigrant in the industrial 1860s takes a job as a lady's maid in the home of prominent businessman Andrew Carnegie, with whom she falls in love before going missing, triggering Carnegie's search for answers and the establishment of his enduring legacy. By the author of The Other Einstein.
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We Need New Names
by NoViolet Bulawayo
Ten-year-old Zimbabwe native, Darling, escapes the closed schools and paramilitary police control of her homeland in search of opportunity and freedom with an aunt in America.
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Where We Come From
by Oscar Cásares
Moving to his godmother's volatile Texas border town after his mother's sudden death, a 12-year-old Mexican-American boy discovers a young illegal immigrant taking shelter in his godmother's home before their shared desire for independence puts all of them at risk.
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Make Your Home Among Strangers
by Jennine Capó Crucet
Upsetting her family by attending an elite college far from home, Cuban-American Lizet struggles with identity issues and her father's abandonment before meeting a young boy whose mother's death enmeshes Lizet's family in Florida's heated immigration debates.
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Dominicana
by Angie Cruz
The award-winning author of Soledad draws on her mother's story in a tale set in a turbulent 1960s Dominican Republic, where a young teen agrees to marry a man twice her age to help her family's immigration to America.
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What Strange Paradise
by Omar El Akkad
Looking at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child, this dramatic story follows Vänna who comes to the rescue of a 9-year-old Syrian boy who has washed up on the shores of her small island and is determined to do whatever it takes to save him.
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A Replacement Life
by Boris Fishman
Determined to make his name as a writer, Slava Gelman, an immigrant living in Brooklyn, New York, forges Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews until he, intoxicated by his inventions, risks exposure and commits an irrevocable act that finally grants him a sense of home in America.
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Gun Island
by Amitav Ghosh
A rare books dealer unexpectedly embarks on a journey of discovery through nations and cultures where the people he meets impart insights into the Bengali legends of his childhood. By the best-selling author of the Ibis trilogy.
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The Leavers
by Lisa Ko
An award-winning debut novel follows the experiences of a Chinese youth who, when his undocumented worker mother fails to return home, is adopted by a family that attempts to make him over as an American teen while he struggles to reconcile his new life with memories of the family he left behind.
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Lost Children Archive
by Valeria Luiselli
The award-winning author of Tell Me How It Ends traces a profoundly human family summer road trip across America that is shaped by historical and modern displacement tragedies as well as a growing rift between the two parents.
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Hotline
by Dimitri Nasrallah
A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman's struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration. It's 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center as a hotline operator. All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she's Mona, and she's quite good at listening. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office Muna is privy to her clients' deepest secrets.
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The Refugees
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer presents a new collection of stories, written over a 20-year period, which explores questions of home, family, immigration, the American experience and the relationships and desires for self-fulfillment that define our lives.
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LaGuardia: a Very Modern Story of Immigration
by Nnedi Okorafor
In an alternate world where aliens have integrated with society, pregnant Nigerian-American doctor Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka has just smuggled an illegal alien plant named Letme Live through LaGuardia International and Interstellar Airport... and that's not the only thing she's hiding. She and Letme become part of a community of human and alien immigrants; but as their crusade for equality continues and the birth of her child nears, Future -- and her entire world -- begins to change.
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There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven
by Ruben Reyes
A debut story collection about Central American identity spans past, present and future worlds to reveal what happens when your life is no longer your own.
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Sweetness in the Skin
by Ishi Robinson
To free herself from her dysfunctional family in Kingston, Jamaica, and join her beloved aunt in Paris, 13-year-old Pumkin Patterson turns her passion for baking into a way to raise money for her French exam, but when word gets out, she stands to lose everything she's worked so hard for.
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Lucky Boy
by Shanthi Sekaran
A wrenching emotional battle ensues between an undocumented Mexican single mother and an Indian-American chef who cannot have children when the latter is placed in the care of the former's son during an immigration detention. By the author of The Prayer Room.
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My Cat Yugoslavia
by Pajtim Statovci
A love story set in two countries in two radically different times follows the experiences of a Yugoslavian bride and her gay outcast son in present-day Finland, where a pet boa constrictor and a loquacious cat compel a journey of healing and cultural understanding.
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The Refugee Ocean
by Pauls Toutonghi
A former piano prodigy who lost his hand in the war, Naim Rahil, a teenage Syrian refugee, struggles to thrive in America where he finds his life inextricably linked—over time and distance—to another refugee by the perils of history and a single haunting piece of music.
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The Next Ship Home
by Heather Webb
On Ellis Island in 1902, linguist Alma, who works at the immigration processing center, meets Francesca, an immigrant from Italy, and together, after discovering that corruption runs rampant in this refuge, they fight to claim the American dreams they were promised.
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Snow Hunters
by Paul Yoon
Though he is a stranger in a strange land, a North Korean war refugee, seeking a new life in a port town on the coast of Brazil, longs to connect with four people who slip in and out of his life, but must confront his traumatic past so he might let go and move on.
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Adult Non-Fiction and Biographies
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The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives edited by Viet Thanh NguyenPublished in support of the International Rescue Committee and edited by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, a collection of searing personal essays by prominent international refugees shares candid reflections on the Trump administration's 2017 executive order to limit or ban Muslim refugees from America.
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The Best We Could Do: an Illustrated Memoir
by Thi Bui
The author describes her experiences as a young Vietnamese immigrant, highlighting her family's move from their war-torn home to the United States in graphic novel format.
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Out of Many, One : Portraits of America's Immigrants
by George W. Bush
An evocative collection of 50 full-color oil portraits by the former 43rd President honors the immigration experiences of men and women from all walks of life, from a Dallas-based Mexican CEO to a North Korean human rights advocate.
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Deported Americans: Life After Deportation to Mexico
by Beth C. Caldwell
Offers a critical look at the consequences of U.S. deportation policies through the experiences of Dreamers and their families who have been deported to Mexico in recent years, and proposes necessary legislative and judicial reforms
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The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border
by Francisco Cantú
An award-winning writer and former agent for the U.S. Border Patrol describes his upbringing as the son of a park ranger and grandson of a Mexican immigrant, who, upon joining the Border Patrol, encountered the violence and political rhetoric that overshadows life for both migrants and the police.
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The Undocumented Americans
by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
An Ivy League-educated DACA beneficiary reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans, from the volunteers recruited for the 9/11 Ground Zero cleanup to the homeopathy botanicas of Miami that provide limited health care to non-citizens.
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A beginner's guide to America : for the immigrant and the curious
by Ru'ya Hakkakiyan
A glimpse into the experiences new American immigrants face, with practical information and advice that reveals what those who settle here love about the country and what they miss about their homes, from an author who went through it herself. Illustrations.
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Children of the Land
by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
An award-winning poet chronicles his experiences of growing up undocumented in the United States, describing how his family and his attempt to establish an adult life were heartbreakingly complicated by racist policies.
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Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown
by Lauren Hilgers
A deeply reported analysis of the Chinese immigrant community in the United States offers revisionist insights into how their experiences in China and America have reflected and transformed the American dream.
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My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: a Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines
by Efrén C. Olivares
Sharing gripping family separation stories alongside his own, a human rights lawyer gives voice to immigrants who have been punished and silenced for seeking safety and opportunity, discussing what nationhood means in America and challenging us to question our own empathy and compassion.
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The Next Great Migration: the Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
by Sonia Shah
Reveals how the refugee crises and unusual animal migrations of today's world can be linked to historical migrations in earlier eras, explaining that migration should be recognized as an ancient and lifesaving biological response to environmental change.
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Family Papers: a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century
by Sarah Abrevaya Stein
An award-winning historian uses the letters and correspondence of one Sephardic family to tell the story of their journey from Salonica, Greece, through their migration across the continents and how they were almost eradicated by the Holocaust.
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Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
by Jose Antonio Vargas
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, filmmaker and immigration-rights activist presents a debut memoir about how he unknowingly entered the United States with false documents as a child.
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The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration
by Isabel Wilkerson
In an epic history covering the period from the end of World War I through the 1970s, a Pulitzer Prize winner chronicles the decades-long migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West through the stories of three individuals and their families.
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