Class Set Books

Class/Group Set Books

Below is a table containing the books available for class/group use. I recommend that if you wish to use any of these sets for your classes that you check all titles available out even if you do not think you will need them all. That way the sets do not get mixed around, resulting in individual copies lost or missing (which seems to have happened in the past).

Please understand that when you check them out in your name, you will be responsible for returning them in a reasonable amount of time so that other teachers may use them in their classes. If you would prefer to have them checked out to individual students, it would be best to arrange to bring your class to the library to facilitate this.

Please e-mail me with any questions.

Call #	Book Title	Author Last Name	Regional Focus	# in Catalog	Summary
020.92 Sta	Alia's Mission: saving the books of Iraq	Stamaty	Middle East	7
741.5 Sat	Persepolis	Satrapi	Middle East	7
921 FUL	Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight	Fuller		10	A journey through a white African girl's childhood. Fuller was conceived and bred on African soil during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979), a world where children over five "learn[ed] how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill." With a subtle sensitivity to racial issues, Fuller describes her parents' racism and the wartime relationships between blacks and whites through a child's watchful eyes.
921 JAI	Red Scarf Girl	Jiang	Asia/China	7
921 SAT	Persepolis	Satrapi	Middle East/Iran	7
940.54 HER	Hiroshima	Hersey	Asia/Japan	22	Describes the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima on six survivors of the atomic blast. "A new edition with a final chapter written forty years after the explosion."
947.7 FIL	Zlata’s Diary	Filipovic	Eastern Europe	7	A diary begun by an eleven-year old girl in Sarajevo in 1991 before the start of the civil war in Bosnia and Hercegovina; the diary has entries through October 1993.
951 CHE	China’s Son	Chen	Asia/China	20	Born in 1962 in southern China, when Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution was in full swing, and the descendents of landlords, who were despised, were routinely stripped of their wealth, beaten, humiliated, and sent off to labor camps, Da Chen, the grandson of a landlord, lives several parallel lives: he excels in school but then gives up studying in the face of unbearable pressure and harassment from teachers, students, and administrators. He is a self-taught musician but also a member of a gang of toughs.
955 Naf	Reading Lolita in Tehran	Nafisi	Middle East	5
959.6 RIF	We Just Want to Live Here	Rifa’i	Middle East	6
959.6 UNG	First They Killed My Father	Ung	Asia	8
959.7 HUY	The Land I Lost	Huynh	Asia	7	Huynh describes his life in a village on a riverbank, with a jungle and mountains nearby. The book is divided up into several short vignettes that describe the lives of the people and animals of this world.
967.57 GOU	We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families	Gourevitch	Africa	7
967.62 LEK	Facing the Lion	Lekuton	Africa	17	A member of the Masai people describes his life as he grew up in a northern Kenya village, travelled to America to attend college, and became an elementary school teacher in Virginia.
968 MAT	Kaffir Boy: the True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa	Mathabane	Africa	7
994 PIL	Rabbit-proof Fence	Pilkington		7
F ABE	Go and Come Back	Abelove	South America	10	Alicia, a young tribeswoman living in a Amazonian village in the Andes, tells about the two American women anthropologists who arrive to study the way of life of her people.
F ACH	Things Fall Apart	Achebe	Africa	26	Achebe sketches Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism, in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy.
F ADI	Purple Hibiscus	Adichie	Africa	26
F ALL	Of Love and Shadows	Allende	South America	9
F ALL	Portrait in Sepia	Allende	South America	6	Portrait in Sepia is both an historical novel set at the end of the nineteenth century in Chile and a family saga peopled by characters from Daughter of Fortune and The House of the Spirits, two of Allende's most celebrated novels.
F ALL	The house of the spirits	Allende	South America	8
F ASH	Little Soldier	Ashley	Africa	7	Taken from Africa to a foster home in London after his family is killed by an enemy tribe, Kaninda discovers the meaning of hate and the value of not hating.
F BAG	The Forgotten Fire	Bagdasarian	Middle East	8	Vahan sees his father taken away and his brothers murdered. He, his mother and sister are forced on a tortuous march, and he alone survives. This is a true story of ethnic violence.
F BRI	The tree of red stars	Bridal	South America	4	A work of autobiographical fiction tells the story of Magda--a girl bewildered by the political upheaval in her native Uraguay--life under seige, and the subtle and overt results of her political activism.
F BUC	The Good Earth	Buck	Asia/China	17	A graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. The lives of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan show the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century.
F CHA	Love in a fallen city	Chang	Asia/China	4	"Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China. At the heart of Chang's achievement is her short fiction - tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these stories combine a contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with a lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first colleciton in English of this body of work, introduces American readers to the stark vision of a modern master."--Book Jacket.
F CHO	The Year of Impossible Goodbyes	Choi	Asia/Korea	21	A young Korean girl survives the oppressive Japanese and Russian occupation of North Korea during the 1940s, to later escape to freedom in South Korea.
F CLI	A Stone in My Hand	Clinton	Middle East	31	Eleven-year-old Malaak and her family are touched by the violence in Gaza between Jews and Palestinians when first her father disappears and then her older brother is drawn to the Islamic Jihad.
F Coe	Veronika decides to die	Coelho	South America	4	"Another of Coelho's spiritual journeys, this time by the 24-year-old protagonist who, after a failed suicide attempt, rediscovers in an insane asylum in Slovenia the preciousness and precariousness of life. Costa's translation is competent, but cannot save Coelho's novel from its by now familiar and conventionally inspirational tone and message"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.
F CRA	I Heard the Owl Call My Name	Craven		25
F Dai	Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress	Dai	Asia/China	4	From the hopelessness and terror of Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are forever transformed when they discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translations. Even their friend, the Little Seamstress, will never be the same.
F Dai	Mr. Muo's traveling couch	Dai	Asia/China	4	After years of studying Freud in Paris, Mr. Muo returns home to introduce the blessings of psychoanalysis to 21st-century China. But it is his hidden purpose to liberate his university sweetheart--now a political prisoner--that leads him to the sadistic local magistrate who demands a virgin maiden in exchange for his sweetheart's freedom.
F ELL	The Breadwinner	Ellis	Middle East	9	Because the Taliban rulers of Kabul, Afghanistan, impose strict limitations on women's freedom and behavior, eleven-year-old Parvana must disguise herself as a boy so that her family can survive after her father's arrest.
F EME	The Bride Price	Emecheta	Africa	25	The story of a young Ibo woman in Nigeria who is vulnerable to the traditions of her people even as she struggles for her own identity.
F Gar	One hundred years of solitude	Garcia	South America	5
F GOL	Memoirs of a Geisha	Golden	Asia/Japan	12
F GUT	Snow Falling on Cedars	Guterson		28
F HES	Siddhartha	Hesse	Middle East	27
F HOL	Boston Jane: an Adventure	Holm	Native American/ Washington State	15	Schooled in the lessons of etiquette for young ladies of 1854, Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia finds little use for manners during her long sea voyage to the Pacific Northwest and while living among the American traders and Chinook Indians of Washington Territory.
F HOL	When the Elephants Dance	Holthe	Asia/Philippines	7	In the waning days of World War II, the Filipino people were caught between a brutal Japanese occupation and battling U.S. forces. In this novel, 13-year-old Alejandro Karangalan, his spirited older sister Isabelle, and Domingo, a passionate guerilla commander, narrate the story of the Karangalans-a family who huddle with their neighbors in the cellar of a house near Manila to wait out the war. In their crowded refuge, the group shares magical stories of Filipino myth and legend.
F HOS	The Kite Runner	Hosseini	Middle East	25
F Ibu	Black Rain	Ibuse	Asia/Japan	6	The people of a Japanese village fight to maintain their humanity and tradition in the radioactive "rain" after Hiroshima.
F Jen	Damage	Jenkins		5	Seventeen-year-old football hero Austin, trying to understand the inexplicable depression that has drained his interest in life, thinks that he has found relief in a girl who seems very special.
F KEH	The Volcano Disaster	Kehret	Washington State	26	Warren is testing his grandfather's Instant Commuter when he is teleported to Mount St. Helens on the morning of May 18, 1980, as the mountain is about to erupt.
F Lah	The interpreter of maladies	Lahiri	India	6	Traveling from India to New England and back again, the stories in this extraordinary debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.
F Lah	The namesake	Lahiri	India	8
F LAI	Kiss the Dust	Laird	Middle East	26	Her father's involvement with the Kurdish resistance movement in Iraq forces thirteen-year-old Tara to flee with her family over the border into Iran, where they face an unknown future.
F Lem	My tender matador	Lemebel	South America	4	It is spring of 1986 in Santiago, Chile, and political and social unrest against Pinochet's dictatorship is growing. In one of the city's poorer neighborhoods, an effeminate homosexual and hopeless romantic known as the Queen of the Corner has fallen in love with a handsome young straight man who is plotting nothing less than the assassination of the dictator.
F LEV	The Return	Levitin	Middle East/Israel	25	Desta and the other members of her Falasha family, Jews suffering from discrimination in Ethiopia, finally flee the country and attempt the dangerous journey to Israel.
F Lin	City of God	Lins	South America	5
F MAR	Nectar in a Sieve	Markandaya	Middle East	25	Rukmani, a peasant from a village in India, lives a life of constant struggle, yet she is a source of strength for many. At age twelve she marries a man she has never met and moves with him to his rented farmland. A tannery built near their village forever alters Rukmani's life, for the tannery takes away farmland and silence, and while it provides jobs, they come with great costs, changing village life from an agricultural to an industrial community. Kenny, a white doctor in Rukmani's village, watches his patients' daily struggle to survive. Rukmani and Kenny's conversations make apparent their individual and shared suffering, and while their experiences of the world are completely different, their friendship is based on respect and mutual reliance.
F Min	Becoming Madame Mao	Min	Asia/China	6	In a sweeping novel that moves from the intimately personal to the larger stage of world events, author Anchee Min tells the story of Madame Mao Zedong, the woman known as the "white-boned demon". Min penetrates the myth of this powerful personality and shows a woman with a desperate need to be loved.
F Min	Empress Orchid	Min	Asia/China	6	"Empress Orchid" is the story of a fascinating, strong- willed woman who for generations has been vilified as a grand seductress and murderer. Min draws a vivid portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman and, through her life, of the world of the Chinese court and the sexual and political lives of the royal concubines.
F Moc	Beacon Hill Boys	Mochizuki	Washington State	24	In 1972 in Seattle, a teenager in a Japanese American family struggles for his own identity, along with a group of three friends who share his anger and confusion.
F Mur	The tale of Genji	Murasaki	Asia/Japan	6
F Nat	Kororo	Natsume	Asia/Japan	4
F ROY	The God of Small Things	Roy	India	16
F Sai	Night Flight	Saint Exupery	South America	4
F Son	Stop Pretending	Sones		5	A younger sister has a difficult time adjusting to life after her older sister has a mental breakdown. This intense and brutally honest story is told in a succession of poems.
F SOT	Pacific Crossing	Soto		16	Fourteen-year-old Mexican American Lincoln Mendoza is in Japan for the summer to practice the martial art of kempo. Lincoln sometimes feels like little more than a brown boy in a white gi. Yet with the help of his Japanese brother, Mitsuo, Lincoln sees that people everywhere, whether friend or kempo opponent, share passions much like his own--for baseball, family traditions, and new friendships.
F Spa	Kim	Spa		4	Seventeen-year-old Kim, feeling the pressure of maintaining an A average to stay on her college gymnastics team, becomes obsessive about her weight and develops anorexia.
F Str	Leslie's Journal	Stratton		5	Leslie's journal is a suspenseful, fast-paced story about love, friendship and what it means to stand up for yourself.
F SUN	The Twentieth Wife	Sundaresan	India	13	Inside a bejeweled, dazzling birdcage--the world of the Mughal Court's zenana, or imperial harem, the heroine exercises power in the only way available to a woman in 17th-century India: from behind the veil. At the age of 8, Mehrunissa (the name means "Sun of Women") has already settled on her life's goal. After just one glimpse of his face, she wants to marry the Crown Prince Salim. And marry him she does, albeit some 26 years later, after overcoming the opposition of her family, an ill-starred early marriage, numerous miscarriages, and the scheming of other wives.
F Tan	The Makioka Sisters	Tanizaki	Asia/Japan	4
F Var	Death in the Andes	Vargas	South America	4	"In this novel, simultaneous plot lines ranging from an investigation by Corporal Lituma of a mysterious disappearance, to his deputy's love affair with a prostitute, to an Andean community terrorized by Shining Path guerrillas, and the alternating first- and third-person narrators all obscure coherence. Grossman's lazy translation needlessly retains large doses of original Spanish lexicon. An introduction, maps, and a translator's note are badly needed to orient readers not familiar with Peru"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.
F Var	The green house	Vargas	South America	4	Don Anselmo, a stranger in a black coat, builds a brothel on the outskirts of a Peruvian town while he charms its innocent people, setting in motion a chain reaction with extraordinary consequences. This brothel called the Green House, brings together the innocent and the corrupt: Bonificia, a young Indian girl saved by the nuns only to become a prostitute; Father Garcia, struggling for the church; and four best friends drawn to both excitement and escape.
F WHE	Homeless Bird	Whelan	India	25	When thirteen-year-old Koly enters into an ill-fated arranged marriage, she must either suffer a destiny dictated by India's tradition or find the courage to oppose it.