The 2023 Spring Read: In Touch with the World takes a different spin this week with four juvenile or young adult selections from around the world.
Echoes From The Square, 2002 by Elizabeth Wellburn (Author), Deryk Houston (Illustrator)
Inspired by the actions of Sarajevo cellist Vedran Smailovic during the Bosnian War, this book tells the fictional story of a young boy whose life is shattered by war and how he learns to cope again when he witnesses a courageous musician's actions during a siege.
The Dreamer, 2012 by Pam Muñoz Ryan (Author), Peter Sís (Illustrator)
A tender, transcendent, and meticulously crafted novel from Newbery Honoree, Pam Muñoz Ryan, and three-time Caldecott Honoree, Peter Sís!
Even as a young boy, Neftali heard a mysterious voice, From the time he is a young boy, Neftalí hears the call of a mysterious voice. Even when the neighborhood children taunt him, and when his harsh, authoritarian father ridicules him, and when he doubts himself, Neftalí knows he cannot ignore the call. He listens and follows as it leads him under the canopy of the lush rain forest, into the fearsome sea, and through the persistent Chilean rain on an inspiring voyage of self-discovery that will transform his life and, ultimately, the world.
Combining elements of magical realism with biography, poetry, literary fiction, and transporting illustrations, Pam Muñoz Ryan and Peter Sís take readers on a rare journey of the heart and imagination as they explore the inspiring early life of the poet who became Pablo Neruda.
A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story, 2011 Linda Sue Park
A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan, a girl in 2008 and a boy in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours’ walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the “lost boys” of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay.
Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya’s in an astonishing and moving way. Includes an afterword by author Linda Sue Park and the real-life Salva Dut, on whom the novel is based, and who went on to found Water for South Sudan.
In Touch with the World – Book Ten Series Book Leader
Haven is from that time of morning and evening when the world tints pink and clouds tumble across the horizon in an array of stretched candy floss. She has worked as a will-of-the-whisp, but really got her career started as a benevolent apparition indicating change to come. She has a side gig as the way a train rocks back and forth on old tracks casting a yawning cradle of hushed grogginess over the riders. She dabbles in gossamer wings and antique brass, creeping avens and apothecaries. She also likes to knit.
