Carolyn Marsden

Eleven-year-old Noi worries that she will have to stop painting the silk umbrellas her family sells at the market near their Thai village and be forced to join her older sister in difficult work at a local factory instead.

In 1960s Czechoslovakia, Patrik participates in and rebels against the communist regime, knowing that anyone could become an enemy in the blink of an eye.

When Oy and her Thai American family move to a new neighborhood, her third-grade classmates tease and exclude her because she is different.

Nouri, who is Shiite, and his cousin Talib, who is half Sunni, live in a war zone. Iraq isn't just fighting Americans. It's at war with itself; Sunnis are fighting Shiites. Only a miracle can mend the rift tearing a country and a family apart.

When her grandmother reveals that the daughter that she had given up for adoption is coming from America to visit her Vietnamese family, nine-year-old Binh is convinced that her newly-discovered aunt is wealthy and will take care of all the family's needs.

The strong friendship between two boys, one black and one white, who live on a mission in Rhodesia, begins to unravel as protests against white colonial rule intensifies in 1964.