Frank Carlson Library

Two families awaiting the arrival of their adopted infant daughters from Korea meet at the airport. The families lives become interwined after the Donaldsons, a young American couple invite the Yazdan's, Maryam, her son and his Iranian American wife to an arrival party, which becomes an annual event. Maryam, who came to this country thirty-five years earlier, feels her values threatened when she is courted by a newly widowed Donaldson. A penetrating...

"Toula is 30. And unmarried. Which means as a nice Greek girl - she's a failure. All her cousins did the right thing - married Greek boys and made Greek babies. So everyone worries: what will become of Toula? Then one day she sees the ultimate unattainable guy and realizes the only way her life will get better is if she gets away from her big, fat Greek family. Toula escapes from the family restaurant. She exchanges her seating hostess jacket for...

Struggling with a disapproving grandparent and her inability to fit in with her white peers, a Thai-American high school senior in a small Kansas community secretly designs a clothing line that reflects both cultures. Kanchana is a Thai-American high school senior in a small Kansas town. She struggles with a disapproving grandparent and her inability to fit in with her white peers. By secretly designing clothing that reflects both cultures, she creates...

Three students are immigrants from Guatemala, Korea, and Somalia and have trouble speaking, writing, and sharing ideas in English in their new American elementary school. Through self-determination and with encouragement from their peers and teachers, the students learn to feel confident and comfortable in their new school without losing a sense of their home country, language, and identity. Young readers from all backgrounds will appreciate this...

Lyric Walker's life forever changes the night she witnesses the arrival of the Alpha, a five-nation race of ocean-dwelling warriors. The world's initial wonder and awe over the Alpha quickly turn into paranoia and fear, tranforming her hometown of Coney Island into a miltary zone with violence bubbling just beneath the surface. Despite her best efforts, Lyric is thrust into the middle of this clash of civilizations when the Alpha teenagers are forced...

The last "Indian war" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official, "Kill the Indian and save the man." Education for Extinction offers...

Best known as a leader of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, Adam Fortunate Eagle now offers a memoir of his years as a young student at Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota. He lives up to his reputation as a "contrary warrior" by disproving the popular view of Indian boarding schools as bleak and prisonlike. Fortunate Eagle attended Pipestone between 1935 and 1945, just as Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier's pluralist...

Feeling blocked after moving from Argentina to New Jersey, a sixteen-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.

On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie...

Examines the history, changing fortunes, and current situation of the Osage Indians.