Asia

=China/Japan=

Bruchac, Joseph. **//Code Talker: A Novel about the Navajo Marine in World War Two.//** Dial, 2005. Ned, a sixteen-year-old, wants to join the United States Marine Corp when he hears that Navajos are being specifically recruited. He claims to be od enough, breezes his way through boot camp and finds himself in a top-secret task. He has become a code talker. His experiences in the Pacific - from Guadalcanal to Iow Jima and beyond - will leave him forever changed. The United States is at war, and sixteen-year-old Ned Begay wants to join the cause—especially when he hears that Navajos are being specifically recruited by the Marine Corps. So he claims he’s old enough to enlist, breezes his way through boot camp, and suddenly finds himself involved in a top-secret task, one that’s exclusively performed by Navajos. He has become a code talker. Now Ned must brave some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with his native Navajo language as code, send crucial messages back and forth to aid in the conflict against Japan. His experiences in the Pacific—from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima and beyond—will leave him forever changed. 910L (Lori)

Ji-li Jiang. **//Red Scarf Girl: a Memoir of the Cultural Revolution.//** HarperCollins, c1997. Nonfiction Ji-Li has lived a happy life in Communist China. In 1996 Mao launches the Cultural Revolution and the family is singled out as traitors because the grandfather was a capitalist landowner. All traitors are persecuted. Their home is searched, property seized, some arrested and tortured. Ji-Li is pressured to betray her parents. This memoir paints a chilling picture of life under a totalitarian government. 780L (Mary Ann)

Li, Cunxin. **//Mao’s Last Dancer.//** Walker & Co., c2008. Nonfiction Li is an eleven-year-old peasant when he is chosen to become a dancer at the Beijing Dance Academy for the Chinese government. The book provides a fascinating look at China in the post Cultural Revolution period of the 1970’s. Government propaganda permeates every aspect of life and everything is done to please and praise Chairman Mao. 810L (Mary Ann)

Lu Chi Fa with Becky White. **//Double-luck: Memoirs of a Chinese Orphan.//** Holiday House, 2001. Nonfiction. Chi Fa was orphaned in 1944 just as WWII was ending in China. Communism is on the rise. He is passed from relative to relative and even sold. He lives a life of great poverty, abuse, and family betrayal. Eventually, he escapes Communist China and settles in the US. 740L (Mary Ann)

Namioka, Lensey. **//Ties That Bind, Ties That Break.//** Random House, 2000. Third Sister in the Tao family, Ailin has watched her two older sisters go through the painful process of having their feet bound. In China in 1911, all the women of good families follow this ancient tradition. But Ailin loves to run away from her governess and play games with her male cousins. Knowing she will never run again once her feet are bound, Ailin rebels and refuses to follow this torturous tradition. As a result, however, the family of her intended husband breaks their marriage agreement. And as she enters adolescence, Ailin finds that her family is no longer willing to support her. Chinese society leaves few options for a single woman of good family, but with a bold conviction and an indomitable spirit, Ailin is determined to forge her own destiny. Her story is a tribute to all those women whose courage created new options for the generations who came after them. (Jan)

Park, Linda Sue. **//My Name was Keoko.//** Clarion Books, 2002. With national pride and occasional fear, a brother and sister face the increasingly oppressive occupation of Korea by Japan during World War II, which threatens to suppress Korean culture entirely. 610L (Lori)

Watkins, Yoko Kawashima. **//So Far from the Bamboo Grove//.** Harper Collins, 1994. This book is based on the author's own experiences and it details the trials and tribulations that a Japanese family must go through when they are forced to flee their home in Korea at the end of WW II. Yoko is eleven years old when this story takes place and her Father is a Japanese government official stationed in North Korea. Yoko, her mom, and her sister Ko leave Korea to escape the North Korean Communists and find that life in the war ravaged Japan is not much easier. (Christie)

Watkins, Yoko Kawashima.**//My Brother, My Sister, and I//.** Simon Pulse, 1996. The sequel to "So Far From the Bamboo Grove," this book picks up with the Kawashima family as Yoko (the author of the book), her sister Ko, and their brother Hideyo struggle to survive as refugees in a war ravaged post World War Two Japan. The family is living in extreme poverty and must endure many tragedies, such as the loss of their home and being bullied and picked on before reuniting with their father who was a prisoner of war. (Christie)

=Laos/Thailand =

Manivong, Laura. **//Escaping the Tiger.//** HarperCollins, 2010. The Communist took over Laos in the mid 1970’s. This book is loosely based on the experiences of the author’s husband’s family. The story starts in 1982 as Vonlai and his family escape from Laos to Thailand by a midnight crossing of the Mekong River. After a long and harrowing night, they make it to the shore in Thailand. They eventually end up in an overcrowded, poorly provisioned refugee camp run by the UN. No one is allowed to leave until they have a sponsor in a host country. The family endures boredom, hunger, poverty, and brutal guards for the next four years waiting for a sponsor. ( Mary Ann)