Literary Heroes & Quests

Literary Heroes & Quests Key: Explicit/Adult Language Trigger Warning Religious Themes

Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Christopher is a logical and gifted fifteen-year-old boy who relates well to animals, but not very well to people. When the neighbor’s dog is mysteriously taken from his life, he is determined to figure out why in his own very literal and quirky ways. “Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away” -Mark Haddon

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.” -Jonathan Safran Foer Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts. Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies Three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. They speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from hair ribbons and secret crushes to gunrunning and prison torture, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. It gives fictional voices to the real-life political martyrs, the Mirabal sisters. “I started crying, but I pinched my arms to stop. I had to be brave for Sinita.” -Minerva

Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima enters his life. She is a curandera, one who heals with herbs and magic. Always, Ultima watches over him. She graces him with the courage to face childhood bigotry, diabolical possession, the moral collapse of his brother, and too many violent deaths. At each turn in his life there is Ultima who will nurture the birth of his soul. “It seemed the more I knew about people the more I knew about the strange magic hidden in their hearts.” -Rudolfo Anaya

Razor’s While the Locust Slept “ I read books late into the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open… I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life” -Peter Razor Abandoned as an infant at the State Public School in Owatonna, Minnesota, Peter Razor is raised by abusive workers. Cut off from his family and his heritage, he turns inward, forced to learn about the world on his own.He struggles to attend high school and begins to dream of another life. Razor's story recalls the years he, like the locust, patiently waited to awaken and emerge.

“For it was true, they all looked alike. Black hair. Slanted eyes. High cheekbones. Thick glasses. Thin lips. Bad teeth. Unknowable. Inscrutable.” -Julie Otsuka Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine One day in California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. She had been reclassified,like thousands of other Japanese-Americans, and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert. Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism.

Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees Lily Owens, whose life has been led by a blurred memory of her mother, is determined to uncover the secrets and see the past clearly. Travelling far from home she is taken in by an eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters. Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. “After you get stung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it.” -Sue Monk Kidd

Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass “It's easier to build strong children than repair broken men.” -Frederick Douglass Content Warning: Racism, Abuse, Slavery, Racial Slurs Former slave, impassioned abolitionist, brilliant writer, newspaper editor and eloquent orator whose speeches fired the abolitionist cause, Frederick Douglass led an astounding life. Physical abuse, deprivation and tragedy plagued his early years, yet through sheer force of character he was able to overcome these obstacles to become a leading spokesman for his people.

Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate ArnChorn-Pond; told from his point of view as a young boy. When soldiers arrive in his hometown, Arn is just a normal little boy. But after the soldiers come, his life is changed forever. Arn is separated from his family and assigned to a labor camp. One day, the soldiers ask if any of the kids can play an instrument. Arn's never played a note in his life, but he volunteers. This decision he later finds will determine his fate. Content Warning: Violence McCormick’s Never Fall Down “You show you care, you die. You show you fear, you die. You show nothing, maybe you live.” -Patricia McCormick

Wilson & Jackson The Last Maasai Warriors Wilson and Jackson are two brave warriors of the Maasai, an intensely proud culture built on countless generations steeped in the mystique of tradition, legend and prophecy. They represent the final generation to literally fight for their way of life, coming of age by proving their bravery in the slaying of a lion. They strive to preserve a disappearing culture, protecting the sanctity of their elders while paving the way for future generations.

Bloor’s Tangerine Paul Fisher sees the world from behind glasses so thick he looks like a bug-eyed alien. But he’s not so blind that he can’t see there are some very unusual things about his family’s new home in Tangerine County, Florida. With the help of his new teammates, Paul begins to discover what lies beneath the surface of his strange new hometown. In Tangerine, it seems, anything is possible. “But I can see. I can see everything. I can see things that mom and dad can't. Or won't.” -Edward Bloor

Kiernan’s The Girls of Atomic City “On occasion, people who tried to write family members living at Site X by addressing the letters to “Oak Ridge” got those letters returned to sender with a note reading simply: “There is no such place as Oak Ridge, Tennessee.” -Denise Kiernan At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, and consumed more electricity than New York City, yet it was shrouded in such secrecy that it did not appear on any map. Thousands of civilians, many of them young women from small towns across the U.S., were recruited to this secret city, enticed by the promise of solid wages and war-ending work. The purpose of this mysterious government project was kept a secret from the outside world and from the majority of the residents themselves.

Russell’s Swamplandia! Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness. “But if you kept thinking about a fight you’d lost, Mom said, you were programming yourself to lose again.” -Karen Russell

“It's hard to imagine which is worse, living with fear, or living without it in a fantasyland were consequences don't exist.” -Brooke Hauser Hauser’s The New Kids: Big Dreams & Brave Journey’s at a High School for Immigrant Teens These are “the new kids”: new to America and all the routines and rituals of an American high school, from lonely first days to prom. All the students are recent immigrants learning English. Together, they come from more than forty-five countries and speak more than twenty-eight languages. The students deal with enormous obstacles: traumas and wars in their native countries, and pressures from their cultures to marry. They are carving out new lives for themselves in America.

Burcaw’s Laughing at My Nightmare With acerbic wit and a hilarious voice, Shane Burcaw's Laughing at My Nightmare describes the challenges he faces as a twenty-one-year-old with spinal muscular atrophy. From awkward handshakes to having a girlfriend and everything in between, Shane handles his situation with humor and a "you-only-live-once" perspective on life. He offers an eye-opening perspective on what it is like to have a life threatening disease

Shetterly’sHidden Figures “Their dark skin, their gender, their economic status--none of those were acceptable excuses for not giving the fullest rein to their imaginations and ambitions.” -Margot Lee Shetterly Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians know as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets into space. Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes.

Literary Heroes & Quests