Miss Priscyla from the Youth Services Department has hand-picked a selection of her current favorite books!
Check out her list of books about crossing the border and understanding what it means to be from neither this side nor that side of the border, ni de aqui o de alla. She’s also got a list of novels that she enjoyed reading when she was growing up!
- All of the books featured here are books that we have in our collection. To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image or button to the right of the description.
Priscyla Recommends… Crossing the Border
Dreamers by Yuyi Morales
An immigration story of a mother and son entering a new world with no form of communication, until this mother and son discover the many wonders of a library.
ALL AGES
Where Are You From? by Yamile Saied Méndez
When other children and their parents keep asking a young girl where she is from, she puts the same question to her grandfather who describes the land and people from which her family originated.
ALL AGES
Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale
by Duncan Tonatiuh
When Papa Rabbit does not return home as expected from many seasons of working in the great carrot and lettuce fields of El Norte, his son Pancho sets out
on a dangerous trek to find him, guided by a coyote.
ALL AGES
The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande
In this poignant memoir about her childhood in Mexico, Reyna Grande skillfully depicts another side of the immigrant experience—the hardships and heartbreaks of the children who are left behind.
TEEN/ADULT
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
by Erika L. Sánchez
Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role. Then a tragic accident on the
busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. But it’s not long before Julia discovers that
Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first kiss, first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out.
TEEN/ADULT
My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero
When Daisy Ramona zooms around her neighborhood with her papi on his motorcycle, she sees the people and places she’s always known. She also sees a community that is rapidly changing around her. But as the sun sets purple-blue-gold behind Daisy Ramona and her papi, she knows that the love she feels will
always be there.
ALL AGES
Carmelo by Sandra Cisneros
A story of a family who travels every year from Chicago to Mexico City as Celaya “Lela” Reyes experiences the reality of being Mexican American while processing the many memories of her awful grandmother and family in Mexico. Caramelo is
alive with the vibrations of history, family, and love.
ADULT
Priscyla Recommends… Favorites from Growing Up
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
In all the years she has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house, Grace has been particularly drawn to an unusual yellow-eyed wolf who, in his turn, has been watching her with increasing intensity.
The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong
Fifteen-year-old necromancer Chloe, having escaped from Lyle House with Derek, Simon, and Rae, finds herself imprisoned in a laboratory run by a sinister organization determined to control her and her supernatural friends.
Incantation by Alice Hoffman
Estrella is a Marrano: During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, she is one of a community of Spanish Jews living double lives as Catholics. And she is living in a house of secrets, raised by a family who practices underground the ancient and mysterious way of wisdom known as kabbalah. When Estrella discovers her family’s true identity–and her family’s secrets are made public–she confronts a world she’s never imagined, where new love burns and where friendship ends in flame and ash, where trust is all but vanquished and betrayal has tragic and bitter consequences.
Deep Down Popular by Phoebe Stone
In a small, Virginia town, sixth-grader Jessie Lou Ferguson has a crush on the hugely popular Conrad Parker Smith, and when he suddenly develops a medical problem and the teacher asks Jessie Lou to help him, they become friends, to her surprise.
Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies by Erin Dionne
Overweight thirteen-year-old Celeste begins a campaign to lose weight in order to make sure she does not win the Miss Huskey Peach modeling challenge, in which her mother and aunt have entered her — against her wishes.
Night World by L.J. Smith
Night World is their secret society, a secret society with very strict rules. And falling in love breaks all the laws of the Night World. In “Secret Vampire”, Poppy thought the summer would last forever. Then she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now Poppy’s only hope for survival is James, her friend and secret love. A vampire in the Night World, James can make Poppy immortal.
My Life in Pink & Green by Lisa Greenwald
When the family’s drugstore is failing, seventh-grader Lucy uses her problem solving talents to come up with a solution that might resuscitate the business, along with helping the environment.
My Life in Pink & Green by Lisa Greenwald
In this continuation of the Cinderella story, fifteen-year-old Ella finds that accepting Prince Charming’s proposal ensnares her in a suffocating tangle of palace rules and royal etiquette, so she plots to escape.
Coffeehouse Angel by Suzanne Selfors
Sixteen-year-old Katrina’s kindness to a man she finds sleeping behind her grandmother’s coffeehouse leads to a strange reward as Malcolm, who is actually a teenage guardian angel, insists on rewarding her by granting her deepest wish.