Literature for Children and Young Adults: Asian/Pacific American Award

(AIYL Picture Book Award 2024)

The Truth About Dragons follows a young child on a journey guided by his mother's bedtime storytelling. He quests into two very different forests, as his two grandmothers help him discover two different, but equally enchanting, truths about dragons. Eastern and Western mythologies coexist and enrich each other in this warm celebration of mixed cultural identity.

(AIYL Picture Book Award 2023)
Young Kalia has never known life beyond the fences of the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. The Thai camp holds many thousands of Hmong families who fled in the aftermath of the little-known Secret War in Laos that was waged during America's Vietnam War. For Kalia and her cousins, life isn't always easy, but they still find ways to play, racing with chickens and riding a beloved pet dog. Just four years old, Kalia is still figuring out her place in the world. When she asks what is beyond the fence, at first her father has no answers for her. But on the following day, he leads her to the tallest tree in the camp and, secure in her father's arms, Kalia sees the spread of a world beyond. Kao Kalia Yang's sensitive prose and Rachel Wada's evocative illustrations bring to life this tender true story of the love between a father and a daughter.

(Caldecott Medal Winner 2022)
(2022 Asian/Pacific American Award for Picture Book)
Gathering watercress by the side of the road brings a girl closer to her family's Chinese Heritage.

(2021 Asian/Pacific American Award for Picture Book)
An inspiring picture-book biography of animator Tyrus Wong, the Chinese American immigrant responsible for bringing Disney's Bambi to life.

(2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for a Picture Book)
Meet Wu Chien Shiung, famous physicist who overcame prejudice to prove that she could be anything she wanted.

(2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for a Picture Book)
A boy and his grandfather cross a language and cultural barrier using their shared love of art, storytelling, and fantasy.

(2018 Asian/Pacific American Award for a Picture Book)
A young boy is awakened early by his father to go fishing. The story reveals this morning is more than an average father-son trip when we hear the young boy ask his father, “If you got another job, why do we still have to fish for food?” The two meet other characters in the early morning, but soon we are left with the young boy and father where we discover stories of the father’s past at a different pond in his homeland of Vietnam.

(2017 Asian/Pacific American Award for a Picture Book)
“Puddle celebrates imagination, while showcasing the special bond between a mother and her son on a rainy day. The author’s simple text and story is universal to all while capturing the playful spirit of the relationship between parent and child.”

(2017 Asian/Pacific American Award for a Picture Book)
After her best friend, Hector, moves away, Juna's brother Minho tries to make her feel better by finding things to put in her special kimchi jar, and each night, whatever is in the jar takes her on a magical journey in search of Hector.

(2024 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
Audiobook available at https://huntington.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1379238134

For fans of Kelly Yang and Rebecca Stead, this touching middle grade novel maps one girl's quest to remember her grandfather through his scavenger hunts; reconnect with her family; and fight for her community in her rapidly changing hometown.

(2023 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
Twelve year-old Maizy discovers her family's Chinese restaurant is full of secrets in this irresistible novel that celebrates food, fortune, and family.

(2022 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
In the companion novel to the beloved and award-winning Amina's Voice, Amina once again uses her voice to bridge the places, people, and communities she loves--this time across continents. It's the last few days of an amazing trip to Pakistan, and Amina finds it hard to leave the sights, the shops, and, most of all, her family. As she heads back to Greendale to start seventh grade, the experience has changed her, and she's eager to share it with her friends. At home, though, Amina discovers her friends don't seem interested in hearing about her trip. With everyone growing in different directions, Amina wonders where she belongs--especially after her school presentation on Malala goes sideways, leaving her feeling like nobody understands both her worlds. When Amina turns to songwriting, a boy named Nico who shares Amina's love for music becomes a welcome new friend. Will Amina find a way to remain true to herself, and to honor everyone and everything that make her who she is?

(Newbery Medal 2021)
(2021 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
A hopeful, heartwarming story of a girl discovering her family's past and present when she makes a deal with a magical tiger from her grandmother's stories, the Korean version of "Once upon a time . . ."

(2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
Moon is everything Christine isn't. She's confident, impulsive, artistic . . . and though they both grew up in the same Chinese-American suburb, Moon is somehow unlike anyone Christine has ever known. But after Moon moves in next door, these unlikely friends are soon best friends, sharing their favorite music videos and painting their toenails when Christine's strict parents aren't around. Moon even tells Christine her deepest secret: that she has visions, sometimes, of celestial beings who speak to her from the stars. Who reassure her that earth isn't where she really belongs. Moon's visions have an all-too-earthly root, however, and soon Christine's best friend is in the hospital, fighting for her life. Can Christine be the friend Moon needs, now, when the sky is falling?

(2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
Recent immigrants from China and desperate for work and money, ten-year-old Mia Tang's parents take a job managing a rundown motel in Southern California, even though the owner, Mr. Yao is a nasty skinflint who exploits them; while her mother (who was an engineer in China) does the cleaning, Mia works the front desk and tries to cope with demanding customers and other recent immigrants--not to mention being only one of two Chinese in her fifth grade class, the other being Mr. Yao's son, Jason.

(2018 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
Maria Singh just wants to play softball (and wear shorts while doing it) but her Mexican Mamá and old fashioned Punjabi Papi don’t believe that girls should play ball.

(2017 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
Set in Louisiana, The Land of Forgotten Girls is a beautifully crafted story of two sisters’ losses, hopes, and the power of their imaginations.

(2016 Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature)
In 1969 twelve-year-old Mimi and her family move to an all-white town in Vermont, where Mimi's mixed-race background and interest in "boyish" topics like astronomy make her feel like an outsider.

(2024 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Fiction Literature )
Audiobook available at https://huntington.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1390130116
Packed with voice, Shannon C.F. Rogers' I'd Rather Burn than Bloom is a powerful YA novel about a Filipina-American teen who tries to figure out who she really is in the wake of her mother's death.

(2023 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Fiction Literature )
A young adult graphic novel about three foreign exchange students and the pleasures, and difficulties, of adjusting to living in Japan.

(2022 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature)
Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root--that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible.  But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father--despite his hard-won citizenship--Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

(2021 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature)
In 1935, ten-year-old Alex Maki of Bainbridge Island, Washington, is horrified to discover that his new pen pal, Charlie Lévy of Paris, France, is a girl, but in spite of his initial reluctance, their letters continue over the years and they fight for their friendship even as Charlie endures the Nazi occupation and Alex leaves his family in an internment camp and joins the Army.

(2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature)
In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.
They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

(2019 Morris Award)
(2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature)
Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life.

(2018 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature)
Sixteen-year-old Sana Kiyohara has too many secrets. Some are small, like how it bothers her when her friends don't invite her to parties. Some are big, like that fact that her father may be having an affair. And then there's the one that she can barely even admit to herself.

(2017 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature)
Stacy Lee has written a richly detailed and compelling historical novel about a smart, driven Chinese American girl set against the backdrop of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Mercy Wong dreams of freedom and independence from society’s prejudices as well as her own family’s traditions and expectations.

(2016 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature)
"Lara Jean didn't expect to really fall for Peter. She and Peter were just pretending. Except suddenly they weren't. Now Lara Jean is more confused than ever. When another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean's feelings for him return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?"-- Provided by publisher.