Vorab-RezensentenJacqueline Grant Kent

My Name is Noel is a middle-grade to young adult chapter book set in Miami, Florida. The main character is a 12-year-old Haitian boy named Noel. Noel and his grandfather have recently braved the ocean, in a small boat, to leave French-speaking Haiti and join his parents in Miami. He soon learns it is not popular to be Haitian in Miami and he thinks it is because of his French background and his dark skin. He cannot change his skin, but he can change his French name in the hope that his classmates will accept him. Instead of being called Noel, he asks to be called Neal. When Noel joins his new school’s soccer team and uses the soccer skills he learned from his father in Haiti to help the team win an important game, his schoolmates begin to accept him. My Name is Noel is written from Noel’s point of view and describes an immigrant boy’s struggle to fit in. The problems he faces trying to get used to a new country are compounded by his poverty and a general unfriendliness towards Haitians in Miami. Young people reading this story will see how overcoming their own prejudices can lead to real friendships.

When Christopher Columbus and his crew first sailed into the waters of the Caribbean they were awed by the sight of the beautiful islands. Columbus described hills covered with brilliant green trees, criss-crossed by rushing streams and rivers, and sloping down to the sugar white sands of the beaches. He and his men had come looking for gold and spices and new lands to settle, but the islands they found did not yield large amounts of gold. Instead these islands would eventually yield a different kind of gold—the kind that grew out of the ground and eventually sweetened the beverages and desserts of people all across the world. Sugar cane brought sweet profits to the Caribbean planters who would later settle the islands. But this profit came at a high price for the men, women, and children who worked on the plantations. This 2,500-word middle-grade nonfiction book tells the story of Caribbean sugar. (Available in all e-formats)

Inga the Viking Girl is a chapter book written for middle-grade (8-12 year old) readers. It includes two stories about Inga Svensdotter; an eleven-year-old Viking girl who lives with her family in Einersfjord, Greenland. The first story is called Inga Goes A-Viking and it begins with the community at Einersfjord facing a huge problem. They have no food or supplies to repair their homes! The merchant ships that used to visit each year bringing important goods for trade, have stopped coming. The men of the settlement must take drastic action and they decide to resort to the ancient Viking way of getting the goods they need to live¾going A-Viking or going on a raid. For Inga this is her big chance to get away from her mother’s attempts to make her into a lady and escape with the men for an adventure. No more sewing or learning how to cook! But when her father tells her she cannot go, Inga is not defeated. She knows there must be a way for her to go A-Viking too. Unfortunately she learns that sometimes adventures are not as much fun as they seem to be. In the second story called Inga Plans a Wedding, Inga tries to help her sister, Anna, who is being forced to marry the worst boy in Einersfjord. Unlike Inga, Anna is the perfect Viking girl. She is good at cooking and her embroidery work is the envy of all the girls in the fjord. Inga, on the other hand, wishes she were a boy. She spends her days wrestling with the boys, practicing her hunting skills, and trying to avoid her mother who is determined to make a lady out of her. Even though they are so different, Inga and her sister are very close friends so when the girls find out that their father has made plans for Anna to marry Gorvid, Inga decides she must help her sister. Now Inga needs a plan to stop the wedding before it is too late. But everything she tries fails. Will Gorvid really marry Anna and become Inga’s brother-in-law? Available in most digital formats.

This is the first book in the nonfiction Caribbean Reference Shelf series and is written for middle-grade (8-12 year old) readers. It tells the engaging story of how people of color in nineteenth-century Cuba celebrated the Catholic feast day of the Epiphany or the Day of the Kings. Available in all eBook formats.