Books like The Tower of Life
By Chana Stiefel
For families ready to talk about the Holocaust through one woman's determination to make sure her town was remembered, not erased. Tender, somber, and ultimately hopeful — grief transformed into tribute.
Across generations, the women in one family pass down the art of quilting — from a seven-year-old girl sold away from her parents who sewed secret maps to freedom, to daughters who carried her knowledge through segregation and into the fight for literacy.
An enslaved man endures separation from his family in Virginia, then hits on a desperate plan: mailing himself in a wooden crate to freedom in the North.
After their father dies, six-year-old Marvel, her seven siblings, and their mother move into a run-down tar-paper shack deep in the Wisconsin woods and slowly turn it into a home.
A young Armenian boy leaves behind his home and everyone he has known to search for refuge, carrying his story until he finally finds the courage to share it.
A young girl, her waitress mother, and her grandma save every spare coin in a big jar, hoping to finally buy a comfortable chair after a fire destroyed their old furniture.
Born into slavery, a woman hears the voice of God calling her north and escapes through the woods with only her faith, beginning the journey that will make her Moses to her people.
Enslaved people in 19th-century Louisiana count down the days through endless labor — slopping hogs, chopping logs, plucking hens — toward Sunday afternoon, when they gather in New Orleans' Congo Square to sing, dance, and briefly live free.
A four-year-old boy and his Japanese American family are forced from their California home into incarceration camps during World War II, moving through three different sites over three years while his parents work to keep the family safe.
A young girl is separated from her mother at the last moment and must sail to America alone, only to discover the address for her family in New York has smudged into illegible ink.
An aspiring young musician hauls his double bass through busy city streets on the long walk home from school, weaving between crowds while music fills his heart the whole way.
A child piano prodigy flees revolution in Venezuela for the United States, and despite feeling lonely and out of place, grows famous enough to be invited to play for President Lincoln at the White House.
A girl from the Muscogee Creek Nation dreams of jingle dancing at the next powwow, but her dress has no jingles — so she turns to the women in her family and community to borrow theirs.
