The Barefoot Girl

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A moving, unforgettable tribute to a Tutsi woman who did everything to protect her children from the Rwandan genocide, by the daughter who refuses to let her family's story be forgotten. The story of the author's mother, a fierce, loving woman who for years protected her family from the violence encroaching upon them in pre-genocide Rwanda. Recording her memories of their life together in spare, wrenching prose, Mukasonga preserves her mother's voice in a haunting work of art.

Fifteen-year-old Margharita is toiling in her family's meager field when a handsome gentleman rides in with a proposal of marriage. After only a few words with her father,Master Domenico Vasari tears Margharita away from the family she cherishes and the farm boy she loves-and hauls her off to a foreign, violent life, full of strangers and strange customs.

2022 Pura Belpré Honor Book NYPL Best Book of 2021 Texas Bluebonnet Master List Selection NPR Best Book of 2021 Based on a true story, the tale of one girl's perilous journey to cross the U.S. border and lead her family to safety during the Mexican Revolution. "Wrenching debut about family, loss, and finding the strength to carry on."—Booklist, starred review "Blazes bright, gripping readers until the novel's last page."—Publishers Weekly, starred review "Vital and perilous and hopeful."—Alan Gratz, New York Times bestselling author of Refugee It is 1913, and twelve-year-old Petra Luna's mama has died while the Revolution rages in Mexico. Before her papa is dragged away by soldiers, Petra vows to him that she will care for the family she has left—her abuelita, little sister Amelia, and baby brother Luisito—until they can be reunited. They flee north through the unforgiving desert as their town burns, searching for safe harbor in a world that offers none. Each night when Petra closes her eyes, she holds her dreams close, especially her long-held desire to learn to read. Abuelita calls these barefoot dreams: "They're like us barefoot peasants and indios—they're not meant to go far." But Petra refuses to listen. Through battlefields and deserts, hunger and fear, Petra will stop at nothing to keep her family safe and lead them to a better life across the U.S. border—a life where her barefoot dreams could finally become reality. "Dobbs' wrenching debut, about family, loss, and finding the strength to carry on, illuminates the harsh realities of war, the heartbreaking disparities between the poor and the rich, and the racism faced by Petra and her family. Readers will love Petra, who is as strong as the black-coal rock she carries with her and as beautiful as the diamond hidden within it."—Booklist, starred review

Shiraz, a kindhearted young girl growing up in Tehran, has a miserable life at home with her stepmother and stepsister, who treat her like a servant. When the wind blows Shiraz’s ball of wool into the garden next door, she spends the day helping and caring for the old lady who lives there, with miraculous results. Then her stepmother sends her own daughter off on the same mission . . . but will the results be the same?

Mukasonga unsparingly resurrects the horrors of the Rwandan geocide while lyrically recording the quieter moments of daily life with her family—a moving tribute to all those who are displaced, who suffer. Mukasonga’s extraordinary, lyrical, and heartbreaking book … is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about the endurance of the human spirit and who hopes for a better world. — Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Los Angeles Review of Books Scholastique Mukasonga’s Cockroaches is a compelling chronicle of the author’s childhood in the years leading up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In a spare and penetrating tone, Mukasonga brings to life the scenes of her family’s forced displacement from Rwanda to neighboring Burundi. With a view made lucid through time and pain, Mukasonga erodes the distance between her present and her past, resurrecting and paying homage to her family members who were massacred in the genocide, but also, in movingly simple language, the beauty present in quiet, daily moments with her loved ones. As lyrical as it is tragic, Cockroaches is Mukasonga’s tribute to her family’s suffering and to the lingering grip of the dead on the living.

Entertaining folk and fairy tales from around the world focus on girls who learn from their mothers to face life with a spirit of adventure, kindness, and courage. This book brings together mother and daughter tales from all over the world. Each of the stories has a distinctive theme and flavour, but all of them share a way of looking at the feminine that embraces both dark and light, good and evil, showing us that the path to maturity requires learning how to deal with all aspects of life, and living wholeheartedly, with courage, generosity, and openness to change. The heroines of these stories include familiar figures such as "Demeter and Persephone," from ancient Greece; "Vasilisa the Beautiful," from Russia; and "Naomi and Ruth," from the Jewish tradition. There are also less familiar tales, among them "The Waterfall of White Hair," from China; "Great Mother Earthquake," from the Iroquois; and "The Girl and Her Godmother," from Norway. All of the stories deal with themes that challenge and guide us on many levels: the death of a beloved parent, the jealousy of a stepmother, the necessary hardship that often attends the passage to mature womanhood. At the same time, they show us how joy can arrive at the most unexpected moments, and how courage and adventure can fill every girl's life. Drawing on the collective wisdom of many generations, this is a book for mothers and daughters of today to share and to celebrate both together and as individuals weaving the story of their own lives. AUTHOR: Josephine Evetts-Secker teaches English Literature at The University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. A practising Jungian analyst, she has made a study of the feminine in folk and fairy tale from both a literary and a psychological perspective for many years. The Barefoot Book of Mother & Daughter Tales is her first book for children. Helen Cann was born in 1969. She trained at the School of Art, University of Wales, graduating in 1992. Since then, she has worked as an illustrator and artist, exhibiting in several European countries. Her work is in private collections in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, The United Kingdom and The United States Ages 6+ REVIEWS: "This beautiful book is a treat for the eyes and the soul." --The Story Bag National 80 full colour illustrations Double CD

The Barefoot Book of children takes its readers on a visual trek across the globe, where they discover that--despite our different clothes and homes and languages--we are more alike than different.