Sarah Bird’s gutsy, sharp, and touching new novel opens at full speed. Bernadette "Bernie" Root, military brat, speaks. She has never really noticed what a peculiar bunch of nomads her eight-member Air Force family is (with the exception of her Post Princess sister, Kit), until the summer after her first year of college when she joins them at their new assignment: Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. Just as Okinawa turns out to be a sorry version of the Japanese paradise Bernie knew in her childhood at Yokota Air Base, her family, especially her once-beautiful mother, Moe, and her former spy-pilot father, Mace, seems to have been in decline since those glory days of the American Raj. Days when her mother was happy and their best friend, Fumiko, now lost to them, was the family’s maid. The worst part of Okinawa for Bernie, though, is realizing how perfectly she fits with her oddball family and how badly she needs to get out. So when a dance contest first prize, a trip to Japan,offers a chance to escape, she takes it, playing second banana to a third-rate comedian on a tour of Japan’s military bases. At their grand finale at the Yokota Officers’ Club, Fumiko finally reappears, and Bernie discovers the terrible price that is paid when the secrets nations hide end up buried within families. A brilliantly appealing novel whose energy, wit, and feeling have won for it (see back of the jacket) extraordinary advance praise.

In this funny and moving novel, Bernie Root is returning to her family for the summer after her first year at college. Her father is stationed in Okinawa, and the rest of her large family is living at Kadena Air Base. Bernie is happy to be back, but it's more obvious to her than ever that her oddball family is the only place she fits in.

This is the first book to focus solely on booktalking to adults. Here is an instruction manual and a material sourcebook in one; providing the reader with both step-by-step instructions on how to write a booktalk and 88 samples to use when creating a booktalk program for an adult audience.

What does Ian McEwan have in common with Barbara Kingsolver? Or The Shack's William Paul Young with The Way the Crow Flies' Ann-Marie MacDonald? All four spent significant portions of their formative years overseas as expatriates; all four are third culture kids. These authors share experiences of cultural and geographical displacement that fracture constructions of home and identity, as their fiction attests. This study surveys 17 authors with "expat" backgrounds to define "third culture literature," a burgeoning yet unrecognized branch of international writing characterized by expressions of dislocation, loss, and disenfranchisement. By explicating how the shared cultural details of these writers emerge in literary themes and images, this work introduces third culture literature as a separate field, reinterpreting the work of major writers from across the globe.

Young adult readers have special needs and concerns, and librarians have become increasingly interested in selecting books suitable for them. This reference provides information about 290 books for young adults. These books received major awards between 1997 and 2001, reflect the voices of 242 different authors, and range from new to familiar themes. Included are nearly 750 alphabetically arranged entries for individual works, authors, characters, and settings. Many of these books were originally written for adults but have become popular among younger readers. Entries for works provide plot summaries and critical assessments, while author entries focus on those aspects of the writers' lives most relevant to literature for young people. The reference is a valuable selection tool for librarians and teachers and a useful guide for students.