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The Refugee Experience

June 20 is World Refugee Day. Check out some of these books to learn more about the refugee experience.

Frisco Public Library

20 items

  • Told in alternating voices, seventeen-year-old Jane rails against her family's Vietnamese culture and struggles with a perpetually angry father, whose traumatic journey to the United States as an eleven-year-old refugee is revealed in flashbacks.
    Book, 2023New York : Crown Books, [2023] — TEEN F HOANG
  • We Are Displaced

    My Journey and Stories From Refugee Girls Around the World

    Yousafzai, Malala, 1997-
    Nobel Peace Prize winner Yousafzai shares her own story of displacement, along with the personal stories of some of the incredible girls she has met on her various journeys to refugee camps and the cities where refugee girls and their families have…
    Book, 2019New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2019. — TEEN BIO YOUSAFZA - WE
  • Forced to become a child soldier, sixteen-year-old Somali refugee Abdi, must confront his painful past.
    Book, 2019New York, NY : G.P. Putnam's Sons, [2019] — TEEN F ANDERSON
  • At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls "Daniel") stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. Like Scheherazade in a hostile classroom, Daniel weaves a tale…
    Book, 2020Montclair : LQ/Levine Querido, 2020. — TEEN F NAYERI
  • Ebo is alone. His brother, Kwame, has disappeared, and Ebo knows it can only be to attempt the hazardous journey to Europe, and a better life, the same journey their sister set out on months ago. But Ebo refuses to be left behind in Ghana. He sets…
    Graphic Novel, 2018Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2018. — YA GN COLFER
  • The unlikely friendship between Syrian American boxer Khadija and Syrian refugee Leene reveals the pressures and expectations of the perfect Syrian daughter and the repercussions of the Syrian Revolution both at home and abroad.
    Book, 2023New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2023. — TEEN F SHUKAIRY
  • The Far Away Brothers

    Two Teenage Immigrants Making a Life in America

    Markham, Lauren,
    Identical twins Ernesto and Raul Flores, seventeen, must flee El Salvador, make a harrowing journey across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, face capture by immigration authorities, and struggle to navigate life in America.
    Book, 2019New York : Delacorte Press, [2019] — TEEN BIO - FAR
  • Sixteen-year-old Tina and two friends leave Kenya and slip into the Congo, where she and her mother fled years before, in order to seek revenge for her mother's murder but instead they uncover startling secrets.
    Book, 2017New York, NY : G.P. Putnam's Sons, [2017] — TEEN MYS/SUSP ANDERSON
  • The Unwanted

    Stories of the Syrian Refugees

    Brown, Don, 1949-
    A timely, and eye-opening exploration of the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, exposing the harsh realities of living in, and trying to escape, a war zone
    Graphic Novel, 2018Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2018] — TEEN GRAPHIC BROWN UNWANTED
  • Although separated by continents and decades, Josef, a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany; Isabel, a Cuban girl trying to escape the riots and unrest plaguing her country in 1994; and Mahmoud, a Syrian boy in 2015 whose homeland is torn apart…
    Book, 2017New York : Scholastic Press, 2017. — TEEN F GRATZ
  • After their home in Syria is bombed, Tareq, his father, and his younger sister seek refuge, first with extended family in Raqqa, a stronghold for the militant group, Daesh, and then abroad.
    Book, 2018New York, NY : Philomel Books, [2018] — TEEN F ABAWI
  • 6,000 Miles to Freedom

    Two Boys and Their Flight From the Taliban

    Marchetti, Stéphane, 1978-
    A narrative account, in graphic novel format, of the traumatic experiences faced by children fleeing war and poverty in Afghanistan, as well as the isolation they often feel as refugees in the West.
    Graphic Novel, 2022University Park, Pennsylvania : Graphic Mundi, [2022] — YA GN MARCHETTI
  • Winter 1945. Four refugees. Four secrets. Each one born of a different homeland; each one hunted, and haunted, by tragedy, lies, war. As thousands desperately flock to the coast in the midst of a Soviet advance, four paths converge, vying for…
    Book, 2017New York, NY : Penguin Books, 2017. — TEEN F SEPETYS
  • According to a UN tally, more than 1 million people fled violence and persecution in 2015. Of these, more than half were children. Thousands died along the way. The Syrian civil war as well as armed conflicts in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia,…
    eBook, 2019Lerner Publishing Group, 2019
  • Five refugees recount their courageous journeys to America — and the unimaginable struggles that led them to flee their homelands.
    eBook, 2020Candlewick Press, 2020
  • When a hurricane exposes Soleida's family's secret sculpture garden, the Cuban government arrests her artist parents, forcing her to escape alone to Central America where she meets Dariel, a Cuban American boy, and together they work to protect the…
    Book, 2023New York : Atheneum, 2023. — TEEN F ENGLE
  • Our Stories Carried Us Here

    a Graphic Novel Anthology

    A bold and unconventional collection of first-person stories told and illustrated by immigrants and refugees living across the United States. Stanford scientist, deaf student, indigenous activist, Black entrepreneur-all immigrants and…
    Graphic Novel, 2021Minneapolis, MN : Green Card Voices, [2021] — YA GN OUR
  • After the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War, hundreds of children were airlifted from Vietnam to the United States. Hang saw to it that her three-year-old brother Linh was one of these children, though at the airport she's shocked to discover…
    Book, 2020New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2020. — TEEN F LAI
  • When the Syrian war reaches Amina's village she's forced to escape, and during her perilous journey she thinks of the brave warrior Zenobia to remind her to stay strong.
    Graphic Novel, 2018New York, NY : Seven Stories Press, 2018. — TEEN GRAPHIC DURR ZENOBIA
  • The author shares the story of her survival during the Gatumba Massacre--despite losing her mother and sister--and how after moving to America she found healing through art and activism.
    Book, 2017New York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2017] — TEEN BIO UWIRINGI - HOW