The Best Immigration Books for Kids

Ordered out of the car to pick wild watercress from an Ohio ditch, a girl is mortified—until her mother says why.

Dat’s first day at his new school arrives as pure nonsense, until one classmate’s words start resolving into letters he can read.

Newly arrived from Korea, Unhei lets her classmates fill a glass jar with American names to choose from.

A mother crosses a bridge with her baby and almost nothing else, and finds a public library on the other side.

Before dawn, a boy and his father fish a Minneapolis pond—not for sport, but for dinner.

The family is hungry, and the father comes home from the market carrying a map instead of bread.

A dress, an apron and a babushka carried from Russia are sewn into one quilt that four generations then get married under.

Jingwen has moved to Australia, hates English, and secretly bakes his late father’s cake menu while his mother is at work.

A new boy joins the class, says nothing for weeks, and four friends set out to get him back to his family.

Hà leaves Saigon by ship in 1975 and lands in Alabama, where she is suddenly the least clever person in the room.

Ten-year-old Mia works the front desk of the motel her parents manage, and hides other immigrants in the empty rooms.

Jude is sent from Syria to Cincinnati with her pregnant mother while her father and brother stay behind.

Omar and his younger brother Hassan have spent nearly their whole lives in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

Three children—1930s Berlin, 1994 Havana, 2015 Aleppo—leave home on three journeys that turn out to be connected.