Lone Cone Library

A loose retelling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, set in tenth-century Baghdad, in which twelve-year-old Marjana tries to keep her brother, Jamal, from joining a gang while helping Ali Baba, their master's cruel brother.

"In the Thai village of Koh Panyee, a team of boys builds their own football pitch on top of the Phang Na Bay"--

A collection of 21 riotous tales and riddles about the Mullah Nasruddin. Why does Mulla Nasruddin spoon yoghurt into the river? What is the reason he rides his donkey backwards? Why does he paint a picture that is blank? And is he crazy to move into the house of the man who's just burgled him? Find out all about the amazing antics of Nasruddin in these twenty-one hilarious stories and riddles, famous throughout the Middle East for their jokes, riddles...

A powerful memoir by Nury Turkel lays bare China's repression of the Uyghur people. Turkel is cofounder and board chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and a commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. In recent years, the People's Republic of China has rounded up as many as three million Uyghurs, placing them in what it calls "reeducation camps," facilities most of the world identifies as concentration camps....

In a small village called Yellow Stone, in southeastern China, Sisi is a model sister, daughter, and student. She brews tea for her grandfather in the morning, leads recitations at school as class monitor, and helps care for her youngest brother, Da. But when students are selected during a school ceremony to join the prestigious Red Guard, Sisi is passed over. Worse, she is shamed for her family's past -they are former landowners who have no place...

Ming goes to preschool, where she bravely plays all kinds of games with new friends and old, but she is still not quite ready for the big red slide.

When their family falls on hard times, thirteen-year-old Lila and her twelve-year-old brother, Hari, try desperately to keep their home intact--an almost impossible task until Hari gets a chance to go to Bombay and returns with some positive plans for the future.

In mirroring stories set in Russia and Chile, Vera and Lucas long for a friend to share their separate, but surprisingly similar, adventures.

"Tough and Cheerful is a story about the world's tallest mountain, the evolution of Nepal, and a man who has been part of the staggering transformation of both. As the last living member of the 1953 first summit of Mount Everest, with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, Kanchha's history is one never to be forgotten...Kanchha's personal story takes us through time and mountain ranges, from scarcity to abundance, from challenge to conquest, from personal...

"As long as he can remember, Xian has wanted to be a great calligrapher, like his father. When he turns six, he's finally old enough to start studying. Calligraphy is more than writing--it's painting--and Xian learns how much work and creativity go into what look like effortless strokes. Based on stories still told about Xian and his father, famous calligraphers of the 4th century, Eighteen Vats of Water is about determination, creativity, and learning...