From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up—More than four dozen teen writers at San Francisco's Galileo Academy of Science & Technology contributed stories about families, fate, journeys, survival, celebrations, and other themes to this collection. While several adults helped to guide the editing and publishing process, teens also worked as editors and advisors as the project moved from creative spark to completion. Because many of Galileo's students are youth of color and/or immigrants or children of immigrants from almost every continent, cross-cultural settings and events predominate. Some of these stories are exquisitely polished: Kevin Tran's "My Uncle's War" and Elvir Becirovic's "Salko and Elena" stand out as the works of accomplished authors. The majority of pieces, however, read like the well-executed high-school essays that they are. That their writers were able to work together to bring their voices to publication is as important as the content of any of the individual pieces. Teen writers will be inspired and teachers will find abundant ways to use these almost entirely first-person accounts as supplements to English and social-studies curricula.—
Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.