Two families – one in Sydney, Australia, the other in southern Morocco’s Valley of Roses (“famous for its rose perfume,” Baker adds in the final author’s note) – experience what seem to be very different lives, thousands of miles apart.

Turn the pages together on either side, and through exquisite, multi-layered collage, Baker creates a wordless journey of two families going about their busy day. “But some things connect them,” Baker writes on the first page, “just as some things are the same for all families no matter where they live.” Indeed each facing set of pages provide hide-and-seek details that actually connect us all together … no spoilers here … you’ll need to cuddle up with a young ‘un to find a few for yourselves!

“The idea for this book came from my delight traveling in a country very different from my own,” explains Baker at book’s end. “At the time, in my own country, there was much political poisoning of attitudes toward foreigners and foreignness.” Traveling as a “stranger” herself, what Baker realized was not so much that outward differences mattered, but “[i]nwardly we are so alike, it could be each other we see when we look in a mirror.”

Her resulting book could not be a better reminder of the same, shared goals of people everywhere: to be loved by family and friends, to be a part of a community, to belong. Regardless of specific circumstances, our connections define and make us human. While celebrating the unique cultures and traditions that give us our diverse heritages, Baker reminds us with clear, undeniable proof that we are all an interconnected community.

Go get a copy right now. Share it with your children, your immigrant neighbors, yourself. Language not required. Just a few moments of your humanity …

Readers: All

Published: 2010

Azel’s sister Kenza soon follows as Miguel’s legal ”wife,” but insists on remaining independent. Unable to come to terms with his exploited sexuality – not to mention his dissolute existence – Azel falls victim to his own sense of trapped failure.

Already a bestseller in France where it was first published (Jelloun is a Moroccan transplant who immigrated to France in 1961), Leaving adroitly explores the complicated issues of immigration, contrasting two cultures separated merely by the few miles of the Straits of Gibraltar, and yet so vastly distanced by socio-economic differences.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2009 (United States)

As far as memoirs go, this one is sensational – literally. It’s got fairy-tale royal life. It’s got a political coup. It’s got deprivation and suffering during a decades-long prison sentence. It’s even got film written all over it (Talk Miramax is the publisher, after all).

The book opens with a preface by co-author Fitoussi who waxes about seeing this mysterious, beautiful woman from afar at a Paris party. They become friends, Oufkir needs to get her story out to “exorcise the painful past” so Fitoussi drops everything to transcribe it for her. Thus, Stolen Lives begins.

Malika Oufkir, whose first name means “queen” in Arabic, was presciently (and later, ironically) named. As the first child of a powerful and affluent family, she was indeed the “little queen” in the eyes of her father, General Muhammad Oufkir. …[click here for more]

Review: Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 2001

Readers: Adult

Published: 2001 (United States)

The prolific Demi is the author/illustrator of over a hundred books for children. Her full name, for the curious, is Charlotte Demi Hunt Huang. She comes for a long line of fine artists … and she’s Chinese American by marriage to Tze-si Jesse Huang.

Review: “Asian American Titles,” What Do I Read Next? Multicultural Literature, Gale Research, 1997

Readers: Children

Published: 1991