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The House on Mango Street

The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.”

Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you’re from.

More Non-Juvenile Books

  • In When We Flew Away, critically acclaimed author Alice Hoffman tells the poignant story of Anne Frank during the harrowing times of World War II. As the Nazi occupation forces Anne and her family into hiding, she discovers her own identity and voice amidst the chaos, ultimately becoming a symbol of resilience and hope.

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  • An award-winning historian shows how girls who found self-understanding in the natural world became women who changed America.

  • George Willard is a young reporter on the Winesburg Eagle to whom, one by one, the inhabitants of Winesburg, Ohio, confide their hopes, their dreams, and their fears. This town of friendly but solitary people comes to life as Anderson’s special talent exposes the emotional undercurrents that bind its people together. In this timeless cycle of short stories, he lays bare the life of a small town in the American Midwest.