Immigration to the United States: Books

Immigrants and generations of their descendants have defined the American nation from its beginning and continue to provide America's characteristic diversity, representing practically every race, nationality, religion, and ethnic group around the world.

Young immigrants from foreign countries relate their experiences in the United States.

"In the News focuses on four controversial issues facing the world today. Form the war on terrorism to efforts at improving food safety, the issues are clearly defined and considered from every viewpoint. Each book includes thought-provoking sidebars to encourage further discussion.

An account of the immigration to the United States from 1880 to 1920.

In this eye-opening book that will make the immigration experience real for everyone, award-winning author Janet Bode talks to people whose ancestors were slaves or slave owners, European craftspeople, Irish farmers, and many others.

Discusses cases from the history of immigration in the U.S. in which immigrants are denied, such as the people aboard "The St. Louis" who were sent back to Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, the detained, such as Japanese Americans during WWII, and the deported, such as Emma Goldman, who was sent back to Russia in 1919 after living in the U.S. for thirty years.

Throughout his presidency, John F. Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, people who deserve the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland.

In their own words, coupled with hand-painted collage illustrations, immigrants recall their arrival in the United States. Includes brief biographies and facts about the Ellis Island Oral History Project.

Learn basic history by visiting communities from our past. Each book is filled with photos and reconstruction artwork covering topics such as food, clothing, shelter, education, play, communication, and family life. View important political and geographical events through the lens of everyday life.

Fourteen-year-old Calogero Scalise and his Sicilian uncles and cousin live in small-town Louisiana in 1898, when Jim Crow laws rule and anti-immigration sentiment is strong, so despite his attempts to be polite and to follow American customs, disaster dogs his family at every turn.

In 1892, nine-year-old Dom's mother puts him on a ship leaving Italy, bound for America. He is a stowaway, traveling alone and with nothing of value except for a new pair of shoes from his mother. In the turbulent world of homeless children in Manhattan's Five Points, Dom learns street smarts, and not only survives, but thrives by starting his own business. A vivid, fascinating story of an exceptional boy, based in part on the author's grandfather.

In this debut novel, a young girl describes her family's bittersweet experience in the United States after their emigration from Korea. Four years old on the flight to California, Young Ju concludes that America is heaven. But when they arrive, they are weighed down by the difficulty of learning English, their insular family life, and the traditions of the country they left behind.

After soldiers kill his family, twelve-year-old Santiago and his four-year-old sister flee Guatemala in a kayak and try to reach the United States.

In letters to her cousin, a young Jewish girl chronicles her family's flight from Russia in 1919 and her own experiences when she must be left in Belgium for a while when the others emigrate to America.

When thirteen-year-old Dina emigrates from Germany to America in 1871, her only wish is to return home as soon as she can, but as the months pass and she survives a multitude of hardships living with her uncle and his young wife and baby, she finds herself thinking of Brooklyn as her home.

Jeannie and Sarah, tell their separate yet tightly interwoven stories in alternating narrative poems. Jeannie, who leaves Scotland during the Highland Clearances with her father, mother, and the younger children, and Sarah, who hides so she can stay behind with her grandmother - carries a length of the other's hair braided with her own. The braid binds them together when they are worlds apart and reminds them of who they used to be before they were evicted from the Western Isles.

Sixteen-year-old Margaret Rose Nolan, newly arrived from Ireland, finds work at New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory shortly before the 1911 fire in which 146 employees died.

When fifteen-year-old Miguel's time finally comes to leave his poor Mexican village, cross the border illegally, and join his parents in California, his younger sister's determination to join him soon imperils them both.