On the Block: Stories of Home
edited by Ellen Oh
Intermediate, Middle School    Crown    208 pp.
10/24    9780593648445    $17.99
Library ed.  9780593648452    $20.99
e-book ed.  9780593648469    $10.99

Composed of twelve stories written by a dozen different authors, this We Need Diverse Books anthology is organized by apartment number in a New York City building. Each tale is narrated by a young person from one of the building’s immigrant families. Ro Chen, in Andrea Wang’s entry, attends Chinese school on the weekends and wants to join the lion dancing class, which seems limited to boys only. Yaniel Fernandez, in Adrianna Cuevas’s story, learns that his abuela, who works in a school cafeteria, was once a civil engineer in Cuba who designed bridges. Alex Kim, in Oh’s tale, secretly leaves Korean food for a cranky neighbor. Through its series of brief slice-of-life vignettes, the collection paints a vivid picture of urban life for the children of immigrant parents. Immigrant experiences are a thread that connects each story, but it is neither a single experience nor the sole focus—it’s something shifting, multifaceted, and multidimensional that coalesces in the closing scene: a building potluck party. While the offerings are interconnected, many individual pieces will stay with readers for a long time. An engaging, thought-provoking collection that can be read from front to back for a more novelistic approach or experienced (and savored) by dipping in and out.

From the March/April 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.