Isla to Island by Alexis Castellano
Nova’s Pick: Marisol lives on the beautiful island of Cuba with her parents, but with wars raging all around them, Marisol’s wonderful home becomes unsafe for her, so her parents send her to Brooklyn in the U.S. She is separated from her home, family and everything she has ever known, and thrown into this new environment to live with people she has never met, a new school, all on an entirely new country to which she has never been. The world seems dark and dreary in her new surroundings compared to her beautiful home in Cuba. But when she begins to discover things such as the library at her school, a Cuban cookbook from her teacher, and the study of flowers and trees, things begin to seem brighter.