Central Kansas Library System

In the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, ten-year-old Sasha idolizes his father, a devoted Communist, but when police take his father away and leave Sasha homeless, he is forced to examine his own perceptions, values, and beliefs.

Marta is a young girl who saw thirty miles of barbed wire appear across her city overnight, separating Berlin into West and East - with Marta's home on the Communist Bloc - controlled Eastern side. Then, just a month ago, Marta's brother became a victim of schiessbefehl, the standing order to fire upon anyone who dared pass into the West. With her family and nation both fractured, marta will soon be faced with a promising - but dangerous - opportunity....

Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists' Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed "bourgeois," and people of laughter.

In Communist China in 1966, eight-year-old Leap Forward learns about freedom while flying kites with his best friend, by trying to get a caged wild bird to sing, and through the music he is learning to play on a bamboo flute.