Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy

"I traced the letters in the dust with my finger, spelling out my name: Zulaikha."

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Zulaikha, a thirteen-year-old girl in Afghanistan, faces a series of frightening but exhilirating changes in her life as she defies her father and secretly meets with an old woman who teaches her to read, her older sister gets married, and American troops offer her surgery to fix her disfiguring cleft lip.

Arthur A. Levine; 266 pages

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

"Marcelo, are you ready?"

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Abstract: Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, faces new challenges, including romance and injustice, when he goes to work for his father in the mailroom of a corporate law firm.

Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books; 312 pages