©2025, 2024 Cooperative Children's Book Center

In 2023, Wisconsin Act 266 was amended to include teaching about the Hmong and Asian Americans in Wisconsin schools.

This bibliography is comprised of selected trade books for children and teens that reflect dimensions of Hmong and Asian American identities and experiences. The list includes picture book stories, novels, informational books, and graphic novels, most of them published in the past five years. All of the books were included in various editions of CCBC Choices, our annual best-of-the-year list.

Across this list are books examining Asian American history, and contemporary Asian American lives, both fictional and real. The fictional books traverse a wide range of themes, many of them universal to growing up (family, friendship, coming of age). Likewise, they reflect various genres, from historical fiction to contemporary realism, humor, and romance. Culture is often but not always a major theme of the fictional stories, even as it's critical to a specific character's identity.

Finally, even as each book is welcome, it's important to keep in mind that no book or group of books can possibly speak to an entire group's experience. To that end, we hope the books on this list, which range from entertaining to enlightening, can be used within (and beyond) the curriculum in conjunction with other resources as starting points to begin to illuminate the diverse identities and experiences encompassed in being “Asian American.”

List Organization: The list is organized by grade band range as follows:

• Books for PreK to Grade 3
• Books for Grades 4-7
• Books for Grades 8-12

Within each grade band, it is organized by specific identities. There are multiple books for some of these identity categories, and only one or two for others.

Sources for Additional Books and Resources:

• CCBC-Recommended Book Search, our searchable database of books we’ve recommended, most in the past 15 years.
  • Select “Asian” under the “Diversity Subject” dropdown filter* and/OR
  • Select “Subject” in the left Search box and enter specific identity* (e.g, Filipino, Hmong, Korean, Taiwanese, etc.)
  • Use “Ages,” "Format," "Publication Year" and other filters as desired
    
    *Both of these search strategies will require clicking on the title to read our full book description in order to determine if the book is set in/about people in the United States, or if its set in/about people of this heritage in other countries around the world. Use the "Add to My List" feature to create a custom list you can print or export.

• Asian Pacific American Youth Literature Award of the Asian Pacific American Library Association: Annual award of winners and honor books in three youth age range categories (there are also adult categories)
• Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Hmong and Asian American Studies: Suggested Resources