Books, videos, and websites for Third Culture Kids
This is a fictional story about a British MK attending elementary school at Chefoo School in Malaysia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It’s written as reflections of her school experiences and adventures in Malaysia since she is about to start a new boarding school in England.
Reading level: age 9-12
Adam knows that war is breaking out in the Middle East, where he lives in the fictional city of Abudai. But instead of fleeing back to Australia with his family, Adam slips away to look for his faithful dog Tara. Lost in the desert, he makes an unlikely friend in a camel boy running from his master. They must overcome cultural and language barriers (with plenty of misunderstandings of course) as they try to survive together and become true friends.
Reading level: age 10-13 years (with occasional swear words so parents be advised)
Based on the experiences of the author’s mother, this is the story of a Canadian MK who grew up in Taiwan in the early 1900s. The book follows her from her early childhood in Taiwan, to Canada where she grows up with her siblings and her mother’s relatives and afterwards her mother returns to Taiwan to rejoin her father in ministry. Her reentry experience is especially poignant, as she is given the responsibility to take care of her brother in a foreign world. But is there anyone to take care of her?
Reading level: age 10-14
Emily’s family moves from the US to Japan where her father is in charge of the small American school. In spite of her homesickness, she begins to make new friends and explore Japanese culture, and gradually she helps the other American kids in her school discover that it’s fun to learn about their overseas home, too. This book is set right after WWII and shows how Emily overcomes her fear of Japan and that people from both places can learn a lot about each other.
Reading level: age 8-12 years
Douglas Fairchild, American ambassador’s son, starts 6th grade at a new school in Washington D.C. after being kicked out of private school. He just thinks the teachers there didn’t understand him because he is from “Pefkakia” (the country in which he was born). After telling the bus driver how to drive and refusing to do his homework, Doug ends up in an after-school counseling group for the school misfits, better known as “The Twinkie Squad”. In his own eccentric way, Doug brings the group together and gains them respect from the schoolmates who used to taunt them, but only after repeated disasters and mishaps as his plans go awry. Interesting to TCKs will be the way Doug clings to the fact that he was born in Pefkakia and uses it to explain why he is different than everyone else, though he never spent actual time there. This alienates him from his peers but also helps him explain away their rejection by saying it is because they “misunderstand him.”
Reading level: age 9-12 years
Nam-Huong a Vietnamese refugee grieves the loss of her family and home. Unable to talk about her losses to the kids at school in Australia, she writes her real feelings in letters to her animal friends in Vietnam. Through a friendship with her kind teacher her grief finally finds expression, and her capacity for happiness again begins to unfold. This book is written in the yearning language of a child who has experienced great loss. Though Onion Tears is a refugee story rather than TCK, the grief of loss and moving is very relatable to TCKs and that’s why it is included on this site.
Reading level: age 8-12 years