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   Every country has its customs — in Haiti, when a child is born a tree is planted. That’s exactly what young Facile wants to do in “Circles of Hope,” a heart-rending book by Karen Lynn Williams.
   Facile feels bad when his sister comes into the world because he wants to give her a special present. As he sits in a mango tree his father planted in honor of his birth, Facile knows what he’ll do. He will take one of the mango seeds and plant baby Lucia a tree of her own, so she’ll always have good luck.
   Alas, poor Facile has the worst time imaginable. When the first seed sprouts a goat gobbles it up. The second leafy sprout is washed away and the third is destroyed in a fire. As if that isn’t bad enough, his sister takes ill. Now she needs a good luck tree more than ever.
   When his uncle urges him to have hope, a solution appears and soon Lucia’s tree becomes a reality. Simple, bright pictures by Linda Saport beautifully illustrate Facile’s struggle and eventual success.

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   Imagine being a girl and not being able to get an education. That was the case in Afghanistan when the Taliban reigned from 1996-2001.
   “Nasreen’s Secret School” by Jeanette Winter is the fictional story of a girl from the city of Herat whose grandmother was determined that she would learn — at any cost. When Nasreen’s father is kidnapped by the Taliban, and her mother goes looking for him and doesn’t return, Nasreen and her grandmother are traumatized.
   Instead of doing nothing, Nasreen’s grandmother fights back in a peaceful way — she sees to it that Nasreen get the education she’s entitled to. The grandmother finds a secret school and walks Nasreen to the closed green door, where learning opens up a whole new world.
   Based on a true story, Nasreen’s quest for knowledge is revealed in sparse text and in brilliantly detailed illustrations framed on each page.

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   Drought forces a family from their village in India to the overcrowded city of Mumbai. There a boy is separated from his family, and enslaved to produce trinkets that will be sold in the Western world.
   That’s the premise of a moving new novel, “Boys Without Names,” by Kashmira Sheth. Eleven-year-old Gopal is distraught when his father tells him they will be moving. But there will be work in the city, and a place for the family to live.
   It’s a wise plan but there’s trouble from the onset. Gopal’s father is separated from his family, who don’t know how to make their way to Mumbai, and when they do, soon run out of money.
   Gopal feels an obligation to put food on the table. He falls for the lies of a boy who says he can get him a job in a factory. But Gopal is tricked—drugged, kidnapped and forced to work in a boarded-up building for hours on end alongside other boys who have been taken by force.
   Though “Boys Without Names” is a work of fiction, its author includes notes in the back of the novel detailing statistics of child labor in India.