'We are different ages, genders, tribes, tongues, and traditions ... but tonight we all SLAY' Black Panther meets Ready Player One. A fierce teen game developer battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther-inspired video game she created and the safe community it represents for black gamers. By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is a college student, and one of the only black kids at Jefferson Academy. By night, she joins hundreds of thousands of black gamers who duel worl...
A debut YA novel-in-verse by Amber McBride, Me (Moth) is about a teen girl who is grieving the deaths of her family, and a teen boy who crosses her path.Moth has lost her family in an accident. Though she lives with her aunt, she feels alone and uprooted.Until she meets Sani, a boy who is also searching for his roots. If he knows more about where he comes from, maybe he’ll be able to understand his ongoing depression. And if Moth can help him feel grounded, then perhaps she too will discover the...
The Awakening of Malcolm X
by Ilyasah Shabazz and Tiffany D. Jackson
No one can be at peace until he has his freedom. In Charlestown Prison, Malcolm Little struggles with the weight of his past. Plagued by nightmares, he drifts through days unsure of his future. Slowly, he befriends other prisoners and writes to his family. He reads all the books in the prison library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm grapples with race, politics, religion, and justice in the 1940s. And as his time in jail comes to an end, he begins to awaken - emerging fro...
The Hate U Give meets Shadowshaper in Bethany C. Morrow's A Chorus Rises, a brilliant contemporary fantasy set in the world of A Song Below Water.Teen influencer Naema Bradshaw has it all: she's famous, privileged, has “the good hair”— and she’s an Eloko, a person who’s gifted with a song that woos anyone who hears it. Everyone loves her — well, until she's cast as the awful person who exposed Tavia’s secret siren powers.Now, she's being dragged by the media. No one understands her side: not her...
Like lightning/you strike/fast and free/legs zoom/down field/eyes fixed/on the checkered ball/on the goal/ten yards to go/can't nobody stop you/can't nobody cop you... Twelve-year-old Nick is a football-mad boy who absolutely hates books. In this follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel The Crossover, football, family, love, and friendship take centre stage as Nick tries to figure out how to navigate his parents' break-up, stand up to bullies, and impress the girl of his dreams. These challenges...
In Queens, New York, ten-year-old Akilah is determined to find out why her closest friend, Victoria, is silent and withdrawn after returning from a trip to her homeland, Nigeria.
When Rufus Henry gets out of work camp for Grand Theft Auto, he has only one place to go? back to Durango Street. Almost right away, he gets on the wrong side of the Gassers, has to join the rival Moors? and starts running for his life. Years ahead of its time, Durango Street, like The Outsiders, shows that gang violence is, sadly, nothing new? and nothing glamorous."A starkly realistic, convincing, well-written teen novel." ? School Library Journal
"To know things, for us to know things, is bad for them. We get to wanting and when we get to wanting it's bad for them. They thinks we want what they got . . . . That's why they don't want us reading." --Nightjohn "I didn't know what letters was, not what they meant, but I thought it might be something I wanted to know. To learn." -- Sarny Sarny, a female slave at the Waller plantation, first sees Nightjohn when he is brought there with a rope around his neck, his body covered in scars....
**A New York Times Best Romance Book of the Year** A swoony, heart-melting YA romance from beloved author Rebekah Weatherspoon about two awkward teens who decide to practice dating in order to be good at the real thing. Perfect for fans of Nicola Yoon and Jenny Han. Sixteen-year-old Bethany Greene, though confident and self-assured, is what they call a late-bloomer. She’s never had a boyfriend, date, or first kiss. She’s determined to change that but after her crush turns her down cold for Hom...
Denim Diaries 4: Broken Promises (Denim Diaries, #4)
by Darrien Lee
Jumping double-dutch is 12-year-old Tiffany’s favorite pastime. She’s the most talented jumper at her school, incorporating flips and stunts into her routine. All that practice has made her the best in the mid-state area, good enough to enter into an upcoming competition. Then suddenly, her demeanor changes and she stops jumping rope altogether. Her mother, who wasn’t thrilled about Tiffany’s obsession in the first place, easily accepts her excuse that she’s just not feeling well. Tiffany’s...
The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul volunteers at a Harlem soup kitchen where he listens to lessons about "the social contract" from an elderly African American man, and mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a basketball scholarship.
That’s right! It’s all about the B.G.R. sisterhood, the most notorious and respected gang in Scotland Heights. In spite of her gang’s powerful reputation, seventeen-year-old Patience is ready to step down as B.G.R.’s leader. The problem is that the same way she was jumped into the gang is the only way the other members will let her out—if they’ll let her out at all. As Patience plans her farewell from the hood, Denim Mitchell overhears that Patience is being setup by her own B.G.R. sist...
Darkness Before Dawn (Hazelwood High Trilogy, #3)
by Sharon M Draper
Hope shines in the face of fear in this conclusion to Sharon M. Draper’s award-winning Hazelwood High trilogy. In her senior year, things are finally looking a little brighter for Keisha. Still haunted by the suicide of her ex-boyfriend, Andy, she finds comfort in the attentions of the new track coach, twenty-three-year-old Jonathan Hathaway, the principal’s son. How can Keisha not be swept off her feet by a tall, dark, handsome “lemon drop wrapped in licorice” who treats her like a woman, not...
When Mina Mooney betrays the clique's year-long virginity pact, she fears that her best friend Lizzie will never forgive her, while Kelly is only too happy to take things slowly with Greg, and Jacinta has a pregnancy scare.
An unforgettable novel, based on a true story, about racism against Italian Americans in the South in 1899. Fourteen-year-old Calogero, his uncles, and his cousins are six Sicilians living in the small town of Tallulah, Louisiana, miles from any of their countrymen. They grow vegetables and sell them at their stand and in their grocery store. Some people welcome the immigrants; most do not. Calogero's family is caught in the middle of tensions between the black and white communities. As Cal...
Star high-school quarterback Romeo has everything on the right track until his older brother Kwame gets out of jail, their absentee mother returns to their lives, and Romeo's girlfriend Ngiai wants a serious relationship.