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Any reader looking for a book that teaches middle schoolers to talk back to power and to channel anger into productive civic action will find that Unfadeable by Maurice Broaddus is a prime candidate. Broaddus paints the character of his protagonist, Isabella Fades, aka Unfadeable or Bella, as a confident tagger and painter of murals in her Indiana neighborhood. Both strong and stubborn, thirteen-year-old Bella is unintimidated by adults and fighting to make the world a prettier place. She’s also homeless and hiding that fact from the powers that be. When she approaches the city to secure money for a youth arts program to beautify herRead More →

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Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam have teamed up to co-author Punching the Air, an important book about the cycle of racial injustice that continues to plague this country, especially in regards to the unfairness of our criminal justice system. Readers of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo will likely be fans of this book. Punching the Air features Amal, a sixteen-year-old art student who dreams, writes poetry, draws, paints, and rides his skateboard. On a fateful night, he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, choices and circumstances that completely upend his life. A fallen angel, Amal—whose name coincidentally means hope—hasRead More →