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In much the same way that Laurie Halse Anderson with Speak in 1999 aimed to shed light on the subjects of sexual assault, mental health, and forming an identity throughout one’s teenage years, Amber Smith chronicles the challenges of Eden McCrorey in her book The Way I Am Now (2023). Raped when she was barely fourteen, Eden struggles to acknowledge compliments and accepts only the love she things she deserves. Eden is afraid she will need depression, anti-anxiety, and sleeping medication forever. Although she feels things deeply and completely, Eden disconnects herself from most of what she loves: playing the clarinet and connecting at aRead More →

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Don’t open Nadine Brandes’ newest book, Wishtress unless you’re prepared to perform some deep philosophical thinking. Brandes takes her readers on a journey with Myrthe Valling and Bastiaan Duur, one that invites reflection and soul-searching while also testing convictions. When Myrthe cries at age twelve, she learns—with dire consequences—that she is the Wishtress and that each tear she cries has the power to grant a wish. Her oma has known of her granddaughter’s power but has manipulated and oppressed her, using Myrthe as a commodity for personal gain. Myrthe would like to see her power used for social good: wishing for people to have food,Read More →

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Set in North Carolina, The Mending Summer by Ali Standish tells the story of twelve-year-old Georgia Collins whose heart is breaking as she struggles to put her Humpty Dumpty family back together. Pursuing their own dreams, her mother is studying long hours for a degree in biology so that she can work in a lab, and her accountant father moonlights as a piano player who comes home transformed by alcohol into the Shadow Man, no longer the Daddy she knows and loves. To protect Georgia from the fighting and the shame and to give herself more study time, Mama arranges for her daughter to summer inRead More →