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Dan SaSuWeh Jones has captured a haunting period in history with his book Stealing Little Moon. In this piece of nonfiction, Jones shares the legacy of the American Indian boarding schools. Partially American history and partially a story of Jones’ family history, Stealing Little Moon recounts the hunger, emotional cruelty, extreme loneliness, and physical and spiritual abuse endured by boarding school survivors. It also tells of the courage, determination, and resilience of those who thrived or those who deserve to be memorialized. Despite the abuse the children received, their language and sense of spirituality lingered. Most of all, though, this is a story of culturalRead More →

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Lamar Giles, author of Ruin Road, takes the idea of selling one’s soul to the devil to a whole new level. His novel further reinforces the moral: Be careful what you wish for, and even suggests that sometimes fear can be a good thing. Playing wide receiver, Kincade (Cade) Webster attends Neeson Preparatory School on an athletic scholarship and dreams of playing football for Ohio State. When he makes it into the pros, he plans to take his best friends out of Jacob’s Court with him: Gabby and Booker Payne. One night, while escaping an altercation on the bus, Cade walks into Skinner’s Pawn andRead More →

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Set in Cuba and the United Stated from 1958-1961, Farewell Cuba, Mi Isla by Alexandra Diaz was inspired by history. Many readers will recall the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs, a time when Cubans fled from the tyranny of Fidel Castro, seeking refuge in Florida. While several of those refugees thought their home in the United States would be temporary, believing that the US would not allow a Communist country so close to their border, that belief did not come to pass. Borrowing from memories of her own family’s stories, Diaz creates two tween cousins, Victoria Pino del Mar and Jacqueline RomeroRead More →

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Although The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield is “another Holocaust book,” this nonfiction account retold for young readers reminds us all how vitally important it is to remember what happened “in those terrible years” (301). So as to brand their minds and inspire young readers to do whatever they can to ensure that nothing like the Holocaust ever occurs again, Dronfield captures the story of the Kleinmann family with a focus on Fritz, who is fourteen years old when the novel opens, and on Kurt, who is eight. By personalizing the tale so that readers can form connections, Dronfield buildsRead More →

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Alechia Dow writes an intriguing speculative story with her novel The Kindred. Her two protagonists—as is everyone else in the Monchuri system—have been linked with since birth. The Kindred program was created after The Second Chaos, a revolution in which the poor rose up demanding that their voices be heard by the rich. Maru’s top scientists created the mind pairing idea as a solution. Because those who are paired come to know each other’s thoughts so intimately, they often marry. However, in the case of Joy Abara and Felix Hamdi, a pairing is unlikely since he’s of royal blood and in line for the throneRead More →

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A young, Black Muslim woman living in Abington, Virginia, Sabriya (Bri) Siddiq revels in the feeling of control she has during ballet and dreams of reaching the American Ballet Theater.  When a terrorist attack happens at Union Station in Washington, D.C., all plans come to a halt. Hakeem Waters is the alleged terrorist, and with that name, people immediately assume that he’s Muslim. Soon, hate crimes are on the rise and Muslims across the country are targets. As a method of release, Bri starts blogging in what she believes is a private online journal that turns out to be public because of a setting oversight.Read More →

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Dark, gruesome, and captivating, The Keeper of Night by Kylie Lee Baker is Book One in a planned duology. In this first installment, Baker writes the story of an angry biracial girl—Ren Scarborough—who is trying to find out where she belongs. This feeling of being half and not whole, as well as the label foreigner haunts Ren, following her from London, England, where she serves as a Reaper, to Japan where Ren was born a Shinigami. In both roles, Ren, who is a descendent of darkness—made not of flesh and blood but of Death and Time—works for Death. This servitude is supposed to be sacred,Read More →

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Anyone interested in reading a book that will prompt a deeper understanding of the complexities of racism should find a copy of The Problem with the Other Side by Kwame Ivery. This occasionally humorous but heartbreaking novel follows the lives of a pair of teens in New Jersey whose sisters decide to run for study body president. By alternating between the perspectives of Sallie Walls and Ulysses Gates (aka Uly), Ivery invites his readers to confront their own biases while also considering the nuances of a mixed-race relationship in a world where two people with a simple pigmentation difference often cannot date without repercussions. WhileRead More →

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Because of her parents’ arguing at home, racist comments and insensitivity from classmates at school, stress induced anxiety, and the typical horrors of high school, Quinn Jackson keeps a journal filled with lists.  A coping mechanism of sorts, her lists serve to calm her mind, provide a sense of focus, and give her a foundation.  She also lists her goals and dreams, her fears and worries.  Her journal contains her feelings when she doesn’t know how to express them out loud. When her journal turns up missing and she instead has a red-covered spiral that belongs to Carter Bennett, Quinn determines that Carter must haveRead More →