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Not only is 14-year-old Staggerlee self-named, she is a child of the county’s only interracial marriage. Moreover, Staggerlee is struggling with an attraction to other girls, something that she can share only with a 14-year-old cousin who visits for the summer.

This dystopian fantasy features a televised reality show in which two teenage representatives from each “district” must fight until only one is left standing. 

Image and text combine in a unique presentation to tell the story of an orphan boy who lives between the walls of a Paris train station and repairs its clocks. Monochromatic illustrations change perspective and move in and out, and alternate with text to tell this mysterious, breathtaking, and riveting tale. Winner of the 2008 Caldecott Medal.

Seventeen-year-old Biddy Owens is part of the Birmingham Black Barons baseball team and dreams of becoming a major league baseball player. However, in 1948 most black players can only play for the Negro Leagues. Jackie Robinson has just recently integrated and is playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but the white owners are reluctant to add too many blacks to their rosters. The Birmingham Black Barons are some of the best players in the league. But as they travel around playing ball, Biddy realizes that not everyone is ready for blacks and whites to play on the same team. 

A title in the Dear America historical fiction book series, The Journal of Douglas Allen Deeds tells the story of the doomed Donner Party expedition, as seen through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old orphan that survived the cold winter of starvation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The tale of a young Irish-American who aspires to be a reporter, while supporting his widowed mother and siblings by selling newspapers. From the My Name is America series.

With haunting echoes of the current refugee crisis this beautifully illustrated book explores the unimaginable decisions made as a family leave their home and everything they know to escape the turmoil and tragedy brought by war. This book will stay with you long after the last page is turned.

Twelve-year-old Charlie is down on his luck: His sharecropper father just died and Cap’n Buck has come to collect a debt. Fearing for his life, Charlie strikes a deal with Cap’n Buck and agrees to track down some folks accused of stealing. It’s not too bad of a bargain until he comes face-to-face with the fugitives and discovers their true identities. Torn between his guilty conscience and his survival instinct, Charlie needs to figure out his next move - and soon.

When an out-of-season hurricane sweeps through Corinne’s seaside village, Corinne knows it’s not an ordinary storm. At first Corinne believes Mama D’Leau, the powerful and cruel jumbie who rules the ocean, has caused the hurricane. Then an even more ferocious storm wrecks the island, sending villagers fleeing their houses for shelter in the mountains, and Corinne discovers the storms weren’t caused by a jumbie, but by the angry god Huracan. Now Corinne, with the help of her friends and even some of her enemies, must race against time to find out what has angered Huracan and try to fix it before her island home is destroyed forever. 

Corinne La Mer claims she isn’t afraid of anything. Not scorpions, not the boys who tease her, and certainly not jumbies. They’re just tricksters made up by parents to frighten their children. Then one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest, and shining yellow eyes follow her to the edge of the trees. They couldn’t belong to a jumbie. Or could they? Based on the stories she heard as a child growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, Tracey Baptiste weaves folklore from the Caribbean throughout this spooky tale. First book in The Jumbies series.

Years after he flees Afghanistan, Amir, now an American citizen, returns to his native land and attempts to atone for the betrayal of his best friend before he fled Kabul and the Taliban.

Henry Townsend, a farmer, boot maker, and former slave, through the surprising twists and unforeseen turns of life in antebellum Virginia, becomes proprietor of his own plantation—as well his own slaves. When he dies, things begin to fall apart at the plantation: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families who had once found love under the weight of slavery begin to betray one another. Beyond the Townsend household, the known world also unravels: low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave “speculators” sell free black people into slavery, and rumors of slave rebellions set white families against slaves who have served them for years.

Soledad has always been able to escape into the stories she creates, just like her mother always could. And Soledad has needed that escape more than ever in the five years since her mother and sister died, and her father moved Sol and her youngest sister from the Philippines to Louisiana. After her father leaves, all Sol and Ming have is their evil stepmother, Vea. Sol has protected Ming all this time, but then Ming begins to believe that Auntie Jove — their mythical, world-traveling aunt — is really going to come rescue them. Can Sol protect Ming from this impossible hope?

Inspired by myth, fairy tale, and folklore, this atmospheric collection of short stories is filled with betrayals, revenge, sacrifice, and love. These tales take the reader to lands both familiar and strange ― to a fully realized world of dangerous magic that millions have visited through the novels of the Grishaverse.

Twelve-year-old Tom leaves his family to apprentice with The Spook, whose job is to protect the village from witches, boggarts, and other creatures. When Tom makes some terrible mistakes, he seems destined for a horrific fate.

Unless you are one of the genetically improved that are permitted to live in Eden, you live in the Urb, the ragged ruins of a once great city. Spaz lives there, surviving by stealing for the gang lead by Billy Bizmo. When Spaz is ordered to rob Ryter, he gets more than the old man’s meager possessions — he finds a friend who is willing to help him help his dying sister.

Higuera’s middle-grades dystopian novel, weaves together Mexican folklore and science fiction through the eyes of aspiring storyteller Petra Peña who awakens on a new planet hundreds of years after Earth’s destruction, the only person alive who holds the stories of the past, and any hope for the future.

When adventurous Black cousins Otto and Sheed Alston accidentally extend the last day of summer by freezing time, they find the secrets hidden between the unmoving seconds, minutes, and hours are not the endless fun they expected.

In 1944, as World War II is  raging across Europe, fifteen-year-old Jack Raab  dreams of being a hero. Leaving New York City, his  family, and his boyhood behind, Jack uses a false  I.D. and lies his way into the U.S. Air  Force.

Greg doesn’t think he needs a resolution for the New Year; he’d be hard to improve on. But he’s not sure his parents agree. Once again, family and school lives are revealed with ardent honesty through Greg’s voice and comic drawings.

Rook Barkwater lives in the network of sewer-chambers beneath Undertown, the bustling main city of the Edgeworld. He dreams of becoming a librarian knight – one of those sent out to explore the mysteries of their world. Breaking all the rules, he sets out on a journey to the Free Glades and beyond. His luck and determination lead him from one peril to another until, buried in the heart of the Deepwoods, Rock encounters a mysterious character—the last sky pirate—and is thrust into a bold adventure that dares to challenge the might of the dreaded Guardians of the night.

The scariest story you will ever read about quantum physics! Gary is confined to a wheelchair, and his older sister Susan must act as his caretaker over the summer. While exploring the maze in their garden that seems somehow connected to Gary’s illness, they make a startling discovery.

Turned out of the only home she has known, Black sixteen-year-old Charlese Jones is on a bus heading to Alabama when she is lured into the dangerous web of human trafficking.

Opposing slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century was dangerous. The most daring abolitionists were poets who veiled their work in metaphor. Of these, the boldest was Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, nicknamed Tula. In passionate, accessible free verse, Engle evokes the voice of this book-loving feminist and abolitionist who bravely resisted an arranged marriage at the age of fourteen and was ultimately courageous enough to fight against injustice. Historical notes, excerpts, and source notes round out this exceptional tribute.