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Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship — the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

Launched into the world of Hindu gods, Aru faces the Sleeper demon from the Lamp of Bharata—in her Spider-Man pajamas.

Nadira’s family has lived a law-abiding — but illegal — existence since arriving in the U.S. from Bangladesh years ago. During a post-9/11 crackdown, her father is discovered and the possibility of deportation hangs heavy over their lives.

By winning the state high school basketball championship in 1955, ten teens from an Indianapolis school meant to be the centerpiece of racially segregated education in the state shattered the myth of their inferiority. Anchored by the astonishing Oscar Robertson, a future college and NBA star, the Crispus Attucks Tigers went down in history as the first state champions from Indianapolis and the first all-black team in U.S. history to win a racially open championship tournament—an integration they had forced with their on-court prowess. From native Hoosier and award-winning author Phillip Hoose comes this true story of a team up against impossible odds, making a difference when it mattered most.

“Ezra looks like any other sixth grader with faded jeans, turned around cap and a mess of chestnut curls. You see, my brother is like any other eleven-year-old except when he isn’t.“ This story follows 14-year-old Jenny as she describes her day-to-day life with her younger autistic brother, Ezra. Ezra can be both her best friend as well as her biggest obstacle to living a normal life, and Jenny often finds herself stuck worrying about her younger brother. Through taking care of Ezra and a very special school project, Jenny ends up learning about her own character and strengths, and a way to shine despite everything else.

Aya lives in the Ivory Coast in the late 1970s, before civil war decimated the country. This is a view of African life not often shown in contemporary fiction—an Africa not unlike the West, told through the eyes of three girlfriends deciding between marriage, men and career.

While his father is in prison for treating a leader of the democracy movement, 15-year-old Chiko is drafted into the Burmese military. Trained to fight the rebel Karenni people, Chiko soon finds himself at the mercy of a young Karenni rebel fighter whose village was attacked by Burmese soldiers. Will the two remain enemies?

In 1983 during South Korea’s Fifth Republic, apolitical Kim Hyun Sook seeks refuge in books at college and finds herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. 

Before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, Black athletes played in the Negro Leagues — on teams coached by Black managers, cheered on by Black fans, and often run by Black owners. Here is the riveting true story of the woman at the center of the Black baseball world: Effa Manley, co-owner and business manager of the Newark Eagles. Elegant yet gutsy, she cultivated a powerhouse team. Yet just as her Eagles reached their pinnacle, so did calls to integrate baseball, a move that would all but extinguish the Negro Leagues. On and off the field, Effa hated to lose. She had devoted her life to Black empowerment — but in the battle for Black baseball, was the game rigged against her? 

During World War II, Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps. Isolated and bored, baseball became a life and soul-saving pastime which successfully brought very different people together. Darkly hued illustrations evoke the difficulty of the time, based on the author’s family story. Spanish version available.

Michelle Robinson was born on the South Side of Chicago. From her modest beginnings, she would become Michelle Obama, the inspiring and powerful First Lady of the United States, when her husband, Barack Obama, was elected the forty-fourth president. They would be the first Black First Family in the White House and serve the country for two terms. In this volume for young people, Michelle Obama shares her views on how all young people can help themselves as well as help others, no matter their status in life. She asks readers to realize that no one is perfect, and that the process of becoming is what matters, as finding yourself is ever evolving. In telling her story with boldness, she asks young readers: Who are you, and what do you want to become? This book is also available in Spanish.

Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Fully authorized by and written in cooperation with the Muhammad Ali estate, and vividly brought to life by Dawud Anyabwile’s dynamic artwork, Becoming Muhammad Ali captures the budding charisma and youthful personality of one of the greatest sports heroes of all time. 

ZJ’s friends Ollie, Darry and Daniel help him cope when his father, a beloved professional football player, suffers severe headaches and memory loss that spell the end of his career.

Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her 12th birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have emigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition of el Trujillo’s dictatorship. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind. New edition of Julia Alvarez’s 2004 classic. Spanish version available.

Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents, eventually becoming one of the most recognizable activists for transgender teens, children, and adults. In her remarkable memoir, Jazz reflects on these very public experiences and how they have helped shape the mainstream attitude toward the transgender community, as well as the challenges, bullying, discrimination, and rejection she has faced. Through it all, her family has been beside her on this journey, standing together against those who don’t understand the true meaning of tolerance and unconditional love. Now Jazz must learn to navigate the physical, social, and emotional upheavals of adolescence—particularly high school—complicated by the unique challenges of being a transgender teen. 

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves. 

Fourteen-year-old Louise Keller and her family leave Ohio for the Philippines in order to join a missionary camp in 1941. Soon after their arrival, the Japanese have invaded and established internment camps that Louise avoids for a time in the jungle but is later captured. This story is a bit different in that it is an American version of being held in a Japanese Internment camp established by the Japanese in the Philippines.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today’s leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination. 

Three Indian sisters are growing up in London with their widowed father, and now, his sister, their strict Auntie. The story is light, but paints a vivid picture of Indian immigrants and British culture.

Publisher description: In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District — a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America’s Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives. In a few short hours, they’d razed thirty-five square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in US history. But how did it come to pass? What exactly happened? And why are the events unknown to so many of us today? These are the questions that award-winning author Brandy Colbert seeks to answer in this unflinching nonfiction account of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

A collection of stories, comics and poems that celebrate Black boyhood from critically acclaimed Black authors including Jason Reynolds, Jerry Craft and Kwame Mbalia.

Seventeen stories that offer unique perspectives to explore what it means to be young and Black in America today.

Apple has always felt a little different from her classmates. She and her mother moved to Louisiana from the Philippines when she was little, and her mother still cooks Filipino foods and chastises Apple for becoming “too American.” When Apple’s friends turn on her and everything about her life starts to seem weird and embarrassing, Apple turns to music. If she can just save enough to buy a guitar and learn to play, maybe she can change herself. It might be the music that saves her … or it might be her two new friends, who show her how special she really is.

A summer heatwave blankets New York City in darkness. But as the city is thrown into confusion, a different kind of electricity sparks in this collection of linked stories about teens navigating life, love, and just getting by.