young adult Archives - Page 29 of 103

Me (Moth)
by Amber McBride (Author)
@ Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound

Booktalk: Moth has lost her family in an accident. Though she lives with her aunt, she feels alone and uprooted.

Until she meets Sani, a boy who is also searching for his roots. If he knows more about where he comes from, maybe he’ll be able to understand his ongoing depression. And if Moth can help him feel grounded, then perhaps she too will discover the history she carries in her bones.

Moth and Sani take a road trip that has them chasing ghosts and searching for ancestors.

Snippet:
Maybe moving forward in this car
will help fill in Sani’s emptiness.

Sani adjusts the rearview mirror.
We are leaving the First World,
the world of darkness (Ni’hodilhil)
where the Diné start their journey to the present.

A 2021 Cybils Poetry nominee

Averee
by Stephanie Phillips (Author), Dave Johnson (Author) and Marika Cresta (Artist)
@ Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound

Booktalk: A world where social rank rules and your status sets your inevitable course in life – sound familiar? Just imagine if it was all controlled by an app! In Averee’s world, the usual trials of making your way into adulthood come with the added stress of Ranked, a ubiquitous and all-knowing tech innovation that awards you points for socially acceptable behavior and takes them away when you don’t conform. It seems fun enough at first, but it becomes much more than a game when Averee’s rank suddenly drops overnight. Now she’s getting hassled at school, blocked from her favorite restaurants, and her mom is out of a job.

Luckily for our hero, she has Zoe – a bottom-ranked BFF – whose open disdain for all things Ranked makes her the perfect accomplice on what’s about to be the heist of the century: they’re staging a raid on the app’s corporate HQ to set things right and its spokesperson, the virtual popstar Pretty Kitty, is in their sights. With Averee’s crush Luke in tow, these friends are in way over their heads and they’re about to learn that the “right” they’re fighting for may be on a global scale.

Snippet: