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Amara and the Bats
by Emma Reynolds (Author / Illustrator)
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Booktalk: Amara loves bats! Her favorite thing to do is to collect bat facts and watch the amazing mammals fly at night by her house. But when Amara moves to a new town, she learns that her beloved bats no longer roost nearby because so many trees are being cut down.

Amara is upset. What can she do to help? She’s just one person, and the problem feels so much bigger than her. But after doing some research, she discovers that there are many young people making big changes all around the world. Inspired to take action, Amara gathers her new friends to help save the bats. Together, she knows they can make a difference!

Snippet:

Home is Not a Country
by Safia Elhillo (Author)
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Booktalk: Nima wishes she were someone else. She doesn’t feel understood by her mother, who grew up in a different land. She doesn’t feel accepted in her suburban town; yet somehow, she isn’t different enough to belong elsewhere. Her best friend, Haitham, is the only person with whom she can truly be herself. Until she can’t, and suddenly her only refuge is gone.

As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen–the name her parents meant to give her at birth–Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might be more real than Nima knows.

And the life Nima wishes were someone else’s. . . is one she will need to fight for with a fierceness she never knew she possessed.

Snippet:
Baba

The photographs of my father are everywhere

alone in a suit framed in the living room

seated with his afro full taped to the mirror of my mother’s dresser

in the one on the coffee table he stares awestruck at his bride

a passport picture in mama’s wallet a single furrow in his brow

i like the one of him younger rounded & serious as a child

dusty-kneed as a teenager crowded with other boys arund a ball

before the car crash that took him from knowing me

before the father-sized ache before my mother all alone

still crowding herself to one side of the bed saving his place

soft browns of sepia photos
making him impossibly far away

A 2021 Cybils Poetry nominee