Barely Floating by Lilliam RiveraIntermediate, Middle School Kokila/Penguin 240 pp.8/23 9780593323120 $17.99e-book ed. 9780593323144 $10.99Twelve-year-old first-person narrator Nat (short for Natalia de la Cruz Rivera y Santiago) is all about body positivity and female strength. She feels conflicted, however, when her mother’s values around feminism clash with her own love...
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline High School Tundra 280 pp. 4/23 9780735265639 $17.99 e-book ed. 9780735265646 $10.99 First-person narrator Winifred, a Canadian teen of Métis and European descent, lives in present-day Toronto with her father, who is a crematory operator, on the grounds of the cemetery, between...
The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto by Adrianna CuevasIntermediate, Middle School Farrar 304 pp. 4/23 9780374390433 $17.99Cuevas (The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez; Cuba in My Pocket, rev. 11/21) presents another humorous, sensitive, and compelling story, with hints of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Rafael, a twelve-year-old Cuban American from Miami,...
Weird Rules to Follow by Kim SpencerIntermediate Orca 192 pp.10/22 Paper ed. 9781459835580 $12.95e-book ed. 9781459835603 $9.99Mia, a Tsimshian tween, is growing up in the 1980s in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. She describes not only making giggly prank calls and getting ill-advised perms but also microaggressions and racism. When her...
My Good Man by Eric Gansworth; illus. by the authorHigh School Levine Querido 414 pp.11/22 9781646141838 $21.99Border-crossing is a major theme of Gansworth’s (Onondaga Nation) complex novel, set on the Tuscarora Reservation. The novel itself also traverses a border: not between the U.S. and Canada but between YA and adult...
Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers; illus. by Jeff Edwards High School Levine Querido 336 pp. g 10/22 978-1-64614-179-1 $19.99 In her debut YA novel, Cherokee writer Rogers distills two centuries of realistic intergenerational trauma into eighteen short horror stories linked by family connections. From the first story, set...
Still This Love Goes On by Buffy Sainte-Marie; illus. by Julie Flett Primary Greystone Kids 32 pp. g 9/22 978-1-77164-807-3 $18.95 e-book ed. 978-1-77164-808-0 $18.95 Sainte-Marie’s (Cree First Nation) 2008 song about wintertime on the Cree reserve in Alberta has here been reinterpreted as a picture...
My Town / Mi pueblo by Nicholas Solis; illus. by Luisa Uribe Primary Paulsen/Penguin 32 pp. g 8/22 978-0-593-10991-5 $17.99 e-book ed. 978-0-593-10992-2 $10.99 This enjoyable bilingual picture book highlights cousins on each side of the U.S./Mexico border. English text narrates the U.S. (girl) cousin’s point of view,...
Alicia and the Hurricane / Alicia y el huracán: A Story of Puerto Rico /Un cuento de Puerto Rico by Lesléa Newman; illus. by Elizabeth Erazo Baez; trans. into Spanish by Georgina LázaroPrimary Children’s/Lee & Low 40 pp. g4/22 978-0-89239-455-5 $19.95Newman wrote this book in the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane...