An intersectional look at the strength we draw from our communities, our families (both blood and found) and how we can work together to make our community a better place.
Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift. She doesn't feel heard at home, and she doesn't believe what everyone else seems to at church.The one place she feels at home is at her Aunty Ehu's house: the Saturdays she shares with her extended Native Hawaiian community is the most grounding thing in her life. It is there that the pieces of her life seem to fit together. As Aouli's world constricts to what others wish she was, she loses the ability to express herself. When a new boy named Nalu shows up in her life, she wonders if love can give her the words she needs to set herself free.
Set at a classic drive-in restaurant that seems to exist in every Native community, this anthology unites the stories of teens from all kinds of backgrounds through the shared theme of Native joy, with stories and poems reflecting hope, healing, humor, love, friendship, romance, and joy. The road to Sandy June's Legendary Frybread Drive-In slips through every rez and alongside every urban Native hangout. The menu offers a rotating feast, including traditional eats and tasty snacks. But Sandy June's serves up more than food: it hosts live music, movie nights, unexpected family reunions, love long lost, and love found again. That big green-and-gold neon sign beckons to teens of every tribal Nation, often when they need it most. Featuring the voices of both new and acclaimed Indigenous writers, and edited by bestselling Muscogee author Cynthia Leitich Smith, this collection of interconnected stories serves up laughter, love, Native pride, and the world's best frybread.
Told in multiple voices, two Iraqi American best friends, a struggling teen father and the community's golden boy, see their forbidden friendship ignite a chain of events that exposes family secrets and forces them to confront questions of identity, faith, racism, and justice.
Teenaged Briseis, who possesses a supernatural power over plants, even poisonous ones, inherits a dilapidated estate in rural New York and must protect herself and her family from centuries-old secrets that threaten their lives.
Lou has enough confusion in front of her this summer. She'll be working in her family's ice-cream shack with her newly ex-boyfriend--whose kisses never made her feel desire, only discomfort--and her former best friend King, who is back in their Canadian prairie town after disappearing three years ago without a word. But when she gets a letter from her biological father--a man she hoped would stay behind bars for the rest of his life--Lou immediately knows that she cannot meet him, no matter how much he insists. While King's friendship makes Lou feel safer and warmer than she would have thought possible, when her family's business comes under threat she soon realizes that she can't ignore her father forever.
Seventeen-year-old Mira explores her queerness and navigates grief through an unlikely friendship with her deceased father's boyfriend.
When Bryce's mom walks out on her abusive boyfriend and back into jail for breaking her probation, he's left facing the summer of his junior year with no parents, no phone, and only the clothes on his back. With nowhere to call home, Bryce crashes at his grandparents' house on Wolf Creek reservation. Wolf Creek is full of memories and old friends--including Robbie and Mikayla, who hang out at the local skate park. Skateboarding reminds Bryce of his late dad: carefree, riding like he could fly. If Bryce could learn to ride like that, he'd take his crew to the top of the skateboarding championship at the end of the summer, and finally prove he's not a loser, especially to the online-famous, captivating Mikayla. Summer is looking up, even as he's falling on his face. But when a fresh loss takes Bryce down, he'll need to learn to lean on his Ojibwe community to get back on the board. Only then can he discover his father's real legacy--and the true meaning of unconditional love.
Seventeen-year-old Avery Anderson is convinced her senior year is ruined when she's uprooted from her life in DC and forced into the hostile home of her terminally ill grandmother, Mama Letty. The tension between Avery's mom and Mama Letty makes for a frosty arrival and unearths past drama they refuse to talk about. Every time Avery tries to look deeper, she's turned away, leaving her desperate to learn the secrets that split her family in two. While tempers flare in her avoidant family, Avery finds friendship in unexpected places: in Simone Cole, her captivating next-door neighbor, and Jade Oliver, daughter of the town's most prominent family-whose mother's murder remains unsolved. As the three girls grow closer-Avery and Simone's friendship blossoming into romance-the sharp-edged opinions of their small southern town begin to hint at something insidious underneath. The racist history of Bardell, Georgia is rooted in Avery's family in ways she can't even imagine. With Mama Letty's health dwindling every day, Avery must decide if digging for the truth is worth toppling the delicate relationships she's built in Bardell-or if some things are better left buried.
After Veronique's parents died, her grandmother raised her on a farm in rural Louisiana. For sixteen years, it's just been Veronique, MawMaw, and an ocean of trees. That's because Veronique has a secret--one MawMaw has warned her she must always keep safe. Veronique has the power to control the wind. But when MawMaw falls ill, Veronique is forced to move to New Orleans to live with family she never knew she had. New Orleans is a far cry from her old quiet life, but Veronique finally gets her chance for a normal life--one with school, friends, and even love. But when her new life threatens her ability to control her powers, she quickly learns that the world is bigger and more dangerous than she'd ever imagined. Veronique must uncover what MawMaw was trying to protect her from before it's too late.
Bugz is caught between two worlds. In the real world, she's a shy and self-conscious Indigenous teen who faces the stresses of teenage angst and reserve life. But in the virtual world, her alter ego is not just confident but dominant in a massive multiplayer video game universe. Feng is a teen boy who has been sent from China to live with his aunt, a doctor on the reserve, after his online activity suggests he may be developing extremist sympathies. Meeting each other in real life, as well as in the virtual world, Bugz and Feng immediately relate to each other as outsiders and as avid gamers. As their connection is strengthened through their virtual adventures, they find they have much in common in the real world, too: both must decide what to do in the face of temptations and pitfalls, and both must grapple with the impact of family and community trauma. But betrayal threatens everything Bugz has built in the virtual world, as well as her relationships in the real world, and it will take all her newfound strength to restore her friendship with Feng and reconcile the parallel aspects of her life: the traditional and the mainstream, the east and the west, the real and the virtual.
Los Angeles, 1924. Sixteen-year-old Ruby Chan considers herself a modern, independent American girl. But when her secret relationship with a white boy implodes- and then is revealed to her very traditional Chinese parents- she's in a tough spot. Horrified that Ruby's reputation is at risk, her parents hire a matchmaker to find her a Chinese husband. Ruby is determined to foil their plans. But how? Meanwhile, Ruby meets the nineteen-year-old film star Anna May Wong, one of her neighbors in LA's Chinatown. The girls quickly strike up a friendship. Anna May defies Chinese convention by working as an actress on the silver screen, and she scoffs at white people's assumptions about her. If she can forge her own path, surely Ruby can too. Not everything is as it seems, though. Danger and betrayal lurk amidst the new possibilities. To build the life she wants, Ruby will have to contend with how others see her--and decide if she's ready to truly see herself.
After eighteen-year-old Maya is kicked out of her wealthy dad's NYC home, she is grounded by a shared writers' workspace where she finds her voice--and the courage to stand up to her dad.
Sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus's curse of seeing the future distracts him from being and doing his best, but when he sees his little brother Isaiah's imminent death, he races against time, death, and circumstances to save him.
Told in alternating timelines, African American Atlas learns of her ancestral powers and their connection to the Great Dismal Swamp which shielded her grandmother as a formerly enslaved girl in the 1700s.
From the 1930s to today, this novel follows four generations of Filipino American boys as they grapple with identity, masculinity, and father-son relationships.
In summer 1947, Maryland, seventeen-year-olds Grace and Rose form an unlikely alliance to uncover the secrets of their haunted home before it is too late.
In the summer of 1995, almost-fifteen-year-old Almudena is sent to live with her estranged Spanish-speaking father, and together they renovate a brownstone and build a relationship while Almudena navigates the Latin American side of her heritage for the first time.
Nineteenth-century Massachusetts high society isn't kind to anyone who doesn't conform to its norms. For years, Remy, Cas, and Finn have done their best to blend in. But when they find themselves targeted by an evil magical society, they'll have to find the strength to stand out. When a prophetic vision sets the three of them on a collision course, they embark on a journey that will take them aboard a ship of queer smugglers, into the path of a demon, and inside a sinister stronghold of dark magic. Together, they'll confront hidden secrets and face deadly odds-and, hopefully, find out who they truly are.
When seventeen-year-old Star Fuentez reaches social media stardom, her polar-opposite twin, Moon, becomes "merch girl" on a tour bus full of beautiful influencers and the grumpy but attractive Santiago Philips.
Ten years ago, Malik's life changed forever the night his mother mysteriously vanished and he discovered he had uncontrollable powers. Since then, he has kept his abilities hidden, looking out for himself and his younger foster brother Taye. Now, at 17, Malik is finally ready to start a new life for both of them, far from the trauma of his past. However, a daring act to rescue Taye reveals an unexpected connection with his long-lost grandmother, a legendary conjurer with ties to a hidden magical university that Malik's mother attended.