Sixteen-year-old Amina Conteh has always believed in using her voice as her weapon—even when it gets her into trouble. After cursing at a classmate, her father forces her to volunteer at their church with Pastor Johnson. But Pastor Johnson isn’t the holy man everyone thinks he is. The same voice Amina uses to fight falls quiet the night she is sexually assaulted by Pastor Johnson. After that, her life starts to unravel: her father is frustrated that her grades are slipping, and her best friend and boyfriend don’t understand why the once loud and proud girl is now quiet and distant. In a world that claims to support survivors, Amina wonders who will support her when her attacker is everyone’s favorite community leader. When Pastor Johnson is arrested for a different crime, the community is shaken and divided; some call him a monster and others defend him. But Amina is secretly relieved. She no longer has to speak because Pastor Johnson can’t hurt her anymore—or so she believes. To regain her voice and sense of self, Amina must find the power to confront her abuser—in the courtroom and her heart—and learn to use all the fighting parts within her.

Danna Mendoza Villarreal's grandfather is slowly losing himself as his memories fade, and Danna's not sure her plan to help him remember through the foods he once reviewed will be enough to bring him back. Especially when her own love of food makes her complicated relationship with her mother even more difficult. Raúl Santos has been lost ever since his mother was wrongly incarcerated two years ago. Playing guitar for the elderly has been his only escape, to help them remember and him forget. But when his mom unexpectedly comes back into his life, what is he supposed to do when she isn't the same person who left? When Danna and Raúl meet, sparks fly immediately and they embark on a mission to heal her grandfather... and themselves. Because healing is something best done together--even if it doesn't always look the way we want it to.

Ariel grapples with her fear of her own mind and violent fantasies, driven by her desire to meet her parents' expectations and societal norms, until a summer job at a carnival leads her to new friends who help her discover her struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and find acceptance and support for her true self.

From the day she was born as Norma Jeane Mortenson, to her reigning days as a Hollywood icon, Marilyn Monroe lived a life that was often defined by others. This verse novel revisits Marilyn's often traumatic early life of foster homes, loneliness, sexual abuse, and teen marriage, and follows her into a hard-won, meteoric rise to stardom that brought with it exploitation, pill dependency, and depression. In covering moments of extraordinary pain and moments of unexpected grace, gumption, and perseverance, we learn the inexorable power of pursuing one's dreams.

Samira is determined to have a perfect summer filled with fun parties, exploring DC, and growing as a poet--until a scandalous rumor has her grounded and unable to leave her house. When Samira turns to a poetry forum for solace, she catches the eye of an older, charismatic poet named Horus. For the first time, Samira feels wanted. But soon she's keeping a bigger secret than ever before--one that that could prove her reputation and jeopardize her place in her community.

The author takes readers on a poetic journey through her childhood in Harlem. León explores love and loss, melody and bloodshed as she navigates the intricacies of foster care, mourning, self-love, and resilience. She invites readers to dream with abandon--because it is a privilege to dream at all.

Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul--her life.

Sixteen-year-old Alicia Rivers has a reputation that precedes her. But there's more to her story than the whispers that follow her throughout the hallways at school--whispers that splinter into a million different insults that really mean: a girl who has had sex. But what her classmates don't know is that Alicia was sexually abused by a popular teacher, and that trauma has rewritten every cell in her body into someone she doesn't recognize. To the world around her, she's been cast, like the mythical Medusa, as not the victim but the monster of her own story: the slut who asked for it. Alicia was abandoned by her best friend, quit the track team, and now spends her days in detention feeling isolated and invisible. When mysterious letters left in her locker hint at another victim, Alicia struggles to keep up the walls she's built around her trauma. At the same time, her growing attraction to a new girl in school makes her question what those walls are really keeping out.

Nima doesn't feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself. Until she doesn't. As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn't give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might just be more real than Nima knows. And more hungry. And the life Nima has, the one she keeps wishing were someone else's...she might have to fight for it with a fierceness she never knew she had.

Omid needs the right words to connect with his newly met grandfather and distant Iranian heritage, words to tell a special girl what she means to him and to show everyone that he truly belongs in Tucson, Arizona, the only home he's ever known. Neither the school play's Shakespearean English nor his parents' Farsi seems up to the task, and it's only when Omid delves into the rhymes and rhythms of rap music that he starts to find his voice. But even as he does so, an act of terrorism transforms familiar accents into new threats. Then a family member disappears, and it seems everyone but Omid knows why. When words fail altogether and violence takes their place, what will Omid do next?

Meticulously researched and drawn from numerous primary sources, this biography-in-verse tells the story of racism in the U.S. through six important Black Americans from different eras who struggled for justice, chronicling how much--and how little--racism has changed since our country's founding.

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age... and the cruelty of mirrors... and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books--the weird one, the outsider--and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears? A fictionalized account of the author's experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder.

NASA has assured everyone the passage of rogue planet Malachite will be safe, but Crosby's been getting other messages--from a fortune teller and Malachite truther message boards. And now she believes that Malachite will kill everyone who doesn't ascend to the fourth dimension--a higher plane that transcends physicality. She tries to prepare her friends and family to leave their bodies behind and raise their frequency by changing their diets, wearing the right crystals, and moving into her friend's bunker before it's too late. But no one is listening. The more time she spends trying to talk her roommate and her quirky friends into her apocalypse plans, the more Crosby is forced to face the cracks in everything she believes to be true.

On her eighteenth birthday, Hilde leaves her orphanage in 1930s Berlin, and heads out into the world to discover her place in it. But finding a job is hard, at least until she stumbles into Café Lila, a vibrant cabaret full of expressive customers. Rosa, one of the club's waitresses and performers, immediately takes Hilde under her wing. As the café denizens slowly embrace Hilde, and she embraces them in turn, she discovers her voice and her own blossoming feelings for Rosa.

Rynn was born with a hole in her heart--literally. Although it was fixed long ago, she still feels an emptiness there when she wonders about her birth family. As her relationship with her adoptive mother fractures, Rynn finally decides she needs to know more about the rest of her family. Her search starts with a name, the only thing she has from her birth mother, and she quickly learns that she has a younger sister living in foster care in a nearby town. But if Rynn reconnects with her biological sister, it may drive her adoptive family apart for good.

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. "Boys just being boys" turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?

Bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault. Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published twenty years ago, she has written a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless. In free verse, Anderson shares reflections, rants, and calls to action woven between deeply personal stories from her life that she's never written about before. Searing and soul-searching, this important memoir is a denouncement of our society's failures and a love letter to all the people with the courage to say #MeToo and #TimesUp, whether aloud, online, or only in their own hearts. Shout speaks truth to power in a loud, clear voice-- and once you hear it, it is impossible to ignore.

Seventeen-year-old Blade endeavors to resolve painful issues from his past and navigate the challenges of his former rockstar father's addictions, scathing tabloid rumors, and a protected secret that threatens his own identity. Blade begins a journey that takes him to Ghana, where he discovers the power of friendship, family, community, and reconciliation.

A story of friendship, first love, and an impossible choice between integrity and duty, family and friend, all while fighting for a dream. Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams is a historical YA novel in verse that centers around a young pianist in East Germany trying to make sense of love, duty, and the pursuit of dreams during the unsettled months of protest that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s. Written in lyrical verse, Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams is a story of hope, courage, romance, and the power of music not only to change lives, but to save them.

Jude loves photography, and he's good at it, too. Between his parents' divorce and his anxiety, being behind a camera is the only time his mind is quiet. Florence is confronting the premature end of her dance career as a degenerative eye disease begins to steal her balance. She's having a hard time letting go. The two meet at Sunrise Night, their sleepaway art camp's dusk-to-dawn closing celebration, and decide to take a chance on each other. Their one rule: No contact for a year after the sun has risen. Over the course of three Sunrise Nights, will Florence and Jude find a deeper connection and learn who they are--and who they could be together?

Five months ago, Liv's big brother, Jonah, shot himself. It was an accident. He didn't know that the gun was loaded. But the damage was done. Now he won't ever be leaving their small mill town like he planned. Jonah can't speak, can't walk, can't take care of himself at all. Their house is full of machines and nurses working around the clock to keep Jonah alive. Liv's mom is struggling to cope with the aftermath, so Liv ends up being the one to soothe Jonah when he gets agitated, to lie with him when he can't sleep, and to see the carefree brother she's sure is still inside him somewhere. Liv hasn't spoken to Clay, Jonah's best friend, since the accident, even though he lives just across the street. The gun belonged to Clay's father, and Clay was with Jonah that terrible day. With Liv's mom suing Clay's father, there are lines Liv is not supposed to cross. As their entire community chooses sides, she feels the distance between them growing every day. Liv knows that Clay is nearly as broken as Jonah. She knows his life also changed forever the same moment as Jonah's. And she refuses to turn away from Clay, just as she refuses to give up on Jonah.

Seventeen-year-old Cordelia Koenig intended to breeze through her senior project. While her peers stressed, Cordelia planned to use the same trace-your-roots genealogy idea her older sister used years prior. And getting partnered with her longtime crush, Kodiak Jones, is icing on the cake. All she needs to do is mail in her DNA sample, write about her ancestry results, and get that easy A. But when Cordelia's GeneQuest results reveal that her father is not the person she thought he was, but a stranger who lives thousands of miles away, her entire world shatters. Now she isn't sure of anything--not the mother who lied, the man she calls Dad, or the girl staring back at her in the mirror. If your life began with a lie, how can you ever be sure of what's true?

For Elio Solis, eighth grade fizzes with change--His body teeming with hormones. His feelings that flow like lava. His relationship with Pops, who's always telling him to man up, the Solis way. And especially Camelia, his first girlfriend. But then, betrayal and heartbreak send Elio spiraling toward revenge, a fight to prove his manhood, and defend Camelia's honor. He doesn't anticipate the dire consequences--or that Camelia's not looking for a savior.

Swan maiden Hilde sacrifices her magical wings to seek freedom in the human world, but when her pact with an upstart baron takes her to the court of Ludwig II, she struggles to fit in, and only Jewish artist Franz, who has the power to paint souls, can help her escape her newfound prison.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class. With Mami's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. When she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she knows that she could never get around Mami's rules to attend, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can't stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in spite of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

The term "Apple" is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly "red on the outside, white on the inside." Eric Gansworth is telling his story in Apple (Skin to the Core). The story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who straddles two worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.