Adolescent challenges are a ubiquitous rite of passage from which no child seems immune. And yet relatively recent manga sensation Wayama – her three titles published in her native Japan have each won major lauds – manages to charmingly defuse some of the most potentially...
Debut novelist Ray Stoeve’s first chapter has three short sentences: “I think I might be trans. I mean, I know I am. I think.” Seattle high-school senior Dean already came out as lesbian, is lovingly partnered with Zoe, and has supportive friends (quality over quantity)....
“If I could put it into words, I wouldn’t be drawing it,” the cartoonist insists. In mostly black-and-white panels laden with exquisite details, Zuo Ma intertwines autobiography with fantasy, their relationship revealed some 200 pages into the unpredictable narrative. A young man returns home from city...
Peyton Thomas's auspicious YA debut, Both Sides Now, invites readers into the complicated transition year between parental reliance and university independence. Seniors Finch and Jonah are their Olympia, Wash., debate team headliners. Although they lose the state competition to their private school archnemeses, the pair still...
Not to be confused with bestselling Julia Alvarez’s book of the same title – hers, a nonfiction examination of Latina coming-of-age quinceañera traditions – Monica Gomez-Hira makes her YA debut with a rollicking fable of quinceañeras lost and found. Eighteen-year-old Carmen never got her party: her...
Educator and poet Gloria Amescua makes her picture-book debut with the inspiring Child of the Flower-Song People, spectacularly illustrated by award-winning Mexican American author/artist Duncan Tonatiuh (Undocumented). Amescua poignantly uses her own experiences of "almost losing my Spanish language and culture" as a Latina in Texas...
Time, geographies, and backgrounds all seem to flow effortlessly through Jai Chakrabarti's exquisite debut novel, A Play for the End of the World. At its core is the provenance of a possible love story between two strangers in New York City. Interwoven into this uncertain...
Award-winning British children's author/illustrator Lizzy Stewart makes an impressive adult graphic debut with interlinked short episodes observing, analyzing and celebrating women's friendships. The nine chapters in It's Not What You Thought It Would Be could each stand alone, but Stewart cleverly relies on shades of orange to...
For most of her first seven years, Anna Qu was "the girl without parents; a father dead, a mother who left to start a new life." And yet those years held the "love" Qu names in the subtitle of her bittersweet debut, Made in China:...
*STARRED REVIEW Nine electrifying stories comprise Anthony Veasna So’s debut, and while many were previously published, when read together their magnificence is enhanced as they create an interconnected Cambodian American community. Most autobiographical is “Human Development,” in which the narrator is also Anthony, a gay, Stanford-degreed...
James Sie (Still Life Las Vegas) multitasks as author and partial narrator in his first YA novel: the theme might seem common – a high school love story complicated by parents and friends – but the narrative’s specifics elevate the familiar into memorable. Sie gamely...
*STARRED REVIEW Singaporean creator Weng Pixin's vibrant Let's Not Talk Anymore began with a "big 'f*ck this, f*ck you!' kind of attitude" after one of her "many disputes and disagreements with [her] Mom." The work made her think more deeply about not just her mother, but her...
Her model – yep, as in runway – older sister Jeannie couldn’t be more perfect, leaving Liza all too familiar with their Taiwanese immigrant mother’s disappointment and frustration. Despite Mom’s “no dating while you’re in school” rule, she ironically can’t get over Liza’s lack of...
*STARRED REVIEW The “Before” was when ZJ’s football-playing father was “everybody’s … next great hero,” but to ZJ, world-famous “Zachariah 44!” was “just my dad … which means / he’s my every single thing.” For most of 12-year-old ZJ’s life, Daddy was the very best parent,...
Introduced in Jasmin Kaur’s debut, When You Ask Me Where I’m Going, mother Kiran and daughter Sahaara return in this timely hybrid prose/verse novel that deftly addresses the perils of being undocumented and surviving sexual assault. Kiran enters Canada from India on a student visa, already...
Sure, reading is rewarding, but here you’ll want to listen in to share the delighted wonder of narrator Avi Roque and writer Aiden Thomas discussing their affirming #OwnVoices debuts as trans Latinx creators, a bonus at recording’s end. Deservedly lauded and awarded all over the...
Eleven-year-old Ellie has been bullied most of her life for being fat. The mean girls are bad enough, but her weight-obsessed mother might unintentionally be her worst enemy – what mother pushes bariatric surgery on her tween? Ellie’s best friend is moving away, which means that...
Once upon a time, Lita “turned from star-stuff thrown off a meteor into a girl” and became “to everyone around” the daughter of the local curandera Bruja Lupe. That meteor gave the New Mexico town its name – yes, Meteor – as well as the...
“I have two lives. / One that is Indian, / one that is not,” 13-year-old Reha introduces herself. During the week, she “swim[s] in a river of white skin” at school; “on weekends / [she] “float[s] in a sea of brown skin and black hair...
*STARRED REVIEW When 15-year-old Talia is shocked by the inexplicable, brutal murder of a cat, her outraged sense of fairness immediately takes control and she punishes the feline killer with similar torture – landing her in a remote girls’ prison school for youth offenders. She devises...
