Teen Tuesday - Novels in verse

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. Harper Collins Publishing, 16 March 2018.

With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomaraunderstands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. 

So when she is invited to join herschool’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson.  Penguin Books, 12 March 2019.

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, Laurie Halse Anderson has
written a critically acclaimed poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless.

In free verse, she shares reflections, rants, and calls to action woven among deeply personal stories from her life that she's never written about before.

The Black Flamingo by David Atta.  Balzer & Bray/Harperteen, 26 May 2020.

Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he's navigated what it
means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican--but never quite feeling Greek or Black enough.

As he gets older, Michael's coming out is only the start of learning who he is and where he fits in. When he discovers the Drag Society, he finally finds where he belongs--and the Black Flamingo is born.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.  Atheneum Books, 12 October 2017.

A gun. That's what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules.No crying. 

No snitching. Revenge. That's where Will's now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother's gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he's after. Or does he?

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence.

YA Tuesday - 5 Novels in Verse

Audacity by Melanie Crowder (Speak paperback, 5 January 2016).


Inspired by the real-life story of Clara Lemlich, a spirited young woman who emigrated from Russia to New York at the turn of the twentieth century and fought tenaciously for equal rights. Bucking the norms of both her traditional Jewish family and societal conventions, Clara refuses to accept substandard working conditions in the factories on Manhattan's Lower East Side. For years, Clara devotes herself to the labor fight, speaking up for those who suffer in silence. In time, Clara convinces the women in the factories to strike, organize, and unionize, culminating in the famous Uprising of the 20,000.





Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs by Ron Koertge (Candlewick paperback, 13 March 2012).



Fourteen-year-old Kevin Boland has a passion for playing baseball, a
knack for writing poetry — and a cute girlfriend named Mira who’s not much interested in either. But then, Kevin doesn’t exactly share Mira’s newfound fervor for all things green. So when Kevin signs up for open mike night at Bungalow Books and meets Amy, a girl who knows a sonnet from a sestina and can match his emails verse for verse, things start to get sticky. Should he stay with Mira? Or risk spoiling his friendship with Amy by asking her out?





The You I've Never Known by Ellen Hopkins (Margaret K. McElderry trade paperback, 30 January 2018).  

For as long as she can remember, it’s been just Ariel and Dad. Ariel’s mom disappeared when she was a baby. Dad says home is wherever the two of them are, but Ariel is now seventeen and after years of new apartments, new schools, and new faces, all she wants is to put down some roots. Complicating things are Monica and Gabe, both of whom have stirred a different kind of desire.

Maya’s a teenager who’s run from an abusive mother right into the arms of an older man she thinks she can trust. But now she’s isolated with a baby on the way, and life’s getting more complicated than Maya ever could have imagined.

Ariel and Maya’s lives collide unexpectedly when Ariel’s mother shows up out of the blue with wild accusations: Ariel wasn’t abandoned. Her father kidnapped her fourteen years ago.

Loving vs. Virginia by Patricia Hruby Powell (Chronicle Books hardcover, 31 January 2017).

In 1955, in Caroline County, Virginia, amidst segregation and prejudice, injustice and cruelty, two teenagers fell in love. Their life together broke the law, but their determination would change it. Richard and Mildred Loving were at the heart of a Supreme Court case that legalized marriage between races, and a story of the devoted couple who faced discrimination, fought it, and won.






A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman (Speak paperback, 12 May 2015).  


Veda loves to dance, and she is incredible at it—just ask anyone who has ever seen her perform. But then, one day, her life changes: An unexpected tragedy forces her to undergo an amputation below the knee, and she struggles to dance with her new prosthetic leg. But Veda is determined to keep dancing, and relearns the steps and technique from the very beginning. Along the way, Veda befriends Govinda, and falls even more in love with the Bharatanatyam dance form.