YA Librarian Recommendations | Board of Library Commissioners

1) Knots in my yo-yo string: the autobiography of a kid

Author

Description

This Italian-American Newbery Medalist presents a humorous account of his childhood and youth in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

2) His promised land: the autobiography of John P. Parker, former slave and conductor on the underground railroad

Author

Parker, John P., 1827-1900

Description

Primary source.

Author

Description

The author explains how, as a young adult, he became a drug user and smuggler, was arrested, did time in prison, and eventually got out and went to college, all the while hoping to become a writer.

4) Messy roots: a graphic memoir of a Wuhanese American

Author

Gao, Laura

Series

Messy Roots

Description

Click to view

Seamlessly toggling between past and present, this funny graphic memoir follows a queer Chinese American's immigration to Texas where she just wants to make the basketball team, escape Chinese school, and figure out why she is attracted to girls.

5) Tiny dancer

Author

Siegel, Siena Cherson

Description

Click to view

"Siena Cherson Siegel dreamed of being a ballerina. Her love of movement and dedication to the craft earned her a spot at the School of American Ballet.. Siena has worked hard her whole life to be a professional ballet dancer, then makes the difficult decision to quit dancing and tries to figure out what comes next. But what do you do when you have spent your entire life working toward a goal, having that shape your identity, and then decide it's...

6) They changed the world: Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo

Author

Hoskin, Rik

Description

Click to view

In the 15th Century, most astronomers agreed that the Earth was the centre of the universe. This idea dated back more than 1000 years, to the Greek astronomer Ptolomy, who stated that the Earth was motionless, and that all other heavenly bodies moved in complicated patterns around the Earth. This view became the accepted view of the Catholic Church, an institution so powerful that few would dare to question it. Until Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo......

7) Brazen: rebel ladies who rocked the world

Author

Bagieu, Pénélope

Description

Click to view

With her characteristic wit and dazzling drawings, celebrated graphic novelist Penelope Bagieu profiles the lives of these feisty female role models, some world famous, some little known. From Nellie Bly to Mae Jemison or Josephine Baker to Naziq al-Abid, the stories in this comic biography are sure to inspire the next generation of rebel ladies.

8) The silence of our friends

Author

Long, Mark, 1957-

Description

Click to view

Overview: As the civil rights struggle heats up in Texas, two families-one white, one black-find common ground. This semi-autobiographical tale is set in 1967 Texas, against the backdrop of the fight for civil rights. A white family from a notoriously racist neighborhood in the suburbs and a black family from its poorest ward cross Houston's color line, overcoming humiliation, degradation, and violence to win the freedom of five black college students...

9) The United States Constitution: a graphic adaptation

Author

Hennessey, Jonathan, 1971-

10) Persepolis: [the story of a childhood]

Author

Satrapi, Marjane, 1969-

Description

Click to view

The great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contraditions between public and private life.

11) All my rage

Author

Tahir, Sabaa

Description

Click to view

A family extending from Pakistan to California, deals with generations of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness.

12) Black birds in the sky: the story and legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Author

Colbert, Brandy

Description

Click to view

"In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District--a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives. In a few short hours, they'd razed thirty-five square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial...

13) I am not your perfect Mexican daughter

Author

Sánchez, Erika L

Description

Click to view

When the sister who delighted their parents by her faithful embrace of Mexican culture dies in a tragic accident, Julia, who longs to go to college and move into a home of her own, discovers from mutual friends that her sister may not have been as perfect as believed.

14) Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe

Author

Sáenz, Benjamin Alire

Series

Aristotle and Dante volume 1

Description

Click to view

From the cover. Dante can swim. Ari can't. Dante is articulate and self-assured. Ari has a hard time with words and suffers from self-doubt. Dante gets lost in poetry and art. Ari gets lost in thoughts of his older brother who is prison. Dante is fair-skinned. Ari's features are much darker. It seems that a boy like Dante, with his open and unique perspective on life, would be the last person to break down the walls that Ari has built around himself....

15) The great equations: breakthroughs in science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg

Author

Crease, Robert P

16) A long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier

Author

Beah, Ishmael, 1980-

Description

Click to view

My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life. "Why did you leave Sierra Leone?" "Because there is a war." "You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?" "Yes, all the time." "Cool." I smile a little. "You should tell us about it sometime." "Yes, sometime." This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice....

17) The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian

Author

Alexie, Sherman, 1966-

Description

Click to view

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

18) The opposite of fate: memories of a writing life

Author

Tan, Amy

Description

Click to view

Product Description: Amy Tan has touched millions of readers with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world's...

19) Life of Pi: a novel

Author

Martel, Yann

Description

Click to view

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat,...

20) Eagle blue: a team, a tribe, and a high school basketball season in Arctic Alaska

Author

D'Orso, Michael

Description

Click to view

Follows the Fort Yukon Eagles, winners of six regional championships in a row, through the course of an entire 28-game season, from their first day of practice in late November to the Alaska State Championship Tournament in March. Author D'Orso climbs into the lives of these fourteen boys, their families, and their coach, shadowing them through an Arctic winter of fifty-below-zero temperatures and near-round-the-clock darkness as the Eagles criss-cross...