This spring, SOUNDTRACK: A NOVEL, the award-winning original audiobook from #1 New York Times bestselling author and former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds, was published in hardcover and print. This raw, resonant, coming-of-age story, written with Jason Reynolds’ signature rhythm, heart, and honesty, celebrates New York City of the early-2000s, and a [ Read the full article… ]
Category: YA Bookshelf
Putting Black Girls at the Center: A Chat with Andréa Butler of Sesi Magazine
Sesi Magazine celebrates the dynamic and multifaceted lives of Black girls and young women in ways that are thoughtful, joyful, and inspiring. And that’s no surprise — publisher and editor-in-chief Andréa Butler is all that and more. A t the age of seventeen, the magazine-loving Andréa decided that if the magazine world continued not to [ Read the full article… ]
Cover Celebration: Keeping It Real
This is what happens when you plan to do something and then don’t. You can’t have a cover reveal because someone puts it on Twitter before you can. So, here we are having a cover celebration instead. And I’m not mad! It’s a good problem to have when teachers, librarians and reviewers of your books [ Read the full article… ]
Spotlight on Elle McKinney & Robyn Smith’s Nubia: Real One
I admit to being jaded about the DC or Marvel universes. When the movies first showed up on the big screen, I was excited to see a form of fantasy and magic take center stage. I brimmed with anticipation, just like everyone else of an *ahem* certain age that had watched the cartoons or the [ Read the full article… ]
Nicola Yoon on #BlackGirlMagic, How Love Changes Everything, and Showing the Possibilities
Nicola Yoon is the #1 NYT bestselling author of Everything, Everything, which is now a major motion picture, and The Sun Is Also a Star, a National Book Award finalist, Michael L. Printz Honor Book and a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, and lives in Los [ Read the full article… ]
Brown Book Review: My Own Worst Frenemy
I’d ask where books like My Own Worst Frenemy were when I was a young reader, but I already know the answer – they didn’t exist. It’s why I started writing YA, in the first place. Reviewing books like Reid’s first in the Langdon Prep series is bittersweet for me. On one hand I feel [ Read the full article… ]
Commentary: Life – An Exploded Diagram
By Mal Peet My problem is, I’m way too literal. When someone tells me that a book is Young Adult, I sort of believe it. And right, wrong or indifferent, for ME a Young Adult novel has to primarily revolve around a young person’s experience. Some YA historical fiction reads like adult historical fiction. An [ Read the full article… ]
Brown Book Review: Bitter Melon
By Cara Chow The best thing a book can do, to and for me, is evoke some sort of passion. The bell rings if it makes me angry. Bitter Melon rang my bells, much like What Can’t Wait did. Both are stories about what it’s like to be a first generation American citizen of an [ Read the full article… ]