Merci navigates the challenges of being a scholarship kid at a posh South Florida private school and the expectations of and responsibilities to her intergenerational family. Read full book review >

A Cuban-American girl comes of age in Flushing, Queens, in 1977, against the backdrop of the Son of Sam murder spree. Read full book review >

Abuela is coming to stay with Mia and her parents. But how will they communicate if Mia speaks little Spanish and Abuela, little English? Could it be that a parrot named Mango is the solution? Read full book review >

A nuanced, heart-wrenching and ultimately empowering story about bullying.

When 15-year old Piedad Sanchez's mother moves them to another part of Queens, Piddy is unprepared for the bullying that awaits her at her new school. Yaqui Delgado doesn't know Piddy but decides she's stuck-up and shakes her ass when she walks—accusations weighty enough to warrant a full-fledged bullying campaign. As her torments escalate, readers feel the intensity of Piddy's terror in her increasingly panicked first-person narration. Interweaving themes of identity, escapism and body image, Medina takes what could be a didactic morality tale and spins it into something beautiful: a story rich in depth and heart. Piddy's ordeal feels 100 percent authentic; there are no easy outs, no simple solutions. Displaying a mature understanding of consequences and refreshingly aware (no deducing supporting characters' feelings before the protagonist, here), Piddy also exhibits an age-appropriate sense of vulnerability. The prose is both honest ("growing up is like walking through glass doors that only open one way—you can see where you came from but can't go back") and exquisitely crafted ("Fear is my new best friend. It stands at my elbow in chilly silence"). Read full book review >

Laden with the hopes and fears of her village, a 16-year-old girl casts aside her appointed calling to discover her true destiny. Read full book review >

Tía Isa dreams of buying a big car, green like the ocean that surrounds the island that she, her brother Andrés and their niece left to move to the United States. Read full book review >

Can magic manta rays protect Milagros and send her all the way north from her Caribbean home to the coast of Maine? Even more challenging, can they send the courageous girl from an island life seemingly set in the time of swashbuckling pirates to a modern-day island without the benefit of a strong time-travel plot device? This first novel is filled with weak links and limp wordplay—the word manta denotes both the sea animal and the protective quilted shawl created by Milagros and Old Woman Perez, an unlikely Mexican seamstress who has also come to live on the small Maine isle. Milagros goes by "Miracle" among English speakers, and miracles do happen, including the magical rescue of Rosa, Milagros's strong mother, from having to walk the plank on her husband's pirate ship. Most readers won't be able to suspend their disbelief, however, even as they might accept the theme of belief in family and one's own strength and imagination. The novel's colorful imagery cannot rescue it from its lack of a strong fantasy structure. (Fiction. 9-12)Read full book review >