Basically, I’m the last saving grace for the Sanchez family. There’s some unwritten family commandment that states that I will graduate from Somerset, attend an Ivy League school, and major in some moneymaking profession. The pressure is on to excel. They don’t call me Princesa for nothing. I’m being groomed for bigger and better things.
Fifteen-year-old Margot Sanchez has just finished up her first year at Somerset Prep. Somerset is ...
It took the state six long years to realize I wasn’t a threat to society before they ripped me out of baby jail and put me with Ms. Stein. From one prison to another, that’s all it was. Understand, there’s a big difference between baby jail and juvie, where the rest of the girls in the house come from. Juvie is for badass kids who do stuff like rob bodegas, steal cars, maybe stupidly try to kill someone. Baby jail ...
“Thanks!” Jin said. As she ran off in the opposite direction toward school, she thought about that word: community
. Harlem was a diverse place full of all sorts of people, but they all had one thing in common. They cared about the neighborhood. It really was a special place, and if Miss Hardwick and Halmoni were any indication, Councilman Markum was in for a fight.
Seventh-grader Jin spends a lot of ...
After a physically and intellectually and emotionally exhausting Midwinter Meeting in Atlanta—and a horrorshow day of travel on Tuesday—I am back home in Maine. Congratulations to all of the Youth Media Award winners and honorees, and a very special personal congratulations to the authors and books on the 2017 Amelia Bloomer list.
Due to being in Bloomer deliberations for one million hours during the conference, I was hardly on the exhibit floor at all… but I made the most of ...
In celebration and honor of this weekend’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let’s take a look at some of the recent and upcoming books about the Civil Rights Movement!
While they are certainly not the most recent books on the list, John Lewis’ March: Book One, Two, and Three are most immediately on my mind—partly because Lewis is the last living speaker from the March on Washington, and partly because he’s been in the news so much this weekend. March ...
The American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting starts in a little under two weeks. Most people look forward to the conference because it’s when the Youth Media Awards are held—when we get to find out which books won the Newbery and the Caldecott and the Printz and the Pura Belpré and the Stonewall and the Coretta Scott King awards. For award and book list committee members—the folks who are tasked with actually making those decisions and drawing up all of those ...
PHEW! I finally finished listing my favorites of 2016, and now it’s time to start the merry-go-round up again and look at the new releases of January 2017.
Here are a few of the titles that I’m planning on picking up:
Allegedly, by Tiffany Jackson
After a court case that was covered nationally, fifteen-year-old Mary is in “baby jail” for allegedly killing a 3-month-old. Devastating and difficult topics—race and reproductive rights within the prison-industrial complex—but, according to the Kirkus review ...
