Me (Moth)
A debut YA novel-in-verse by Amber McBride, Me (Moth) is about a teen girl who is grieving the deaths of her family, and a teen boy who crosses her path.
Lakelore
In this young adult novel by award-winning author Anna-Marie McLemore, two non-binary teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake – but can they keep their worlds above water intact?
Lost in the Never Woods
When children start to go missing in the local woods, a teen girl must face her fears and a past she can’t remember to rescue them in this atmospheric novel, Lost in the Never Woods from the author of Cemetery Boys.
American Road Trip
American Road Trip holds true to classic road-trip themes like the emotional power of singalongs and unexpected detours, but it also wades into the darker waters of mental illness with both realism and sensitivity.
This is My Brain in Love
When Jocelyn's father tells her that their family restaurant may be going under, she enlists the help of their new employee, Will. But with Jocelyn's depression and Will's anxiety — plus family prejudices and economic uncertainty — it seems like everything is threatening to keep their budding romance from ever growing into something real.
Highly Illogical Behavior
Solomon hasn't left his house in three years because of his agoraphobia. When Lisa learns about him, she decides to befriend him, "cure" him, and use the experience in her college application. But when her experiment leads to real friendship between her, Solomon, and her boyfriend, Clark, the line between truth and lie gets even more murky.
The Art of Starving
Matt has come to a discovery: The less he eats, the clearer his mind is — and he needs a clear head to find out how a band of bullies drove away his sister, Maya. He also seems to be developing mysterious abilities — to see things he shouldn't see, to see the thoughts in people's heads. And all he needs to do is keep the hunger at bay.
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns
How far would you go to fulfill your destiny? That is the question that plagues 18-year-old Xifeng. While years of manual labor and near starvation in her poor village have convinced her of her own insignificance, part of Xifeng clings desperately to the darkly magical card readings her abusive aunt, the witch Guma, has been bestowing on her since her birth—readings that link Xifeng’s extraordinary beauty to a great and majestic destiny, but one she can achieve only if she embraces the evil blood magic that lives within her. Armed with her aunt’s prophecy and the love of Wei, a modest village boy, Xifeng makes her way to the Imperial City with one goal in mind: to become the Empress of all Feng Lu. The setting and unfolding of the plot is based in East Asian storytelling and drama.
Spin the Dawn
Maia Tamarin dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. When a royal messenger summons her ailing father, once a tailor of renown, to court, Maia poses as a boy and takes his place. She knows her life is forfeit if her secret is discovered, but she'll take that risk to achieve her dream and save her family from ruin. There's just one catch: Maia is one of twelve tailors vying for the job. With the help of a pair of magic scissors and Edan, the emperor’s beguiling enchanter, Maia travels the kingdom gathering the mythic materials, battling demons, and evading mercenaries. This breathtaking and fast-paced Silk-road inspired fantasy is sure to enchant readers beginning to end.
Six Crimson Cranes
When 16-year-old Princess Shiori is introduced to her betrothed, she panics and flees, appalled at the notion of constrained life as a married noblewoman. Shiori is feisty, adventurous, and close to her six older brothers, and she will need all those qualities when stepmother Raikama reveals her dark magic and curses to Shiori and her brothers, changing the princes into cranes. Shiori must act on their behalf to break the curse, with the help of origami crane Kiki, who she brought to life with her own magic. Lim combines Andersen's "The Wild Swans" with many elements of Asian folklore while complementing fast pacing with the richly detailed world of both courtly life and the natural world.
This Woven Kingdom
Alizeh is an orphaned servant who keeps to the shadows and tries to avoid drawing attention to herself. She is a jinn, and even though there is a truce between the jinn and the clay, that doesn’t mean that she is safe from violence. In the palace across the city lives Crown Prince Kamran, who spends his time dedicated to the empire and aspiring to be a ruler like his grandfather. When their worlds collide, both Alizeh and Kamran must accept truths that will affect their futures and that put them on opposing sides. Magic, political intrigue, and forbidden love collide in Mafi’s tale inspired by Islamic tradition and the Persian epic poem the Shahnameh.
a thousand beginnings and endings
A collection of Asian myths and legends in which beloved stories of spirits, magic, family, love, and heartbreak are combined with elements from modern teens’ lives. In this anthology, Asian authors from a variety of backgrounds retell some of their cultures’ favorite myths and legends. It begins with a more traditional Filipino myth, retold by Roshani Chokshi, of a beautiful guardian spirit associated with Mount Makiling who falls in love with a human and loses her heart. Lori M. Lee changes a well-known Hmong children’s folktale into a story of deception and androids. Pulling common elements from a Korean epic, E.C. Myers creates a tale filled with traditional magical beings and online role-playing games. After each short story, the author gives background information about their inspiration as well as a description of the original tale.
the ivory key
Since the murder of the maharani of Ashoka—the country that controls all magic—the relationships between the royal siblings have fractured. At only 18, Vira has ascended to the throne, a role few in her council believe her capable of. Meanwhile, her twin brother, Ronak, is plotting to break free from a tactful marriage and taking their half-brother, Kaleb, (wrongfully imprisoned for the maharani’s assassination) with him. The siblings’ unease comes to a head when their sister Riya returns to the palace after two years of running with a group of rebels. As Ashoka’s quarry runs out of magic, the only option left is to find fragments of an old map leading to an ivory key rumored to unlock the lost quarries of Ashoka. Legend or not, all the siblings want a piece of it. Raman’s Indian-inspired fantasy debut is a dream for seekers of character-driven stories.
Never Look Back
Narrators Almarie Guerra and Samuel Maria Gomez deliver candid and sobering performances in this contemporary retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story with Afro-Latinx characters. Pheus is a charming boy from the Bronx who often serenades the local neighborhood girls. When he spends time with Eury, a disturbed girl who survived Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, he learns she is haunted by spirits. Guerra, narrating Eury’s perspective, and Gomez, narrating Pheus’s, offer a complementary mix of hopeful and tragic emotions. Both expertly create authenticity and lush detail in this drama. Fans of the mythological legend will be mesmerized by the parallels in this sweet romance between an optimistic boy and a troubled girl.
When Morning Comes
A privileged Johannesburg student falls head over heels for a girl from the other side of town. The only problem is that she is Black and he is white and they live in apartheid-torn South Africa in 1976. Contributing a spot-on South African accent, narrator Patience Mpumiwana leads a quartet of fresh voices in providing distinct characters, clarity, and cultural grounding for this story of four high school students whose destinies become intertwined in the search for racial equality. As the action and tension ramp up, the story closely follows the historic incidents that led to the unprecedented and bloody Soweto Youth Uprising of 1976. A Romeo-and-Juliet tale for a time when 10,000 children raised their voices and changed South Africa forever.
A Brief History of Fascist Lies
The lucid and accessible discussion of the connection between fascism and lying made by Argentine historian Federico Finchelstein comes to listeners through the equally clear and agile narration of Edoardo Ballerini. International in scope and spanning the twentieth century’s infamous fascist leaders and their followers, the audiobook calls upon Ballerini to demonstrate his ease with a broad range of languages to smoothly pronounce names and terms. His pacing, and the author’s writing, prevent any sense of drag, making this short audiobook rigorous enough to engage politically educated listeners as well as students eager to find expert guidance in developing historical understanding.
No-No Boy
Greg Watanabe, Kurt Kanazawa, and Joy Osmanski give riveting, emotional performances in this L.A. Theatre Works adaptation of the 1957 novel by Japanese-American author John Okada. After spending years in internment camps and prison, a Japanese-American who had said no to both a loyalty oath and serving in the U.S. military during WWII (hence, the term “no-no boy”) finally returns home to his native Seattle to find old friendships and his family in tatters. Watanabe’s voice deftly captures the pain and confusion of a young man of color who finds that he has no job prospects, his delusional mother believes Japan won the war, and the girl he loved is already married. Still, like so many American tales, there is the sound of hope.
Library Staff
Sue Heraper, Teacher Librarian, sheraper@conejousd.org
Fey Ouyang, Library Technician, fouyang@conejousd.org
Website: https://sites.google.com/learn.conejousd.net/nphslibrary
Twitter: @NPHS_library