While not a sports fan, I loved this book including the fast paced basketball action. The main character Adam was adopted in Poland when he was 11 and immigrated to American with his new mom, a U.S. citizen.  Adam is not very communicative with any one but his mom and good buddy Barry as he is embarrassed about his English proficiency. His voice is so well written, I can hear his accent and foreign phrasing. This attracts the attention of Kase whose bullying and ridicule trigger Adam’s anger management issues.
When his basketballs skills attract the attention of star player Carli and her coach father, things begin to look up for Adam.
All the side characters are well crafted and interesting. When Adam makes some insensitive racial comments, these are fully worked out in a realistic manner that he accepts and learns from.
This quote sums it up for me:
"I know I will fight injustice, and sometimes that means a protest and a battle....but I think many times that means just being a good, kind person in the world."
You will be a better person for seeing into the lives of these engaging characters. And entertained…sports, romance, interpersonal relationships, humor, identity woven into a brilliant book.
​Tessa's Picks, 7-8th grade, Character driven, Contemporary fiction, Issues fiction, Romance, Sports, Social justice

Kidnapped by a rebel group as a child, Imara has grown up among rough men doing terrible deeds. The only reason she has survived is that they believe she has supernatural powers. She has accepted her fate and the devil inside her. Imara has learned to keep her feelings bottled up safe inside and not let anything touch them. Then the rebels kill a silverback gorilla and kidnap its baby. She is put in charge of caring for it until they can sell it as a pet. The innocent baby chips away at all her defenses as tempts her to forget all the lessons that have kept her safe and risk it all to save another. 

This heart-wrenching novel completely absorbed me as I eagerly rooted for Imara. Gorillas are my favorite animal, so I was hooked instantly. Even though it's fiction it's firmly rooted in reality and opened my eyes up to issues that I knew very little about. 

Gorilla Dawn by Gill Lewis
Erica's Picks
5th -8th grade
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In a Viking village plagued by supernatural foes, warriors must pass a trial when they come of age. If they fail, they are banished from the village unless they can accomplish an impossible task. Most don’t even survive a week. As the chief’s daughter, Rasmira has been training her whole life to take over from her father and lead her people in battle. But when she’s sabotaged in the trial, she’s sent away on her own. Her task? To kill the God that terrorizes the village. In the wild, she meets two others who have failed their trials and been banished. Together, they vow to help each other complete their tasks so they can return to their villages.

A viking adventure with a supernatural twist. This is a classic adventure full of monsters, quests, and revenge. The Norse setting makes it a little different and the characters are really well developed. The fast-paced plot will have you turning the pages and puzzling over how the characters can complete their impossible tasks. 

Warrior of the Wild by Tricia Levenseller
Erica's Picks
Grades 7-8
​Tags: adventure, fast-paced, friendship, historical fiction, 

Solara and Dylan have always hated each other. Rivals at their elite school, Dylan comes from one of the richest families in the Galaxy while Solara is a scholarship student from the orphanage. But when Dylan’s family is caught up in an inter-galactic scandal, they end up on the run together, booking passage on a pirate ship. In deep space, no one will be able to find them as long as they don’t blow their cover with the crew. But they also have nowhere to escape when things go wrong. 

This is a classic sci-fi story with a bunch of quirky misfits hurtling through space trying to avoid a corrupt government. It's a fun adventure for fans of the genre. 

Starflight by Melissa Landers

Erica's Picks
Grades 6-8
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Moving stinks for everyone, but it's especially awful for Maya. Maya is deaf and she's used to going to a school with other deaf kids where everyone can sign and understands what Deaf culture is about. But in Colorado she has to go to a regular, hearing high school, which means she has to have an interpreter in all her classes. Outside of class, she has to rely on lip reading, which is never 100% effective, and deal with the ignorance of her hearing classmates. But one boy is different. Beau starts learning sign language and seems interested in getting to know Maya a lot better. Will they be able to bridge their differences and get together? Or is their relationship doomed before it even starts?

I love reading books that explore Deaf culture, and Maya is a wonderful character. She's fiercely loyal to her younger brother, who has cystic fibrosis and is not acclimating to the higher elevation well. With her friends at school she can be flawed and moody, which is perfectly understandable considering all she has to put up with and makes her well-rounded and relatable. I'd whole-heartedly recommend this to students looking for a realistic school story or a romance. 

The Silence Between Us by Alison Gervais
Erica's Picks
Grades 6-8
Tags:character driven, contemporary fiction, disability, family life, romance, school stories

This may be my favorite book of the year. As a foodie and a cook, I love reading about food and its creators. Here we have a trip to so many ethnic and cultural cuisines that symbolize so much more than nourishing the body. Take a trip to Hungry Heart Row, a few square blocks of multicultural restaurants, food trucks and small businesses. You will meet a shy teen who bakes feelings into her pastry and gives them to people who need them.  Visit a Chinese establishment with gang connections. Grab a taste at a Muslim food truck with the best halal meat (look that up if you don’t know what it is). Meet a boy who puts his soul into his food to win a contest that will save his mother’s life. And so much more
Here are 13 stories by some of my favorite YA authors, all interconnected by setting and characters. When they magically appear in the next story, you ask,” How did they do that?” With magic, food and love!  Love, family, culture, belonging and the meaning of life.  It all awaits you on Hungry Heart Row.
Come for a stroll and stay for the food.

Tessa's Pick, 5th-8th grade, Character driven, Contemporary fiction, Global perspectives, People of Color, Short stories

​The Marvels and Creations of Existence…the name of an ancient manuscript that two young people discover separately; both decide to record the marvels and oddities in their lives. We will be privy to their writing in these journals rewritten in narrative form. 
Begin. We meet Zayneb a Muslim in hijab, sitting on a plane next to a verbally Islamophobic woman. It is established that Zayneb is angry at the affront and she has a passion for justice.  Unfortunately, her high school history teacher insults her cultural heritage every day. One time he goes too far and she confronts him. This earns her a suspension and she heads to her aunt’s in Doha (located in Qatar on the Persian Gulf).
Quiet and sensitive Adam, a university student in London, is also headed to Doha when the two accidentally meet for a moment at the airport. They part never expecting to meet again. 
But they do, as Adam is a family friend of Z's aunt.  Told in alternate chapters, Z and A voice their feelings about each other and the issues they are dealing with. Adam is hiding his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis from his family and is trying to keep his mother’s memory alive for his little sister. Zayneb is exploring her identity as a woman in a Muslim country and confronting stereotypes.
This is their love story as they support and care for each other. Their marvels and oddities make them grow separately and together.
  This is my favorite wisdom from the book: The size of the world is relative to our mind’s perception of it.
 “For some of us, this means the world is small, including only those we see as belonging to it…. People who look like us, dress like us, think like us.
For others, it’s a medium-size and includes those we connect to through some similarity…which then allows us to overlook the differences between us and them.
And then there are those who see the world as huge…. Huge enough to include vast differences, people with nothing in common with one another except a beating heart and a feeling soul, these two—heart, soul—being the strongest connection between us all.”
To which world do you belong?

​Tessa's Pick, 7th-8th grade, Character driven, Contemporary fiction, Global perspectives, Issues fiction, Romance

I absolutely loved the update on this classic story. Whether or not you've read the original, there's much to enjoy about Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.

The March sisters love each other, although at first glance it may not seem like it. Each sister has her own unique passions and personality and sometimes that leads to conflict. The oldest, Meg is obsessed with fashion and how the other, richer half lives. Jo couldn't care less about fashion but dreams of becoming a famous author someday. Beth is known for being quiet until she gets a guitar and learns how to make her noise. Amy is an artist and a chaotic rainbow of a girl, but sometimes her exuberance can get on her sisters' nerves. With their father stationed overseas and their mother working long hours as a nurse the March girls have to stick together. They've weathered many storms, but the coming years will try them more than anything they've faced. 

Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo

Erica's Picks
Grade 4 -8
Tags: comics, retellings, people of color

Allie Is a straight A student with a loving family, good friends and is dating the sweet Wells Henderson.  The book opens with a scene on an airplane where Allie’s father is targeted by the man next to him when he hears him speaking Arabic.  Islamophobic comments bring the steward over and Allie stands up for her father showing on her phone that he is a professor at Northwestern.  Allie smooths over the incident but is tired of bearing the burden of other peoples’ ignorance.
Her parents do not practice Islam (although her father’s extended family do) and advise Allie, who does not appear Muslim, to not acknowledge her heritage.  Feeling spiritually lost, Allie finds herself drawn to Islam and joins a young woman’s study group where they discuss religion. Supported by these strong feminist women, Allie feels proud to be an out Muslim and begins to learn Arabic so that she can speak with her grandmother.
When she finds out that Well’s father in none other than Jack Henderson infamous Islamophobic talk show shock jock, Allie is faced with some hard choices. Will there budding romance survive this news?
I loved the diverse characters in Allie’s family and how she finds her path and has the courage to follow it. I came away with so much empathy for what it means to be Muslim in America.

​Tessa's picks,6th-8th grade, Character driven, Contemporary fiction, Family life, Global perspectives, Issues fiction.