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

​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

None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the filthy minds of high school students. Aphra’s programming project is supposed to give advice and learn natural language from its users, but when it starts spouting filth, she knows she can’t turn the project in. So she takes over, pretending to be her program while she gives advice. The good news is that her crush figures it out and falls in love with app’s persona. The bad news is he thinks the person behind the persona is Aphra’s best friend. 

This modern-day Cyrano had me in stitches with laughter. A fantastic romance filled with humor and heart. 

Erica's Picks
We Are the Perfect Girl by Ariel Kaplan

Grades 6-8
​Tags: Character Driven, Contemporary Fiction, Family Life, Friendship, Humor, Mental Illness, Retellings, Romance, SEL

1890s Atlanta is not an easy place for Chinese Americans. Jo, abandoned at birth, lives with her adopted father in an abandoned hideout left over from the underground railroad. She grew up listening to the conversations in the newspaper offices above. When she hears that they are struggling, she anonymously submits articles for a new advice column. “Miss Sweetie” becomes wildly popular and controversial. As Jo tries to keep her identity a secret, she tries to uncover who her parents were. But some secrets are best left alone and these ones put her in the crosshairs of a notorious criminal. 

I loved this historical fiction. It transported me back in time and kept me turning pages with the hint of mystery and romance. 

Erica's Picks
The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee

6th - 8th
​Tags: Character Driven, Historical Fiction, Issues Fiction, Mystery, People of Color, Romance, Social Justice

If you read one book this year, have it be this one.  The year is 2002, one year after 9/11, a politically turbulent time for a sixteen-year old Hijabi Muslim.  Shirin’s immigrant parents have moved the family each year to find better job opportunities and better school districts. This makes it even harder to walk the halls of a new school surrounded by rampant Islamophobia and xenophobia.  Slurs and stereotyping and even violence have built a guarded shell around Shirin that she can never let down. Invisibility is her goal and loneliness her companion. 
One day her brother introduces her to his break dancing crew and she finds herself belonging somewhere.  Then she meets Ocean. Not since Augustus in A Fault in Our Stars, have I encountered a young male character whose innocence, kindness, integrity and tenderness break your heart.  He is the perfect complement to Shirin’s toughness.  But I had never, ever touched someone and felt like this: like I was holding electricity inside of me. Their romance is so sweet and yet you fear that Shirin may be right that the cruelty of students, teachers and families will destroy it.
Shirin is an amazing narrator, fierce and angry as well as funny and loving.  Her family and their Persian culture is heartwarmingly portrayed.  I laughed and cried over this book.
I just want to include the following written by a young reader from Good Reads:
“Everything about this book fitted right into the hollows of my heart. When I first heard that this is the story of a fellow teen Muslim, my hope came so sharp that I didn’t dare speak it. My joy, now, is inarticulate—I could never quite explain the blaze of connection, the feeling of being seen and set apart that planted seeds of gratitude that would come to flower.”

​Tessa's Picks, 8th Summer 2019, Character driven, Contemporary fiction, Issues fiction, People of color, Romance

'Quinn McAvoy is a freshman in a new school and loves sports and skateboarding.  And she is completely bald, having lost her hair due to alopecia, an autoimmune disorder.  Bullied and shunned by her friends, she is hoping to start over when her parents move to Massachusetts so that her younger brother can attend a special school for his autism.  She decides to keep her baldness a secret, struggles with wig issues and finds herself popular!
When Quinn first encounters Nick Strout in his wheelchair, his bitterness and bad temper are off putting. Eventually they become friends and Quinn learns that he is a double amputee due to a snow-boarding accident caused by his big brother who was drunk at the time.  Tommy is a star football player as was Nick before the accident.  Tommy is doing his best to support his brother but winning forgiveness is a long way away. 
Quinn and Nick become close and their honest support of each other is heartwarming. Quinn is not afraid of being real and Nick responds with humor.
“I know this is weird, but I don’t feel like explaining it right now. Can you just roll with it?”
“Oh, I can roll with it. You’ve seen me roll.”
“Are you making a wheelchair joke?”
“Maybe.”
The author handles issues of disability in a very real and empathetic way.  I have a relative with alopecia who has recently decided to stop wearing wigs and I applaud how Quinn works through her own way of dealing with this issue.  Nick’s acceptance of Quinn’s encouragement helps him move on in his journey to walk and to finding forgiveness.
This story about courage, connection and love will not disappoint.

​Tessa's Picks, 6-8th grade, Character driven, Contemporary fiction, Family life, Friendship, Issues fiction, romance.

Inspired by transformation in the tales of Snow-White and Rose-Red and Swan Lake, McLemore has created a beautiful story of magical realism in lyrical prose.  The title characters are two sisters who come from a long line of women in a Latinx family that has been cursed for generations. The curse is that there are always two daughters and one is chosen by the swans to become one of them. Roja has always know it would be her, for she is seen as the one with darker skin and fiery red-black hair and wicked, passionate ways.  Blanca of the fair skin and hair is the sweet, obedient, graceful one.
They are the yin and yang and closer than a circle.  Together they vow to break the curse.  While they hope to stop the transformation to swan, two missing boys have become a bear and a cygnet. A rich boy from an abusive family has become Yearling the bear. The cygnet is Page, a trans boy from a family who grow apples as if it is an art. Love happens to all but not as expected and with dire consequences.  Can destiny be avoided, can expectations and assumptions be shattered?
“The story of the ugly duckling was never about the cygnet discovering he is lovely. It is not a story about realizing you have become beautiful. It is about the sudden understanding that you are something other than what you thought you were, and that what you are is more beautiful that what you once though you had to be.”
One of the most beautiful books I have read, magic, fierce, bright and unforgettable. 
 
 Tessa's Picks
7th-8th grade, Character driven, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, LGBTQ, Romance, People of Color 

  There have always been secrets in Danny Cheng’s family.  When he finds a taped-up box in his father’s closet, it is more than old photos and letters; there is a file on a powerful Silicon Valley family.  A high school senior who has early acceptance to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Danny becomes obsessed with figuring out the past.  His parents immigrated to the states from China to Texas and then moved in the middle of the night without warning to California. And changed their last name. He experiences a new emptiness for the sister he never knew about who died young.  How do all these clues connect?
Danny’s friends who attends a mostly Asian-America high school in Cupertino, are all very real and memorable. Harry Wong is the perfect combination of nice, handsome, and smart and the two have a deep and meaningful friendship. Harry’s girlfriend Regina Chan has known Danny forever.  The book made me long for a sequel just to find out what the future will be for these young people.
As the one-year anniversary of a tragedy that shook this friend group approaches, Regina publishes the school newspaper as a memorial and lands them all in trouble.  Danny’s family begins to unravel as an accident brings them into the public eye. 
This story grabs you and just won’t let go as the pieces fall into place yet the unexpected still happens.  The ending literally made me gasp out loud. Themes of love, loyalty, family, immigration and friendship are beautifully woven in this moving book.

“Because if you're tangled up in someone else, if your futures are tied that way, if that's real and if you know when it happens - then it means you know who you belong to, and you know whose fates are tied to yours, whether you like it or planned it or not, whether they still exist in the same world with you or they don't, and I think that's where everything begins and ends. I think that's everything.” 
 
Tessa's Picks, 8th grade, Character driven, Contemporary Fiction, Family life, Issues Fiction, Friendship, People of color, Romance, LGBTQ