Teen Summer Challenge: Books by Authors of Color

Told from multiple viewpoints, while seventeen-year-old Anna K seems above the typical problems of her Manhattan friends and siblings, finding love with a notorious playboy changes everything.

3) The astonishing color of after

Author

Pan, Emily X. R

Formats:

Description

After her mother's suicide, grief-stricken Leigh Sanders travels to Taiwan to stay with grandparents she never met, determined to find her mother who she believes turned into a bird.

4) The black kids

Author

Hammonds Reed, Christina

Formats:

Description

With the Rodney King riots closing in on high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble she has enjoyed, protecting her from the difficult realities most black people face, begins to crumble.

5) Boy in the black suit

Author

Reynolds, Jason

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

Soon after his mother's death, Matt takes a job at a funeral home in his tough Brooklyn neighborhood and, while attending and assisting with funerals, begins to accept her death and his responsibilities as a man.

6) Cemetery boys

Author

Thomas, Aiden

Formats:

Description

Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school's bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.

7) Charming as a verb

Author

Philippe, Ben

Formats:

Description

Henri "Halti" Haltiwanger can charm just about anyone. But his easy smiles mask a burning ambition to attend his dream college, Columbia University. There is only one person who seems immune to Henri's charms: his "intense" classmate and neighbor Corinne Troy. When she uncovers Henri's less-than-honest dog-walking scheme, she blackmails him into helping her change her image at school. Henri agrees, seeing a potential upside for himself. Soon what...

8) Children of blood and bone

Author

Adeyemi, Tomi

Formats:

Description

Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.

9) Clap when you land

Author

Acevedo, Elizabeth

Formats:

Description

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people ... In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal's office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash. Separated by distance -- and Papi's secrets -- the two girls are forced to...

10) A Cuban girl's guide to tea and tomorrow

Author

Namey, Laura Taylor

Formats:

Description

Seventeen-year-old Lila Reyes, furious when her parents send her to the English countryside to recover from grief and heartbreak, unexpectedly falls in love with a teashop clerk--and England, itself.

11) Dear Haiti, love Alaine

Author

Moulite, Maika

Formats:

Description

After her presentation at school goes very wrong and she is suspended, Haitian American teen Alaine is sent to work in a Haitian nonprofit, where she learns about the local culture and her family's heritage.

12) Dear Martin

Author

Stone, Nic

Formats:

Description

Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.

13) The downstairs girl

Author

Lee, Stacey

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

"1890, Atlanta. By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel Caroline Payne, the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for 'the genteel Southern lady'"--

14) Dread Nation

Author

Ireland, Justina

Formats:

Description

New York Times bestseller; 6 starred reviews!

At once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, Dread Nation is Justina Ireland's stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar—a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet.

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—derailing

...

15) Each of Us a Desert

Author

Oshiro, Mark

Description

Xochitl and her younger brother, Raul, have not heard from their parents in two months--they were among the first people to venture away from their tiny dying colonia to reach Solado, the prosperous and mysterious land far to the north. Since her fated birth, Xo has been chosen-the beloved of the sun-meant to bridge the natural gap between her people and land by sharing their stories with the desert, while the stars bless them back. Frustrated with...

16) Early departures

Author

Reynolds, Justin A

Formats:

Description

Jamal's best friend, Q, doesn't know that he died, and that he's about to die again. He doesn't know that Jamal tried to save him. And that the reason they haven't been friends for two years is because Jamal blames Q for the accident that killed his parents. But what if Jamal could have a second chance? A new technology allows Q to be reanimated for a few weeks before he dies permanently. And Q's mom is not about to let anyone ruin this miracle by...

17) An ember in the ashes

Author

Tahir, Sabaa

Formats:

Description

"Laia is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire's greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution"--

18) The epic crush of Genie Lo

Author

Yee, F. C

Formats:

Description

Sixteen-year-old Genie's focus on getting into a top-tier college is destroyed when an enigmatic transfer student, Quentin, helps her transform into a demon-fighter.

19) Fat chance, Charlie Vega

Author

Maldonado, Crystal

Formats:

Description

eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Overweight sixteen-year-old Charlie yearned for her first kiss while her perfect best friend, Amelia, fell in love, so when she finally starts dating and learns the boy asked Amelia out first, she is devastated.

20) Felix Ever After

Author

Callender, Kacen

Formats:

Description