Sorted By: Diverse
Alexis Castellanos
ISLA TO ISLAND
Spring 2022, Atheneum/S&S, TBD pp
A wordless middle grade graphic novel following a girl growing up in 1960s Cuba. When her parents begin to fear for their daughter's safety under Castro's regime, she is sent from her beloved island t...
Sorted By: Diverse
Gonzalo Alvarez
PIYOMAN: WARRIOR OF THE SUN
Spring 2022, HarperCollins, TBD pp
Stumbling into an Aztec underworld fueled by sacrifice, a timid boy named Emmanuel struggles to fulfill someone else's destiny, discover dormant gods, and vanquish six terrifying Latin American Legen...
Sorted By: Diverse
Daria Peoples-Riley
AMERICA, MY LOVE, AMERICA, MY HEART
April 2021, Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 40pp
America, do you love me? My black. My brown. My pride. My crown. Acclaimed author-artist Daria Peoples-Riley invites readers to answer timely—and timeless—questions beating inside the hearts of child...
Sorted By: Diverse
Amparo Ortiz
DRAGONBLOOD RING (Blazewrath #2)
October 2021, Page Street Kids, 320 pp
After the Sire’s capture, teen athletes Lana Torres and Victoria Peralta travel to Puerto Rico with their former Blazewrath team. While Lana discovers her roots, nothing fills the void Blazewrath’s ca...
Sorted By: Diverse
Mimi Yu
Empress of Flames
August 2021, Gollancz/Hachette UK, 496 pp
As the late-Emperor's first-born, Princess Lu knows the throne rightfully belongs to her. She also can't forget her promise to shapeshifter Nok, the boy she loves, to win justice for his now powerless...
Sorted By: Diverse
Madeline McGrane
THE ACCURSED VAMPIRE
July 2021, HarperCollins, 176pp
A spooky and funny graphic novel debut that’s perfect for fans of Molly Knox Ostertag’s THE WITCH BOY and Kristen Gudsnuk’s MAKING FRIENDS. Dragoslava is a vampire kid. And that’s not even the worst ...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kathryn Ormsbee
CANDIDLY CLINE
November 2021, HarperCollins, 320pp
Born in Paris, Kentucky and raised on her Gram’s favorite country music, Cline dreams of making it big with her own songs—even if her mother has always told her that music won’t pay the bills. So whe...
Sorted By: Diverse
Sorted By: Diverse
Kat Cho
VICIOUS SPIRITS
August 2020, Putnam/Penguin, 416 pp
Miyoung and Jihoon are picking up the pieces of their broken lives following the deaths of Miyoung’s mother, Yena, and Jihoon’s grandmother. The events at the end of Wicked Fox have upended the forces...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kat Cho
WICKED FOX
June 2019, Putnam/Penguin, 448 pp
An addictive fantasy-romance set in modern-day Seoul. Eighteen-year-old Gu Miyoung has a secret--she's a gumiho, a nine-tailed fox who must devour the energy of men in order to survive. Because so fe...
Sorted By: Diverse
Ellen Oh
THE DRAGON KING CHRONICLES
KING
Book 3 – December 2014, HarperCollins/HarperTeen, 288 pp
This thrilling and romantic conclusion to the Prophecy series brings Kira her final quest. Kira, once an outcast in her home village of Hansong, is now the only one with the power to save her kingdom....
Sorted By: Diverse
Ellen Oh
THE DRAGON EGG PRINCESS
March 2020, HarperCollins, 256 pp
A must-have middle grade novel perfect for fans of the Wing & Claw series by Linda Sue Park. In a kingdom filled with magic, Jiho Park and his family are an anomaly—magic doesn’t affect them. Jiho co...
Sorted By: Diverse
Ellen Oh
FINDING JUNIE KIM
May 2021, HarperCollins, 368pp
From We Need Diverse Books cofounder Ellen Oh comes an extraordinary story about a girl who must understand her family’s past to embrace her present, finding herself along the way. Junie Kim just wan...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kathryn Ormsbee
TASH HEARTS TOLSTOY
June 2017, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 384 pp
A refreshing LGBTQ+ coming-of-age novel about Internet fame, peer pressure, and YouTube. After a shout-out from one of the Internet’s superstar vloggers, Natasha “Tash” Zelenka suddenly finds herself...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kathryn Ormsbee
THE GREAT UNKNOWABLE END
February 2019, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 400 pp
A humorous, lightly speculative novel for fans of “Welcome to Nightvale” with points of view from two teens with opposing beliefs who come together at what might be the end of the world in a small Ame...
Sorted By: Diverse
Yamile Saied Méndez
ON THESE MAGIC SHORES
April 2020, Tu Books/Lee & Low, 288 pp
Twelve-year-old Minerva Soledad Madrid does not believe in fairies (or peques, as mamá calls them), despite the fact that her family insists peques followed them from Argentina to the US watch over th...
Sorted By: Diverse
Yamile Saied Méndez
FURIA
September 2020, Algonquin/Workman Publishing, 368 pp
Camila “Furia” Hassan has a dream—to play professional fútbol. She lives in the cradle of fútbol legends, Rosario, Argentina, but Rosario only exports fútbol players of the male kind. No one believes ...
Sorted By: Diverse
Dana Alison Levy
THE MISADVENTURES OF THE FAMILY FLETCHER
July 2014, Delacorte/Penguin Random House, 260 pp
Modern Family meets modern classics like Beverly Cleary’s Quimbys and Judy Blume’s Hatchers in this heartwarming and hilarious middle grade novel. Four adopted brothers, two dads, and an ever-changing...
Sorted By: Diverse
Dana Alison Levy
THE FAMILY FLETCHER TAKES ROCK ISLAND
May 2016, Delacorte/Penguin Random House, 272 pp
Fans of The Penderwicks and other summer tales will enjoy this stand-alone companion novel to the acclaimed Misadventures of the Family Fletcher. Set on a fictional New England island, the boys, ages ...
Sorted By: Diverse
Dana Alison Levy
THIS WOULD MAKE A GOOD STORY SOMEDAY
Spring 2017, Penguin Random House, 260 pp
Fans of Dan Santat’s Are We There Yet and Geoff Rodkey’s The Tapper Twins will enjoy this cross-country train trip of a middle grade novel. Twelve-year-old Sara loves her family, but she’s less than t...
Sorted By: Diverse
Dana Alison Levy
IT WASN’T ME
November 2018, Delacorte/Penguin Random House, 336 pp
The Breakfast Club meets middle school in this story of six 12-year-old students — five potential perpetrators and Theo, one seriously annoyed victim — forced to spend vacation week together in school...
Sorted By: Diverse
Aida Salazar
THE MOON WITHIN
Spring 2019, Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, 250 pp
This free verse middle grade novel tells the story of 11-year-old Cely, whose life swirls with questions about her changing body, her first attraction to a boy, her best friend’s exploration of what i...
Sorted By: Diverse
Aida Salazar
LAND OF THE CRANES
September 2020, Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, 256 pp
This free verse middle grade novel, inspired in part by the author’s own childhood as an undocumented immigrant, tells the story of 9-year-old Betita, who believes that she and other migrants follow a...
Sorted By: Diverse
Randi Pink
INTO WHITE
September 2016, Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan, 288 pp
Sixteen-year-old Latoya Williams, who is black, attends a mostly white high school in the Alabama. In a moment of desperation, she prays for the power to change her race and wakes up white. Randi Pink...
Sorted By: Diverse
Randi Pink
GIRLS LIKE US
October 2019, Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan, 320 pp
This historical fiction novel set in the summer of 1972, months before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, is an introspective look into abortion rights. The novel weaves togethe...
Sorted By: Diverse
Randi Pink
ANGEL OF GREENWOOD
January 2021, Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan, 304pp
ANGEL OF GREENWOOD is a historical fiction novel set in the Tulsa, Oklahoma neighborhood of Greenwood, affectionately known as Black Wall Street, in which sixteen-year-old Angel and seventeen-year-old...
Sorted By: Diverse
Ashley Woodfolk
THE BEAUTY THAT REMAINS
March 2018, Delacorte/Penguin Random House, 336 pp
Autumn always knew exactly who she was: a talented artist and a loyal friend. Shay was defined by two things: her bond with her twin sister and her love of music. And Logan has always turned to writin...
Sorted By: Diverse
Ashley Woodfolk
FLYY GIRLS
TOBYN: THE IT GIRL
Book 4 - August 2021, Penguin Workshop/Penguin, 144 pp
Meet the Flyy Girls. The group of girls who seem like they can get away with anything. Veteran author Ashley Woodfolk pens a gorgeous and dynamic series about four Harlem highschoolers, each facing a ...
Sorted By: Diverse
Suzanne Walker / Wendy Xu
MOONCAKES
Fall 2019, Lion Forge, 256 pp
A story of love and demons, family and witchcraft. Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers’ bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books a...
Sorted By: Diverse
Randy Ribay
PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING
June 2019, Kokila/Penguin Random House, 304 pp
A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin’s murder. Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his...
Sorted By: Diverse
Mimi Yu
THE GIRL KING
January 2019, Bloomsbury Children’s, 432 pp
With three revolving points-of-view, this diverse, epic, richly-imagined Asian fantasy is set against a world of ancient magic and political intrigue. Assertive Lu has always expected to be named her...
Sorted By: Diverse
Shveta Thakrar
STAR DAUGHTER
August 2020, Harperteen/HarperCollins, 448 pp
The daughter of a star and a mortal, Sheetal is used to keeping secrets. Her mother returned to the constellation Pushya when Sheetal was just a child, and since then, Sheetal has hidden her true iden...
Sorted By: Diverse
Justin A. Reynolds
EARLY DEPARTURES
September 2020, Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins, 320 pp
Jamal’s best friend Q does not know he’s about to die . . . again. He also doesn’t know that Jamal tried to save his life, rescuing him from drowning only to watch Q die in the hospital. Even more co...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kelly Quindlen
LATE TO THE PARTY
April 2020, Roaring Brook/Macmillan, 304 pp
A story of friendship and first love, featuring a diverse cast of LGBTQ+ characters. Codi wants to score her first kiss—with a girl—but she may have to expand her social world first. Can she fall in ...
Sorted By: Diverse
Josanne La Valley
THE VINE BASKET
April 2013, Clarion/HMH, 256 pp
Things aren’t looking good for fourteen-year-old Mehrigul. She yearns to be in school, but she’s needed on the family farm. The longer she’s out of school, the more likely it is that she’ll be sent of...
Sorted By: Diverse
Josanne La Valley
FACTORY GIRL
January 2017, Clarion/HMH, 256 pp
In order to save her family’s farm, Roshen, sixteen, must leave her rural home to work in a factory in the south of China. There she finds arduous and degrading conditions and contempt for her minorit...
Sorted By: Diverse
Cynthia Leonor Garza
LUCÍA THE LUCHADORA
April 2017, POW!, 32 pp
Girls can be superheroes, too. When the boys on the playground tell Lucía that girls can’t be superheroes – despite her high-flying leaps – she comes up with a plan to disguise herself as a masked luc...
Sorted By: Diverse
Cynthia Leonor Garza
LUCÍA THE LUCHADORA AND THE MILLION MASKS
October 2018, POW!, 32 pp
A splendiferous sisterhood adventure in the follow-up to Lucía the Luchadora. Lucía’s little sister Gemma wants to be a luchadora too, but she seems to find trouble wherever she goes. When Gemma makes...
Sorted By: Diverse
Daria Peoples-Riley
THIS IS IT
February 2018, Greenwillow/Harper, 40 pp
A young ballerina, uncertain of her talent, follows the poetically compelling voice of her shadow to discover the courage she needs to audition....
Sorted By: Diverse
Daria Peoples-Riley
I GOT NEXT
July 2019, Greenwillow/Harper, 40 pp
A perfect read-aloud for all young athletes on game day, featuring text that mimics spoken-word poetry. When a young basketball player wants to play in the next game at the local playground, his shad...
Sorted By: Diverse
David Kreizman
THE YEAR THEY FELL
September 2019, Imprint/Macmillan, 384 pp
In the wake of their parents’ tragic plane crash, five very different teenagers must find a way to navigate their senior year of high school and forge a new family. Josie, Jack, Archie, Harrison, and...
Sorted By: Diverse
David Kreizman
THE UNEXPLAINABLE DISAPPEARANCE OF MARS PATEL
October 2020, Candlewick, 304 pp
When his friends begin disappearing, eleven-year-old Mars Patel uncovers a mystery that will take him to the stars…and beyond.The first novel in a series written by Sheela Chari based on the award-win...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kat Fajardo
MISS QUINCES
Spring 2022, Graphix/Scholastic, 180 pp
A coming-of-age middle grade graphic novel about a girl forced to celebrate her quinceañera despite hating all things pretty and pink. Suyapa “Sue” Gutierrez was planning a fun summer at camp with he...
Sorted By: Diverse
Mike Dutton
FOOD TRUCK FEST!
March 2018, Macmillan/FSG, 40 pp
The rhyming story follows a fleet of food trucks as they get ready for the biggest and best day of the year – the food truck fest....
Sorted By: Diverse
Tameka Fryer Brown
BROWN BABY LULLABY
Winter 2020, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux/Macmillan, TBD pp
A beautifully illustrated portrayal of parental love in a family of color. When the sun sets, it’s time for Momma, Papi, and their tired toddler to begin the evening’s routine, which includes clangin...
Sorted By: Diverse
Nina Crews
SEEING INTO TOMORROW: HAIKU BY RICHARD WRIGHT
February 2018, Millbrook/Lerner, 32 pp
Richard Wright’s haiku put everyday moments – walking a dog, watching a sunset, finding a beetle – into focus. Now, more than fifty years after they were written, these poems continue to reflect kids’...
Sorted By: Diverse
Pat Cummings
TRACE
December 2018, HarperCollins, 320 pp
Coretta Scott King Award winner Pat Cummings’s debut TRACE, about a boy who stumbles into a ghost story born in the turmoil of New York City’s 1863 Draft Riots. Weighed down by guilt for an accident ...
Sorted By: Diverse
Alina Chau
MARSHMALLOW AND JORDAN
October 2021, First Second/Macmillan, TBD pp
Beautiful watercolor illustrations bring to life this middle grade graphic novel about former youth basketball star Jordan, who was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident. She misses playing her...
Sorted By: Diverse
Ann Dávila Cardinal
FIVE MIDNIGHTS
June 2019, Tor/Macmillan, 288 pp
In this thrilling, supernatural murder mystery, monsters only come when they’re called. A self-described Gringa-Rican from Vermont, Lupe Dávila has her summer thrown off-course when she’s shipped off...
Sorted By: Diverse
Ann Dávila Cardinal
CATEGORY FIVE
June 2020, Tor/Macmillan, 240 pp
After the hurricane, some see destruction and some smell blood. Category Five is a new supernatural thriller from Ann Dávila Cardinal, set against the backdrop of a post-hurricane Puerto Rico. The t...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kacen Callender
HURRICANE CHILD
March 2018, Scholastic, 224 pp
A lyrical, debut middle grade novel with a touch of magical realism and LGBTQ+ themes, about first friendship, first love, and finding self-acceptance. 12-year-old Caroline Murphy is a Hurricane Chil...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kacen Callender
THIS IS KIND OF AN EPIC LOVE STORY
October 2018, Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, 304 pp
A fluffy romantic comedy that plays with the friends-to-lovers and second-chance tropes featuring diverse LBGTQ+ teens. Nathan Bird is a film buff, but he’s a firm disbeliever in real-life happy endi...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kacen Callender
KING AND THE DRAGONFLIES
February 2020, Scholastic, 272 pp
From the Stonewall and Lambda Book Award-winning author of Hurricane Child comes a novel about loss, grief, and finding the courage to discover one’s identity. Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure ...
Sorted By: Diverse
Kacen Callender
FELIX EVER AFTER
May 2020, Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, 368 pp
From Stonewall and Lambda Literary Award-winning author Kacen Callender comes a poignant story of identity and self-discovery, layered with romance. Felix Love has never been in love, and he’s painfu...
Sorted By: Diverse
Shakirah Bourne
JOSEPHINE AGAINST THE SEA
Spring 2021, Scholastic, TBD pp
The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste meets R.L.Stine’s The Girl Who Cried Monster. 11 year-old Jo discovers that her Dad’s new girlfriend is a powerful sea creature and has to convince everyone of the woma...