Sorted By: Social Justice
René Peña-Govea
ESTELA, UNDROWNING
February 2026, HarperCollins/Quill Tree, TBD pp
As a rare Latina who tested into San Francisco’s most exclusive public high school, seventeen-year-old Estela Morales just wants to keep her head down and become a first-gen college student at UC Berk...
Sorted By: Social Justice
Daria Peoples
BE THE LIGHT: HOW SHE BECAME ANGELA DAVIS
June 2025, Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 56 pp
Somewhere between soil and sky, spirit and flesh, Angela imagined a new world that had not been seen yet. In BE THE LIGHT: How She Became Angela Davis, acclaimed author and artist Daria Peoples illumi...
Sorted By: Social Justice
H.D. Hunter
SOMETHING LIKE RIGHT
August 2024, Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan, 336 pp
Zay’s ma always said his mouth would get him in trouble. Sure enough, it got him into his first and only fight in his junior year of high school. Expelled from his district, Zay’s only hope for redemp...
Sorted By: Social Justice
Bessie Flores Zaldívar
LIBERTAD
August 2024, Dial/Penguin Young Readers, 432 pp
A queer YA coming-of-age set during the rigged Honduran presidential election, about a young poet discovering the courage it takes to speak her truth about the people and country she loves. As the c...
Sorted By: Social Justice
Daria Peoples
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: Social Justice
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: Social Justice
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: Social Justice
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: Social Justice
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...