Pierce County Library System
Information & Imagination

Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (T)
(Alexie, Sherman)
Young Adult Fiction (230 pages) Recommended for Grades 7-12. Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. [Kit added 9/2009]

All American boys
(Reynolds, Jason)
Young Adult Fiction (316 pages) Recommended for grades 7-12. When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoint. [Added 9/2017]

Almost American girl: an illustrated memoir (Graphic Novel)
(Ha, Robin)
Recommended for Grades 8-12. "A powerful and moving teen graphic novel memoir about immigration, belonging, and how arts can save a life--perfect for fans of American Born Chinese and Hey, Kiddo. For as long as she can remember, it's been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn't always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together. So when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation--following her mother's announcement that she's getting married--Robin is devastated. Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn't understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cut off from her friends in Seoul and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn't fit in with her new stepfamily, and worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to--her mother. Then one day Robin's mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined."--Provided by publisher

Anger is a gift
(Oshiro, Mark)
Young Adult Fiction (463 pages) Six years ago, Moss Jefferies' father was murdered by an Oakland police officer. Along with losing a parent, the media's vilification of his father and lack of accountability has left Moss with near crippling panic attacks. Now, in his sophomore year of high school, Moss and his fellow classmates find themselves increasingly treated like criminals in their own school. [Kit added 1/2019]

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
(Saenz, Benjamin Alire)
Young Adult Fiction. (359 pages) Recommended for Grades 7-12. Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before. [Kit added: 11/2014]

Bomb: the race to build and steal the world's most dangerous weapon
(Sheinkin, Steve)
YA Nonfiction (298 pages) Recommended for Grades 5-12. Recounts the scientific discoveries that enabled atom splitting, the military intelligence operations that occurred in rival countries, and the work of brilliant scientists hidden at Los Alamos. [Kit added 01/2018]

Enrique's journey: the true story of a boy determined to reunite with his mother
(Nazario, Sonia)
Documents the journey of a Honduran teen who braved hardship and peril to reunite with his mother after she was forced to leave him behind and seek migratory work in the United States [Kit added 01/2017]

Every Day
(Levithan, David)
Young Adult Fiction (324 pages) Recommended for Grades 7-12. Every morning A wakes in a different person's body, in a different person's life, learning over the years to never get too attached, until he wakes up in the body of Justin and falls in love with Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon. [Kit added 10/2013]

Fever, 1793
(Anderson, Laurie Halse)
Young Adult Fiction (243 pages) Recommended for Grades 6-9. The year is 1793 and fourteen-year-old Matilda Cook finds herself in the middle of a struggle to keep herself and her loved ones alive in the midst of the yellow fever epidemic. [Kit added 9/2009]

Hate u give, The
(Thomas, Angie)
Recommended for Grades 9-12. "Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does--or does not--say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life."--Amazon

Home is not a country
(Elhillo, Safia)
Recommended for Grades 7-9. "Nima doesn't feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself. Until she doesn't. As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn't give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might just be more real than Nima knows. And more hungry. And the life Nima has, the one she keeps wishing were someone else's...she might have to fight for it with a fierceness she never knew she had."-- Publisher's description

Last night at the Telegraph Club
(Lo, Malinda)
Recommended for Grades 10-12. "Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father--despite his hard-won citizenship--Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day"-- Provided by publisher

Patron saints of nothing
(Ribay, Randy)
Recommended for Grades 10-12. When seventeen-year-old Jay Reguero learns his Filipino cousin and former best friend, Jun, was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, he flies to the Philippines to learn more

Peak
(Smith, Roland)
Young Adult Fiction (246 pages) Recommended for Grades 6-10. A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest. [Kit added 3/2010]

Speak
(Anderson, Laurie Halse)
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect of Melinda's freshman year in high school [Kit added 1/2017]

They called us enemy (Graphic novel)
(Takei, George)
Recommended for Grades 7-12. "A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten 'relocation centers', hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future. What is American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do?"--Provided by publisher

Unwind
(Shusterman, Neal)
Young Adult Fiction (335 pages) Recommended for Grades 8-12. In a future world where those between the ages of thirteen and eighteen can have their lives "unwound" and their body parts harvested for use by others, three teens go to extreme lengths to uphold their beliefs--and, perhaps, save their own lives. [Kit added 10/2011]