Hey, YA readers!
I’m so excited to share these books with you this week. I won’t lie: these titles are all sitting somewhere pretty high on my TBR and the faster I write this intro, the faster I can add even more books onto my TBR without get/ting to read them.
2024 is the tenth year of the Read Harder Challenge! Join us as we make our way through 24 tasks meant to expand our reading horizons and diversify our TBRs. To get book recommendations for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter. We’ll also keep you informed about other cool reading challenges, readathons, and more across the bookish internet. If you become a paid subscriber, you get even more recommendations plus community features, where you can connect with a community of passionate, like-minded readers in a cozy and supportive corner of the internet. Sign up today!
Bookish Goods
Library Love Vinyl Sticker by SprinklesStudio
Slap this library lover sticker that taps the nostalgia button on your favorite water bottle. $4.25.
New Releases
We’ve got a nice array of new YA out today (like my rhyme?). I’m highlighting two in the science fiction and fantasy realm below, but you can grab the entire list here.
Daughter of the Bone Forest by Jasmine Skye
Rosy is a bone familiar, living in the Bone Forest. Her magic is being able to shift into different animals with exposed bones. She keeps this power hidden, though, as she does not want to be drafted into the Witch King’s army. When Princess Shaw enters the forest and Rosy saves her life, Rosy is given an offer she’s nervous about but also cannot refuse: an opportunity to attend a prestigious school. She knows it’ll help her find a solution to a problem plaguing her grandmother.
As soon as she’s at Witch Hall, though, Rosy finds herself pulled into Shaw’s world and magnetism. Rosy does not want to get involved in the coming war, but she cannot stop following in what Shaw wants and does.
How does she navigate her desire to keep her head down to help her grandmother with the feelings she cannot shake?
Snowglobe by Soyoung Park, translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort
This book sounds so good and I am itching to get to it on my TBR!
Snowglobe is beneath a dome, and it is the only place that is warm anymore. The less fortunate don’t get to live there, and instead, they face the brutal, unrelenting cold every day to get to their jobs, which help supply to power to keep Snowglobe warm. Reprieve comes to them via the 24-hour feed constantly showing the lavish lives being lived inside the dome.
Chobahm’s life is about watching what’s happening in the globe. One of her favorite shows stars Goh Haeri. When Haeri dies and Chobahm is selected to replace her on the show, Chobahm thinks this is the key to a better life.
Except what is happening in the dome is not the dream. Not even close.
This one is pitched as part Squid Game and part Hunger Games. It’s a big title in Korea and is finally being released in English.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Black YA Nonfiction
It is Black History Month, and while it is important to read, share, and talk about Black YA books all year round, it would be a gross oversight not to highlight it this month. YA has certainly improved when it comes to Black voices over the last decade, but there is little question it still is not enough.
This week, let’s look at some of the recent nonfiction written by Black YA authors. I’m sticking to books that came out in hardcover or in their paperback form so far this year (& including some to put on your to-read list as they will hit shelves before the end of the first third of the year). YA nonfiction has historically been the most inclusive of the category, and it has been nice to see this continue.
The below is not comprehensive, but it is pretty darn close!
Better Than We Found It by Frederick Joseph and Porsche Joseph
At the core of this work are questions of care: why do we need to engage in change? How can young people get involved? Through interviews and anecdotes, a wide range of topics are covered in this collection, including gun violence, climate change, Indigenous land theft, Black Lives Matter, and more.
Bless The Blood: A Cancer Memoir by Walela Nehanda
At 23, Walela was diagnosed with blood cancer. Not only was this traumatic from the medical perspective, but it became even more difficult as medical professionals refused to acknowledge Walela by their pronouns and accept their identity.
In essays and poetry, Walela shares their experience with reconnecting to ancestors and inner wisdom through the process. As someone living at the intersections of being Black, fat, queer, nonbinary, and disabled, they offer insight and perspective too rarely given space to be fully seen.
Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School by Tiffany Jewell
Released this week, Jewell’s next work of nonfiction for young readers explores how Black and Brown students’ lives are impacted by the racism they experience every day simply by going to school.
This book digs into systemic racism through Jewell’s personal lens, but it also brings in a wealth of other voices. The aim is to help empower marginalized students while also validating their educational experiences.
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be by Shannon Gibney
This Printz honoree and new-in-paperback is a speculative memoir about Gibney’s life growing up a Black transracial adoptee. The speculative element comes through Gibney developing the fictitious story of Erin Powers, the name her white birth mother gave her prior to adoption. The real-life Gibney lived meets that alternate life in the book, and it helps the two parts of Gibney’s story come together as a whole.
How Do I Draw These Memories? by Jonell Joshua (April 16)
This illustrated memoir tells Joshua’s story of growing up with a mentally ill mother and how, even through those tough times, her family came together to ensure she and her brother were cared for in the best way possible.
How The Boogeyman Became a Poet by Tony Keith Jr.
In this memoir in verse, we follow Keith as he grows up dreaming of becoming a poet, writer, and performer. The problem is that he’s been followed by the Boogeyman. It was first coming because of his Blackness. Then it came as Keith began to realize he was gay—something he tried as hard as he could to push away and ignore. The problem was by denying himself his truth, Keith could not step into the life he was truly meant to live.
This sounds like an excellent read for fans of George M. Johnson’s memoirs.
Thanks as always for hanging out. Can you believe it’ll be the last day of February when we see each other again here? Wow.
See you then!
–Kelly Jensen