“Daybreak in Alabama” is a poem by Langston Hughes about a composer who fantasizes about creating music that will embody the beauty of life in Alabama and thereby lead to healing and a better world. The poem became popular during the sixties due...

Ellen Bass is an American poet, writer, and teacher whose work centers on love, sex, food, relationships, conflict, and healing. In her poem "Basket of Figs," published in the 2002 collection Mules of Love, the speaker invites her lover to lay...

When it was published, Adam Rapp's 33 Snowfish (2003) was lauded by experts and critics as an important, challenging novel that could impact the worldview of its teenage readers because of its complex and mature themes. In the 2020s, those mature...

Someday (2018) is the third and final novel in author David Levithan's Every Day series. Once again, Levithan's novel delves into the lives of A, Rhiannon, Nathan, and Reverend Poole. For much of his life, A has thought he was one of a kind. At...

Another Day (2015) is the second novel in David Levithan's Every Day trilogy, which began with the novel Every Day in 2012. Levithan's novel is told from the perspective of a character named A, who has the ability to inhabit different people's...

David Levithan, the author of the critically acclaimed and incredibly successful Every Day series, has centered much of his literary career on love—particularly 2SLGBTQIA+ love. In each of his novels, love is a prominent theme. That is especially...

On 11/22/63 (2011), Stephen King ventured into a new genre: speculative science fiction. Long known as the master of horror, 11/22/63 tells the story of a high school English teacher named Jake Epping who travels back in time to stop the...

10 Things I Can See From Here (2017) by Carrie Mac is a story about what it means to grow up in the age of the Internet. The novel follows a young woman named Maeve, who has been struggling with anxiety for much of her life. Her anxiety is so bad...

Check, Please!: Sticks and Scones (2020) is the second half of author Ngozi Ukazu's manga comic book. The first entry in the series, called #Hockey, covered the main character's Freshman and sophomore years. Sticks and Scones cover Bittle's junior...

Check, Please!: #Hockey (2018) is the first entry in author Ngozi Ukazu's Check, Please manga comic book series. Ukazu's novel follows Eric Bittle, an incoming Freshman (the novel takes place in Eric's freshman and sophomore years) at Samwell...

Stuart Little is a children's book written and published by E.B. White in 1945. It was this first book of White’s as well as his second, Charlotte’s Web, that secured his reputation as one of the most beloved American writers of children’s...

Sarah J. Maas' Empire of Storms (2016) is the fifth installment in her Throne of Glass series. As with previous novels, Empire of Storms tells the story of Aelin Galathynius, who lives in a complicated world filled with people who have conflicting...

Identical (2008) is a novel about abuse. It tells the story of Kaeleigh and Raeanne, two sixteen-year-old identical twins with a seemingly normal life. Their parents are both involved in the prestigious—their father is a district court judge, and...

Ellen Hopkins' Crank (2004) was based in part on the real-life struggles of the author's daughter, who has struggled with addiction to crystal meth for much of her life. Although it is a work of fiction, Hopkins estimated that "60%" of the novel...

A Court of Mist and Fury (2016) is the sequel to author Sarah J. Maas' 2015 novel A Court of Thorns and Roses. A Court of Mist and Fury's story picks up where the previous novel left off. Once again, the novel follows Feyre, a human huntress who...

A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015) is the first novel in Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses series. It introduces the series' magical world and the novel's main character, Feyre, a nineteen-year-old huntress. One day, Feyre decides to kill...

Ellen Hopkins' Tricks (2009) is a novel told in verse. The novel follows five teenagers in the United States, each of whom is struggling with drug addiction or sex and the related situations they find themselves in because of it. The first story...

Ellen Bass is an American poet, writer, and teacher whose work is concerned with the complexity of life: relationships, conflict, the body, sexuality, and food. Bass's poem "The Thing Is," published in her 2002 collection Mules of Love, instructs...

Blood Brothers is a musical written by English dramatist and composer Willy Russell. It depicts the lives of twin brothers, Mickey and Eddie, who were separated at birth. One ends up being raised by a rich family and becoming a local politician...

Eragon, author Christopher Paolini's first novel, was published in 2022, when Paolini was 19. After spending much of his early career writing novels in the world of Eragon, Paolini took a break. Murtagh (2023) is his return to that world. Murtagh...

The Future (2023) is author Naomi Alderman's novel, which envisions a world run by a few billionaires called "The Future." Those billionaires have the world on a crash course towards climate destruction because of their decision to pollute the...

How to Say Babylon (2023) is author Safiya Sinclair's memoir. The book traces Sinclair's upbringing in a strict Rastafarian (a religion whose God is Haile Selassie) to her eventual decision to leave her religion and become a person of her own. As...

Angie Kim's Happiness Falls (2023) follows a biracial Korean family living in Virginia. Initially, their life seems picture-perfect. They are a seemingly happy family with a lot going for them; however, when the beloved patriarch of the family...