By Ellen Hagan
New York : Bloomsbury Children's Book, 2021. Fiction. 309 pgs.
Twelve-year-old Beatrice Miller copes with the ups and downs of friendships, puberty, and identity, guided by the wisdom and love of her beloved Mamaw and mom, the summer before seventh grade.
They Call Me Güero
By David Bowles
El Paso, Texas : Cinco Puntos Press, [2018]. Fiction. 111 pgs.
Twelve-year-old Güero, a red-headed, freckled Mexican American border kid, discovers the joy of writing poetry, thanks to his seventh grade English teacher.
Alone
By Megan E. Freeman
New York, NY : Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division, 2021. Fiction. 404 pgs.
When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She's alone--left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read.
What About Will
By Ellen Hopkins
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, [2021]. Fiction. 361 pgs.
Trace's relationship with his older brother Will becomes increasingly complicated after Will suffers a traumatic brain injury and becomes addicted to pain pills.
We Belong
By Cookie Hiponia Everman
New York : Dial Books for Young Readers, 2021. Fiction. 201 pgs.
Through a bedtime story to her daughters, a woman weaves together her immigration story and Pilipino mythology.
Singing with Elephants
By Margarita Engle
New York : Viking, 2022. Fiction. 217 pgs.
Lonely Cuban-born eleven-year-old Oriol lives in Santa Barbara, California, where she enjoys caring for injured animals, but her budding friendship with Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American winner of a Nobel Prize in Literature, emboldens Oriol, an aspiring writer, to open up and create a world of words for herself.
BenBee and the Teacher Griefer
By K. A. Holt
San Francisco, CA : Chronicle Books, [2020]. Fiction. 336 pgs.
BenBee and the Teacher Griefer is a funny, clever novel-in-verse series about Ben Bellows--who failed the Language Arts section of the Florida State test--and three classmates who get stuck in a summer school class. Soon, the kids win over Ms. J with their passion for Sandbox, a Minecraft-type game. The kids make a deal with Ms. J: every minute they spend reading aloud equals one minute they get to play Sandbox in class. But when the administration finds about this unorthodox method of teaching, Ben B. and his buds have to band together to save their teacher's job--and their own academic future.
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