Display: Young Love

Danny Constantino's First (and Maybe Last?) Date
By Paul Acampora
New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2020. Fiction. 218 pages.

Between going to the middle school dance with his celebrity crush and watching his mom campaign to be the next town mayor, Danny has a lot to learn about life in the spotlight. --Editor

Bye Forever, I Guess
By Jodi Meadows
New York: Holiday House, 2024. Fiction. 284 pages.

Eighth-grader Ingrid runs a popular blog anonymously and has online personas more popular than she is, but when a wrong-number text message offers her a chance at connection, Ingrid opens herself to the opportunity to make a real live friend. --Editor

Toads & Diamonds
By Heather Tomlinson
New York: Henry Holt, 2010. Fiction. 278 pages.

A retelling of the Perrault fairy tale set in pre-colonial India, in which two stepsisters receive gifts from a goddess and each walks her own path to find her gift's purpose, discovering romance along the way.--Editor

That's What Friends Do
By Cathleen Barnhart
New York: Harper, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, 2020. Fiction. 340 pages.

Told in two voices, middle-schoolers Sammie and David's long-term friendship is endangered when new student Luke begins flirting with Sammie just when David decides to confess his crush on her.--Editor

Crushing It
By Joanne Levy
New York: Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division, 2017. Fiction. 229 pages.

Seventh grader Kat struggles with awkwardness while trying to help her popular best friend and cousin, Olivia, get together with her own crush, Tyler.--Editor

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Review: Kareem Between

Kareem Between By Shifa Saltagi Safadi New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024. Fiction. 324 pages. Kareem loves football and as he gets ready to start seventh grade he dreams of someday becoming the first Syrian American NFL player. Seventh grade is not off to a great start for Kareem, after football tryouts don't go as he had planned, his best friend moves away, and his mom returns to Syria to help bring his sick grandfather to the US for treatment. So when Austin, the quarterback and coach's son, offers to talk to his dad and get Kareem on the football team in the spring, if he will cheat and do his homework for him, Kareem agrees. Kareem really wants to fit in at school and he is desperate to find a friend, but deep down he knows that doing Austin's homework isn't the right thing to do. And to make things harder, Kareem's mom asks him to be a friend to Fadi, a Syrian Christian refugee. He knows he should stand up for Fadi and help him adjust to the new school,...

Review: A World Without Summer

A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out Written by Nicholas Day Illustrated by Yas Imamura New York: Random House Studio, 2025. Informational. 294 pages. In 1815 on a small island in Indonesia, Mount Tambora erupted. The blast was the largest in human history, and one of the deadliest. Though it couldn't be understood at the time, the deadly blast half a world away would lead to catastrophic famine in Europe, prompt westward expansion in America, and inspire the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The global climate disaster following the explosion also led to inventions like modern meteorology and the early invention of the bicycle. The people living at the time couldn't have seen how everything was connected, but this fast paced narrative assures that readers will. As he did in 2024's Sibert winner The Mona Lisa Vanishes, Nicholas Day does an impressive job of weaving together different historical events into one single, compell...

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...

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