Teen Reads: Books in Verse

Updated April 28, 2026
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Island Creatures
Engle, Margarita
Paper Book
A Golden Kite Award Winner for Young Adult Fiction From award-winning author Margarita Engle comes a "[f]anciful, hopeful, and heartfelt" (Kirkus Reviews) love story told in verse about childhood friends, once lost and now reconnected, and their fight to protect...
Ariel crashes a train
Cole, Olivia A.
Paper Book
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD . A COSMOPOLITAN BEST YA BOOK OF THE YEAR . A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, BOOKLIST AND KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Exploring the harsh reality of OCD and violent intrusive thoughts in stunning,...
Blood Gone Cold
Grant, Katy
Ebook
The House No One Sees
King, Adina
Paper Book
A Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book Penelope Ross has always felt like a passenger in her mother's fairytale - until the night of her 17th birthday, when she is forced to enter her own. After a text from her estranged mother rips her away from a night with friends...
One Step Forward
Atkins, Marcie Flinchum
Paper Book
A Kirkus' Best Book and Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection! One Step Forward is a compelling debut YA historical fiction novel in verse about Matilda Young--the youngest American suffragist imprisoned for picketing the White House to demand women's right to vote....
I Can't Even Think Straight
Atta, Dean
Ebook
Away
Freeman, Megan E.
Paper Book
A New York Times bestseller! A group of children investigate the threat that prompted large-scale evacuations in this "solid and engrossing" (Booklist) companion novel to the New York Times bestselling Alone told in multiple POVs. ...
The boy lost in the maze
Coelho, Joseph
Paper Book
From the UK Children's Laureate comes a spellbinding YA novel in verse blending the ancient myth of Theseus and the Minotaur with the quest of a modern-day teen in search of his father. Theo, a seventeen-year-old London schoolboy with a single mother, is desperate to track down...
Sync
Hopkins, Ellen
Paper Book
From #1 NYT bestselling author Ellen Hopkins comes a new heartbreaking young adult novel in verse about twins separated in the foster care system and the different paths their lives take. Seventeen-year-old twins Storm and Lake have always been in perfect sync. They faced the...
Song of freedom, song of dreams
Green, Shari
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2025 GEOFFREY BILSON AWARD FOR HISTORICAL FICTION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE From award-winning verse novelist Shari Green comes an unforgettable story of friendship, first love, and an impossible choice between integrity and duty, family and friends, all while fighting...
All the fighting parts
Sawyerr, Hannah V.
Ebook
In the vein of Grown and The Poet X, Hannah V. Sawyerr's All the Fighting Parts is an award-winning, searing, and defiant young adult novel in verse about reclaiming agency after a sexual assault within the church community. Sixteen-year-old...
Saints of the household
Tison, Ari
Paper Book
Winner of the Pura Belpré Award and Walter Dean Myers Award for Young Adult Literature! Saints of the Household is a haunting contemporary YA about an act of violence in a small-town--beautifully told by a debut Indigenous Costa Rican-American writer--that...
We are all so good at smiling
McBride, Amber
Paper Book
They Both Die at the End meets The Bell Jar in this haunting, beautiful young adult novel-in-verse about clinical depression and healing from trauma, from National Book Award Finalist Amber McBride. Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of...

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