National Poetry Month 2025 - Books for Teens and Young AdultsUnpublished

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A Finalist for the 2023 YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award. Rex Ogle's companion to Free Lunch and Punching Bag weaves humor, heartbreak, and hope into life-affirming poems that honor his grandmother's legacy. In his award-winning memoir...

A Caldecott Honor winner! Prepare yourself for something unlike anything: A smash-up of art and text for teens that viscerally captures what it is to be Black. In America. Right Now. Written by #1 New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds....

Winner of the American Indian Youth Literature Award Printz Honor Winner National Book Award Longlist TIME 10 Best YA and Children's Books of the Year NPR Best of the Year Shelf Awareness Best of the Year Publishers Weekly Big Indie Books of...

A Coretta Scott King Honor Book Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award A thoughtful celebration of Black girlhood by award-winning author and poet Renée Watson. In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renée Watson writes about her experience...

A searing debut YA poetry and essay collection about a Black cancer patient who faces medical racism after being diagnosed with leukemia in their early twenties, for fans of Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals and Laurie Halse Anderson's Shout. When Walela is...

Laurie Boyle Crompton's coming of age in rural Pennsylvania and the New York City area in the 1970s and 1980s was anything but idyllic. In moving verse accompanied by diary-esque sketches, Crompton takes you along as she navigates relationships, plays the happy family at church despite discord at...

"At once tender, poetic and ferocious, Enter The Body breathes new life into the Bard's most tragic heroines. More than a tribute to Shakespeare, this kaleidoscopic, ambitious novel-in-verse gives Juliet, Ophelia, Cordelia, and Lavinia the chance to tell their own stories full of passion,...

A brilliantly original tale for fans of The Bear and the Nightingale and The Hazel Wood about embracing your power, facing your monsters, and loving deeply enough to transcend a century. Inspired by the author's experiences restoring Jewish cemeteries in Eastern...

Odyssey Award for Audiobook Excellence Winner Poet, writer, and hip-hop educator Tony Keith Jr. makes his debut with a powerful YA memoir in verse, tracing his journey from being a closeted gay Black teen battling poverty, racism, and homophobia to becoming an openly gay first-generation...

They tell me to "fix" my hair. And by fix, they mean straighten, they mean whiten; but how do you fix this shipwrecked history of hair? In her most famous spoken-word poem, author of the Pura Belpré-winning novel-in-verse The Poet X Elizabeth Acevedo embraces all the...

A New York Times bestseller! A Schneider Family Book Award Honor Book "Every so often a book comes along that is so brave and necessary, it extends a lifeline when it's needed most. This is one of those books." --Katherine Applegate, author of the Newbery Medal-winning,...

NASA has assured everyone the passage of rogue planet Malachite will be safe, but Crosby's been getting other messages--from a fortune teller and Malachite truther message boards. And now she believes that Malachite will kill everyone who doesn't ascend to the fourth dimension--a higher plane that...

"Permit me to lay at your feet the following genuine Narrative . . ." Olaudah Equiano was a writer and abolitionist whose autobiography, The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano, captured the attention of British readers at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. The...

By the critically praised author of A Million Quiet Revolutions, this contemporary sapphic romance novel-in-verse follows a bisexual teen girl who falls in and out of love over the course of one fateful summer, perfect for fans of Juliet Takes a Breath and Laura Dean Keeps...

"A rich, thoughtful anthology exploring centuries of Black poetry." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "This deep and complex assemblage of Black poetry culminates in a joyful, painful, and emotionally rich experience." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "An eclectic mix of Black...

When Emily Dickinson died at her home in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1886, she left a locked chest with hand-sewn notebooks and papers filled with nearly 1,800 unpublished poems. Four years later, her first collection was published and became a singular success. Today Dickinson is revered as one...

In powerful, vivid verse, the master behind The Watch That Ends the Night recounts one of history's most harrowing--and chilling--tales of survival. In 1846, a group of emigrants bound for California face a choice: continue on their planned route or take a...

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...

Performance poet Sophia Thakur offers a powerful new collection touching on intergenerational relationships, finding your voice, and what it means to be a woman. In her heartfelt second poetry collection, Sophia Thakur takes us on an emotionally charged journey through the lives...

Infused with magical realism, this story blends first love and political intrigue with a quest for justice and self-determination in 1930s Haiti. Sixteen-year-old Lucille hopes to one day open a school alongside her best friend where girls just like them can learn what it means...

Poems to Turn to Again and Again - from Amanda Gorman, Sharon Olds, Kate Baer, and More Created and compiled just for young women, You Don't Have to Be Everything is filled with works by a wide range of poets who are honest, unafraid, and skilled at addressing the complex feelings of coming-of-age,...