Outstanding International Books for Teens

Updated November 25, 2024
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Carry on : poetry by young immigrants
Rogé
Paper Book
A moving #OwnVoices poetry collection written by young newcomers to Canada Carry Onbegan in a high school in Outremont, Quebec, where author and poet Simon Boulerice conducted creative-writing workshops for young newcomers to Canada. As the students...
Hunted by the sky
Bhathena, Tanaz
Paper Book
Exploring identity, class struggles, and high-stakes romance, Tanaz Bhathena's Hunted by the Sky is a gripping adventure set in a world inspired by medieval India. Gul has spent her life running. She has a star-shaped birthmark on her arm, and in the kingdom of Ambar,...
A pocketful of stars
Bushby, Aisha
Paper Book
Safiya and her mother have never seen eye to eye. Her mother doesn't understand Safiya's love of gaming, and shy Safiya doesn't think she has anything in common with her vibrant, sometimes volatile mother. But when her mother falls into a coma, Safiya's whole world shifts. She finds...
Amazona
Canizales
Paper Book
This socially conscious thriller from graphic novelist Canizales examines the injustices of his home country in a stark, distinctive style. Andrea, a young Indigenous Colombian woman, has returned to the land she calls home. Only nineteen years old, she comes to mourn her lost child,...
Freedom swimmer
Chim, Wai
Paper Book
A powerful story of friendship, bravery, and a desperate bid for freedom, inspired by true events. Ming survived the famine that killed his parents during China's "Great Leap Forward", and lives a hard but adequate life, working in the fields. When a group of city boys comes to the...
All rise : resistance and rebellion in South Africa 1910-1948 : a graphic history
Conyngham, Richard
Paper Book
A Kirkus Reviews Best YA Book of 2022  A USBBY 2023 Outstanding International Book A 2022 Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner (Graphic Novels & Comics Category) Honorable mention, 2023 Children's Africana Book Awards...
Words in deep blue
Crowley, Cath
Paper Book
"One of the loveliest, most exquisitely beautiful books I've read in a very long time. . . . I didn't just read the pages, I lived in them." --Jennifer Niven, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places   A beautiful love story for fans of...
Blood moon
Cuthew, Lucy
Paper Book
This powerful, timely novel in verse exposes provocative truths about periods, sex, shame, and going viral for all the wrong reasons. After school one day, Frankie, a lover of physics and astronomy, has her first sexual experience with quiet and gorgeous Benjamin--and gets...
Unbecoming
Downham, Jenny
Paper Book
Three women. Three generations. Three secrets.A Stonewall Honor Book!Katie's life is falling apart: her best friend thinks she's a freak, her mother, Caroline, controls every aspect of her life, and her estranged grandmother, Mary, appears as if out of nowhere. Mary has...
Pardalita
Estrela, Joana
Paper Book
MILDRED L. BATCHELDER HONOR WINNER School Library Journal Best of the Year BCCB Best of the Year (Blue Ribbon Selection) A beautiful slice-of-life story that is This One Summer meets Ursula K. Le Guin's Very Far...
Deeplight
Hardinge, Frances
Paper Book
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea meets Frankenstein in Deeplight, an inventive YA fantasy from award-winning author Frances Hardinge. The gods are dead. Fifty years ago, they turned on one another and tore each other apart. Nobody...
The Lie Tree
Hardinge, Frances
Paper Book
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature and Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction. An ALA/ALSC Notable Children's Book and an ALA/YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Top Ten selection A teenage girl unravels lies...
A skinful of shadows
Hardinge, Frances
Paper Book
From the award-winning author of The Lie Tree, Frances Hardinge offers "a delicious combination of historical adventure, coming-of-age tale, and supernatural intrigue" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Sometimes, when a person dies, their spirit goes looking for...
Okinawa
Higa, Susumu
Paper Book
Okinawa brings together two collections of intertwined stories by the island's pre-eminent mangaka, Susumu Higa, which reflect on this difficult history and pull together traditional Okinawan spirituality, the modern-day realities of the continuing US military occupation, and the senselessness of...
Hopeless in Hope
John-Kehewin, Wanda
Paper Book
★ Among CCBC's Best Books for Kids & Teens list, a starred selection of exceptional caliber We live in a hopeless old house on an almost-deserted dead-end street in a middle-of-nowhere town named Hope. This is the oldest part of Hope; eventually it will all be torn...
Blue flag. 1
Kaito (Manga artist)
Paper Book
An unexpected love quadrangle with a dash of unrequited love as two classmates, a boy and a girl, begin to fall for each other when each of their best friends have already fallen for them. Love is already hard enough, but it becomes an unnavigable maze for unassuming high school...
When the world was ours
Kessler, Liz
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Emily Windsnap series, Liz Kessler, comes a "brutally honest and totally believable" (Booklist, starred review) story of three young friends whose fates are intertwined during the devastation of the Holocaust--based on a true story.<...
Walking in two worlds
Kinew, Wab
Paper Book
An Indigenous teen girl is caught between two worlds, both real and virtual, in the YA fantasy debut from bestselling Indigenous author Wab Kinew. Perfect for fans of Ready Player One and the Otherworld series. In the real world, Bugz is a shy and self-conscious Indigenous...
Catfish rolling
Kumagai, Clara
Paper Book
"Excellent, evocative, and thoughtful with genuine depth" (New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon), Catfish Rolling is a wholly original and mind-bending debut YA novel by Clara Kumagai about memory, family, and an earthquake that breaks apart time.  
The things she's seen
Kwaymullina, Ambelin
Paper Book
This brilliantly written thriller explores the lives--and deaths--of two girls, and what they will do to win justice. Sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year! Nothing's been the same for Beth Teller since the day she died. Her dad is drowning in...
War
Letria, José Jorge
Paper Book
A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book An award-winning, stunningly illustrated, sober depiction of war. A recipient of the prestigious Nami Concours prize, this remarkable book of striking, often surreal illustrations and sparse prose reveals the many sides of...
This is our place
Martins, Vitor
Paper Book
Three teens -- in three different decades -- navigate life, love, and family in Vitor Martinss heartfelt new novel that spans generations. Perfect for fans of Tales from the City and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. If the walls of Number 8 Sunflower Street could...
The big lie
Mayhew, Julie
Paper Book
In a gripping novel set in present-day England under a Nazi regime, a sheltered teen questions what it means to be "good" -- and how far she's willing to go to break the rules. Nazi England, 2014. Jessika Keller is a good girl -- a champion ice skater, model student of the Bund...
Shuna's journey
Miyazaki, Hayao
Paper Book
A New York Times BestsellerWinner of the Eisner for Best U.S. Edition of International Material--Asia From legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki comes Shuna's Journey, a new manga classic about a prince on a quest for a golden grain that would...
Savage her reply
Sullivan, Deirdre
Paper Book
Kirkus Reviews, "Best Teens and YA Books of 2023" Bank Street Best Children's Books 2024 2024 USBBY Outstanding International Books A feminist retelling of favourite Irish fairytale The Children of Lir. Aífe marries Lir, a chieftain with four...
Ironhead, or, Once a young lady
Rijckeghem, Jean-Claude van
Paper Book
A Junior Library Guild Selection Eighteen-year-old Constance is not interested in marriage or in being a "young lady." But for a young woman coming of age in the early 1800s, that's just about all that's available to her. When her parents arrange her a...
Somebody give this heart a pen
Thakur, Sophia
Paper Book
In a powerful debut, rising star Sophia Thakur brings her spoken word performance to the page. Be with yourself for a moment. Be yourself for a moment. Airplane mode everything but yourself for a moment. From acclaimed performance...
The last execution
Wung-Sung, Jesper
Paper Book
Based on the chilling true story of the last execution in Denmark's history, this award-winning, mesmerizing novel asks a question that plagues a small Danish town: does a fifteen-year-old boy deserve to be put to death? On February 22, 1853, a fifteen-year-old Niels Nelson is...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.