National Poetry Month 2025 - Books for Teens and Young Adults

Updated March 26, 2025
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Ain't burned all the bright
Reynolds, Jason
Paper Book
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....
Apple : skin to the core : a memoir in words and pictures
Gansworth, Eric
Paper Book
NOW IN PAPERBACK! WINNER, AMERICAN INDIAN YOUTH LITERATURE AWARD HONOR, MICHAL L. PRINTZ AWARD LONGLIST, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD TIME 10 Best YA and Children's Books of the Year NPR Best of...
Black girl you are Atlas
Watson, Ren?
Paper Book
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 Renee Watson. In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renee Watson writes about her experience...
Bless the blood : a cancer memoir
Nehanda, Walela
Paper Book
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...
The denim diaries : a memoir
Crompton, Laurie Boyle
Paper Book
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...
Enter the body
McCullough, Joy
Paper Book
"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,...
The ghosts of Rose Hill
Romero, R. M.
Paper Book
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...
How the Boogeyman Became a Poet
Keith Jr, Tony.
Paper Book
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...
Inheritance : a visual poem
Acevedo, Elizabeth
Paper Book
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...
Louder than hunger
Schu, John
Paper Book
Meet Me in the Fourth Dimension
Feinstein, Rita
Paper Book
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...
Poems for tortured souls
Ison, Liz
Paper Book
Dear Reader, these poems are an introduction to the passionate words of some of the English language's most renowned poets. Inspired by today's greatest lyricist, Taylor Swift, this collection overflows with folklore, love, heartache, revenge and peace - the perfect balm for any tortured soul.
The snow fell three graves deep : voices from the Donner party
Wolf, Allan
Paper Book
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...
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...
You don't have to be everything : poems for girls becoming themselves
Whitney, Diana (EDT)/ Gonzalez, Cristina (ILT)/ Mockford, Kate (ILT)/ Singleton, Stephanie (ILT)
Paper Book
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,...

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