Alex Sanchez is a Mexican American author of award-winning novels for teens and adults. His first novel, Rainbow Boys (2001), was selected by the American Library Association (ALA), as a Best Book for Young Adults. Subsequent books have won additional awards, including the Lambda Literary Award. Although Sanchez's novels are widely accepted in thousands of school and public libraries in America, they have faced a handful of challenges and efforts to ban them. In Webster, New York, removal of Rainbow Boys from the 2006 summer reading list was met by a counter-protest from students, parents, librarians, and community members resulting in the book being placed on the 2007 summer reading list.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a young adult novel by Ann Brashares published in 2001. It follows the adventures of four best friends — Lena Kaligaris, Tibby Rollins, Bridget Vreeland, and Carmen Lowell, who will be spending their first summer apart when a magical pair of jeans comes into their lives, turning their summer upside down. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2005. Four sequels to the book have been published, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood; Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood; Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood; and Sisterhood Everlasting.
Deenie is a 1973 young adult novel written by Judy Blume.
Summer of My German Soldier is a 1973 book by Bette Greene.
Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a Korean-American author, novelist and essayist. She is a cofounder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop (AAWW). This organisation was formed in 1991 to support New York City writers of color.
Luna is a young adult novel, by Julie Anne Peters, and was first published in 2004.
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018 to 2019. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.
The Tulip Touch is a children's novel written by Anne Fine and published in 1996. The book raises questions of morality and accountability, as well as exploring the question of nature versus nurture. It won the Whitbread Award and was Highly Commended for the Carnegie Medal.
Becoming Naomi León is a 2005 fiction, adventure, and young author's 246 page coming of age novel by Pam Muñoz Ryan about a quiet Latina girl, whose life with her great-grandmother and younger brother is peaceful, until her mother reappears after abandoning her and her brother years earlier.
Feathers is a children's historical novel by Jacqueline Woodson that was first published in 2007. The story is about a sixth-grade girl named Frannie growing up in the '70s. One day an unexpected new student causes much chaos to the class because he is the only white boy in the whole school. Feathers grapples with concepts such as religion, race, hope, and understanding. The book examines what it was like to grow up right after segregation had been outlawed, how all people are equal, and that hope is everywhere. The book was a Newbery Honor winner in 2008.
Chinese Handcuffs is a 1989 young adult novel by young adult writer Chris Crutcher. The story alternates between the two main characters, Dillon and Jennifer, both high school athletes dealing with personal issues. The majority of Dillon’s story is told via a journal he keeps, writing about the death of his older brother.
Lena Dunham is an American writer, director, actress, and producer. She is the creator, writer, and star of the HBO television series Girls (2012–2017), for which she received several Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe Awards. Dunham also directed several episodes of Girls and became the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Comedy Series. Prior to Girls, Dunham wrote, directed, and starred in the semi-autobiographical independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), for which she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. Her second feature film, Sharp Stick, written and directed by Dunham, was released in 2022. Her third film, Catherine Called Birdy, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2022. It was released in a limited release on September 23, 2022, by Amazon Studios, prior to streaming on Prime Video on October 7, 2022.
Show Way is a 2005 children's picture book by American author Jacqueline Woodson with illustrations by Hudson Talbott. The book was made into a film in 2012 by Weston Woods Studios, Inc., narrated by the author. It recounts the stories of seven generations of African-Americans and is based on the author's own family history. Show Way was a John Newbery Medal Honor Book in 2006 and was featured in Reading Rainbow that same year in the series finale.
Brown Girl Dreaming is a 2014 adolescent verse novel by author Jacqueline Woodson. It discusses the author's childhood as an African American growing up in the 1960s in South Carolina and New York. It was awarded the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Coretta Scott King Book Award, and an NAACP Image Award for outstanding literary work.
This Is Not a Test is a novel written by Canadian author Courtney Summers. It was first published on June 19, 2012 by St. Martin's Press. The novel takes place in a fictional Canadian town called Cortege, during the beginning of a zombie apocalypse. This Is Not a Test follows Sloane Price, a suicidal and abused teen girl as she faces the mental torments of her abusive father and being abandoned by her elder sister all the while reluctantly surviving alongside five other damaged teenagers. In 2013, it made the Inky Awards Shortlist and was a nominee for Silver Inky. In 2014, it was an Ontario Library Association Forest of Reading White Pine Honour Book.
Lena Waithe is an American actress, producer, and screenwriter. She is the creator of the Showtime drama series The Chi (2018–present) and the BET comedy series Boomerang (2019–20) and Twenties (2020–2021). She also wrote and produced the crime film Queen & Slim (2019) and is the executive producer of the horror anthology series Them (2021–present).
Another Brooklyn is a 2016 novel by Jacqueline Woodson. The book was written as an adult book, unlike many of the author's previous books and titles. NPR wrote that the book was "full of dreams and danger". It was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2016.
Kristin Sims Levine is an American novelist who authored The Lions of Little Rock, a New-York Historical Society Children’s History Book Prize winner. It is a fictional story about friendship based around true historical events of the Little Rock Nine in Little Rock, Arkansas. In September 2019, it was announced that rights to Lions was optioned for development of a featured film. Levine has written other historical fictional books, The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had and The Paper Cowboy, which take place during the United States' entry into World War I and McCarthyism era America of the 1950s, respectively. Levine's most recent book, The Jigsaw Jungle, is about a daughter who discovers a family secret. Levine currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her two daughters.
Scary Stories for Young Foxes is a 2019 children's book written by Christian McKay Heidicker, with illustrations by Junyi Wu. The book, published by Henry Holt and Company, was first envisioned to be similar to some of the Berenstain Bears' scary stories, but was rewritten into a collection of tales based on classic horror stories.
Red at the Bone is an coming of age novel written by Jacqueline Woodson and originally published by Riverhead Books in 2019.
