Tween Booklists

Thirteen-year-old Amari, a poor Black girl from the projects, gets an invitation from her missing brother to join the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs and join in the fight against an evil magician.

Ever since his dad left their family three years ago, Cooper has become distant from his friends, constantly annoyed by his little sister, Jess, and completely fed up with the pale, creepy rich girl who moved in next door, who won't stop staring at him. So when Cooper learns of an unsolved mystery his sister has discovered online, he welcomes the distraction.

Bullied and shamed her whole life for being fat, twelve-year-old Ellie finally gains the confidence to stand up for herself, with the help of some wonderful new allies.

There lived a girl named Petra Peäna, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children--among them Petra and her family--have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet--and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?

Thirteen-year-old Mei reimagines the myths of Paul Bunyan as starring a Chinese heroine while she works in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in 1885. Aware of the racial tumult in the years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Mei tries to remain blissfully focused on her job, her close friendship with the camp foreman's daughter, and telling stories about Paul Bunyan--reinvented as Po Pan Yin (Auntie Po), an elderly Chinese matriarch.

When his anxiety spirals into panic attacks after being placed in foster care, an increasingly desperate Brian is offered shy assistance by a basketball teammate Ezra, who is concealing a secret crush.

A tale based on true events follows the coming-of-age of a girl who is motivated by an act of racism at school to learn about her ancestral heritage and her grandparents' experiences as lost children during the Korean War.

Join the Dungeon Critters—a tight-knit squad of animal companions—on a wild adventure investigating a sinister botanical conspiracy among the furry nobility. As they risk their lives traveling through haunted dungeons, swamps, and high society balls—they also come closer together as friends.

Callan and four other young criminals are recruited to pull off a difficult heist from the city's most powerful sorcerer.

A ship. A garden. A library. A key. In Kaleidoscope, the incomparable Brian Selznick presents the story of two people bound to each other through time and space, memory and dreams. At the center of their relationship is a mystery about the nature of grief and love which will look different to each reader. Kaleidoscope is a feat of storytelling that illuminates how even the wildest tales can help us in the hardest times.

On the run from her latest bank robbery, Scarlett McCain comes to the rescue of Albert Browne, the sole survivor of a horrific accident, and soon learns he may be the most dangerous threat of all.

A debut novel inspired by Native-American culture follows the experiences of a boy whose summer at his grandmother’s reservation home is shaped by his uncle’s addictions and an encounter with a sacred being from the Navajo Creation Story.