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As a child, Ta-Nehisi Coates was seen by his father, Paul, as too sensitive and lacking focus.  Coates details with candor the challenges of dealing with his tough-love father, the influence of his mother, and the dynamics of his extended family, including his brother Big Bill, who was on a very different path than Ta-Nehisi. Coates also tells of his struggles at school and with girls, making this a timely story to which many readers will relate. 

Twelve-year-old Rahul Kapoor, an Indian-American boy growing up in small-town Indiana, struggles to come to terms with his identity, including that he may be gay.

“Opening in the summer of 1847, this story follows an Ojibwe family through four seasons; it focuses on young Omakayas, who turns “eight winters old” during the course of the novel. In fascinating, nearly step-by-step details, the author describes how they build a summer home out of birchbark, gather with extended family to harvest rice in the autumn, treat an attack of smallpox during the winter and make maple syrup in the spring to stock their own larder and to sell to others.” — Publishers Weekly

With the Rodney King riots closing in on Black high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble protecting her from the difficult realities most Black people face, begins to crumble.

The Great Depression changed everything for 11-year-old Oscar and his widowed dad. Oscar’s prized model trains are sold, his dad leaves Illinois to find work in California, and Oscar begins an adventure through time and places after he jumps onto a model train.

Emily has had a rough senior year of high school. She has to move from Chicago back to Boston and her boyfriend dumps her! Luckily, Emily meets up with some old friends and the girls complain how boys don’t know how to treat girls. Together, they create a book with a list of ways boys should behave. The girls convince Emily to try out their tips and tricks on Luke, the cutest boy in school. Will Emily finally find a guy who treats her well or will Luke be like all of the rest?

Fifteen-year-old Ruby “Roo” Oliver is having a tough year at Tate Prep. Through a series of social debacles, she loses her best friends, her boyfriend, her dignity, and the respect of her fellow Taters in less than two weeks’ time. Following nearly half a dozen panic attacks, Roo starts to spend some quality time on Doctor Z.’s couch, where she makes a list of boyfriends past and present, official and unofficial, and starts on a journey of self-discovery. Ruby is a likable and empathetic character whose quirks and behaviors will strike a chord with many readers. [This is the first book in the Ruby Oliver quartet.] (School Library Journal)

Life is harsh in Chennai’s teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, eleven-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter — and friendship — on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts. And while making a living scavenging the city’s trash heaps is the pits, the kids find plenty to laugh about and take pride in too. After all, they are now the bosses of themselves and no longer dependent on untrustworthy adults. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom. Washington Post Best Books 2019.

“Ghetto nerd,” outcast, and anime-loving Oscar Wao is the latest in a long line of doomed generations to suffer the dreaded fuku curse of his native Dominican Republic. With humor and talent as his weapons, he perseveres, knowing “you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.”

When Amra’s best friend said they couldn’t speak anymore, she realized that this was the first sign her world was changing. Amra, who was Muslim, lived in Bihac, Bosnia. Then Muslim refugees from other Bosnian cities started arriving, fleeing Serbian persecution. When the tanks rolled into Bihac, bringing her own city under seige, Amra’s happy life in her peaceful city vanished. But there is light even in the darkest of times, and she discovered that light in the warm, bonfire eyes of a stray cat. Here is the stunning true story of a teen who, even in the brutality of war, never wavered in her determination to obtain an education, maintain friendships, and even find a first love ― and the cat who gave comfort, hope, and maybe even served as the family’s guardian spirit. YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist.

A man struggles to come to terms with his parents’ brutal past at Auschwitz in this seminal graphic novel.

Fifteen-year old DeAndre lives in the projects of West Baltimore, and his parents, Fran and Gary, battle severe drug addiction. This book asks difficult questions: What happens when parents don’t parent? What is the community’s role? Simon and Burns went on to create the TV series “The Wire,” continuing their examination of life in Baltimore.

In this historical fiction novel, 12-year-old Hannah find herself transported back in time. As she experiences the horrific events of the Holocaust that were often recounted by her grandparents, Hannah finds new reasons to embrace her family and culture.

Based on his father’s immigration files from Angel Island, Laurence Yep and his niece Dr. Kathleen S. Yep bring us the story of a ten-year-old boy from China who must prepare for his interrogation at Angel Island. The young boy memorizes everything from the layout of his village to the number of doors in the house, and continues his study on the sea voyage to San Francisco with his father. The Yeps provide a powerful account of the intensity and challenge Chinese immigrants faced at Angel Island, as well as the complexity of the relationships for those families who were spread between China and the U.S.

Young Neftali cannot resist the power of words and the world around him. Whether he is studying the iridescent wings of beetle or imagining the story of a lone boot left in the mud, there is no limit to where his imagination and words will take him. Neftali grows up to become one of the world’s most beloved poets: Chile’s Nobel-winning laureate Pablo Neruda. Through this stunning novel, Pam Muñoz Ryan imagines poet’s childhood and triumph in overcoming a tyrannical father to believe in his own voice and words.

Jimmy McClean is a Lakota boy, though you wouldn’t guess it by his name. Over summer break, Jimmy embarks on a journey with his grandfather, Nyles High Eagle. While on the road, his grandfather tells him the story of Crazy Horse, one of the most important figures in Lakota, and American, history. Expertly intertwining fiction and nonfiction, celebrated Brulé Lakota author Joseph Marshall III chronicles the many heroic deeds of Crazy Horse, especially his taking up arms against the U.S. government. Through his grandfather’s tales about the famous warrior, Jimmy learns about his Lakota heritage and, ultimately, himself. 

Middle school is tough enough but what happens when your grandfather — a scientist who has uncovered some really interesting jellyfish properties — attends with you as a 13-year old? It’s a totally new experience! Told with verve and humor (and a touch of science), this is a coming-of-age tale for 11-year old Ellie and Melvin, her teenaged granddad.

Suraya, a twelve-year-old Malaysian girl, inherits her grandmother’s pelesit and becomes best friends with the ghostly demon, whom she names Pink. 

Sixteen-year-old Sonia Ocampo was born on the night of the worst storm Tres Montes had ever seen. And when the winds mercifully stopped, an unshakable belief in the girl’s protective powers began. Sonia knows she has no special powers, but how can she disappoint those who look to her for solace? When she gets a chance to travel to the city and work in the home of a wealthy woman, she seizes it. But when news arrives that her beloved brother has disappeared while looking for work, she learns to her sorrow that she can never truly leave the past or her family behind.

Molly and her Dad always shared a love of baseball — especially the hard-luck Chicago Cubs — and he taught her how to throw a tricky knuckleball. After her father passes away, Molly wants to try out for the boys’ baseball team, as a way of keeping her connection to her Dad. This tender novel combines sports action with Molly’s struggle to accept her loss.

The Glass Castle is the 2005 memoir by the American author Jeannette Walls. In it, Walls recounts her deeply dysfunctional yet vibrant upbringing, emphasizing her resilience and her father’s attempts toward redemption.

Twelve-year old Alice must face issues beyond her years. Her sister has run off, her mother won’t get out of bed, and the family horse farm is failing. Can she keep the family from falling apart?

The tale of a young Irish-American who aspires to be a reporter, while supporting his widowed mother and siblings by selling newspapers. From the My Name is America series.

When an out-of-season hurricane sweeps through Corinne’s seaside village, Corinne knows it’s not an ordinary storm. At first Corinne believes Mama D’Leau, the powerful and cruel jumbie who rules the ocean, has caused the hurricane. Then an even more ferocious storm wrecks the island, sending villagers fleeing their houses for shelter in the mountains, and Corinne discovers the storms weren’t caused by a jumbie, but by the angry god Huracan. Now Corinne, with the help of her friends and even some of her enemies, must race against time to find out what has angered Huracan and try to fix it before her island home is destroyed forever.