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2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist
2024 Reading Challenge: Read a book with a friend or book club
Book Picks—September 2023
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2024 Reading Challenge: Read a book with a friend or book club
Book Picks—September 2023
More Lists...
Description
"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and...
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"Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can't afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that his great-grandfather's fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star begins to rise....
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"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother--only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory,...
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"The year is 2050. Ava and her girlfriend live in what's left of Brooklyn, and though they love each other, it's hard to find happiness while the effects of climate change rapidly eclipse their world. Soon, it won't be safe outside at all. The only people guaranteed survival are the ones whose applications are accepted to The Inside Project, a series of weather-safe, city-sized structures around the world. Jacqueline Millender is a reclusive billionaire/women's...
Author
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English
Description
"Beth Kramer is a "townie" who returns to her sophomore year after having endured a year of tension with her roommate, Sarah. But Sarah Brunson knows there's more to that story. Amanda Priya "Spence" Spencer is the privileged daughter of NYC elites, who is reeling from the realization that her family name shielded her from the same fate as Sarah. Ramin Golafshar arrives at Chandler as a transfer student to escape the dangers of being gay in Iran,...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 3.4 - AR Pts: 10
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English
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Description
If there's one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it's that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad's in prison. Life's not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav's got everything under control. Until he finds out he's a father....
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English
Description
It's 2008, and the rise of Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He's eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to, and abandoned, when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she'd never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. Returning...
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English
Description
"More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage...
9) Wonder
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 4.8 - AR Pts: 11
Language
English
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NYT - Children’s Chapter Books
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade E-Book
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade E-Book
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover
Description
Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
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English
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Description
"Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and attitude, Afro-punk before that term existed. Coming of age in Detroit, she can't imagine settling for a 9-to-5 job--despite her unusual looks, Opal believes she can be a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her at a bar's amateur night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together for the fledgling Rivington...
11) ONE BLOOD
Author
Language
English
Description
"Join New York Times bestselling author Denene Millner as she explores the lives of three generations of women tied together by love, hope, dreams, ambition...and family secrets in this epic novel. Meet Grace: raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her grandmother. Shellshocked, she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie--a woman who firmly...
12) Salt the water
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
A confrontation with a teacher and a family crisis force high school senior Cerulean Gene to drop out of twelfth grade and derails their dreams of moving cross-country and living off the grid.
13) All my rage
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 12
Language
English
Description
Lahore, Pakistan. Then. Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Juniper, California. Now. Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else...
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English
Description
"Told from alternating perspectives, an evocative and riveting novel about the lifelong bond between two women, one Black and one white, whose friendship is indelibly altered by a tragic event--a powerful and poignant exploration of race in America today and its devastating impact on ordinary lives. Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions....
16) Melissa
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5 - AR Pts: 4
Language
English
Description
"When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl. George thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. George really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part ... because she's a boy. With the help of her best friend, Kelly, George comes up with a plan....
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
In the wake of being sexually assaulted by her pastor, sixteen-year-old Amina struggles to regain her footing until she finds the strength within herself to confront her abuser in court.
"Sixteen-year-old Amina Conteh has always believed in using her words as her weapon--even when it gets her into trouble. After cursing at a classmate, her father forces her to volunteer at their church with Pastor Johnson. But Pastor Johnson isn't the holy man everyone...
18) Thirst
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 4.4 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A heroic girl in Mumbai fights for her belief that water should be for everyone"--
19) Wandering stars
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Book Picks—March 2024
Most Anticipated 2024 Winter Releases—Fiction
New & Upcoming Fiction
New Releases—February 27, 2024
Most Anticipated 2024 Winter Releases—Fiction
New & Upcoming Fiction
New Releases—February 27, 2024
Description
"Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle,where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is...
20) Little family
Author
Language
English
Description
"A powerful novel about five young people, struggling to replace the homes they have lost with the one they have created together, from the internationally bestselling author of A Long Way Gone. Hidden away from a harsh and chaotic outside world, five young people have cobbled together a home for themselves in an abandoned airplane, a relic of their country's tumult. At seventeen, Elimane, the bookworm, is as street-smart as he is wise: the group's...
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