Young Adult Poetry

Concrete Kids is an exploration of love and loss, melody and bloodshed. Musician, playwright, and educator Amyra León takes us on a poetic journey through her childhood in Harlem, as she navigates the intricacies of foster care, mourning, self-love, and resilience. In her signature free-verse style, she invites us all to dream with abandon - and to recognize the privilege it is to dream at all.

Collected by international poetry sensation Nikita Gill, Slam! You're Gonna Wanna Hear This is a joyful celebration of the ground-breaking poets making their voices heard in the spoken-word scene. Empowering, inspiring and often hilarious, slams are a platform for well-known and emerging talent from all walks of life where every style of poetry has a home.

Henry Brown came to be known as Box; he "entered the world a slave". He was put to work as a child and passed down from one generation to the next - as property. When he was an adult, his wife and children were sold away from him out of spite. Henry Brown watched as his family left bound in chains, headed to the deeper South. What more could be taken from him? But then hope - and help - came in the form of the Underground Railroad. Escape!

"The Raven" and other poems suitable for the 10th and 11th grades.

Inspired by the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum, these poems pay tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists insisting that Black Lives Matter. Elliott engages poets from the past two centuries to create a chorus of voices celebrating the creativity, resilience, and courage of Black women and girls.

In a new city, at a new school, 12-year-old Emmy has never felt more out of tune. Things start to look up when she takes her first coding class, unexpectedly connecting with the material - and Abigail, a new friend - through a shared language: music. But when Emmy gets bad news about their computer teacher, and finds out Abigail isn't being entirely honest about their friendship, she feels like her new life is screeching to a halt. Despite these obstacles, Emmy is determined to prove that, for the first time ever, she isn't a wrong note, but a musician in the world's symphony.

This heart-wrenching novel in verse describes the life of a poor girl surviving the Irish Land War and the everyday challenges she experiences.

Gabriel's life is about to change. He lives in a world where change never happens. In Harmony, a tyrannical mayor dictates everyone's lives without opposition. Gabriel makes a plan to change the routine of such a boring, regimented life. In his quest, he never expected to find himself in an unfamiliar place. And, unfortunately for him, his past is hot on his trail.

The dreaded day had finally come. World War II raged throughout Europe. A Nazi soldier knocks on the door of a farmhouse where Felix Culpa Schmidt lives with his family, including his brother, Willy, who has Down Syndrome. Felix becomes an unwilling soldier in the German army, forced to serve Adolph Hitler, a man who plans to kill thousands of "useless eaters" - citizens who are disabled or elderly - citizens like his brother Willy.

Dylan cannot sleep without his Cosydoze, but it goes missing on a visit to Granny’s house. Where has it gone? And can Mum and Dad get Dylan to sleep without it? A funny, heart-warming story for very young listeners told in rhyme.

Jesse-Ray Lewis, 19, enters a West Virginia "safe house" with few possessions beyond the kerchiefs that identify him as a gang member. An age-out foster child, he lands in Bluefield, where a charity gives him food. What follows is the personal, dramatic story of two people who intervene in the life of a homeless, drug-abusing teen with a background of violence and neglect. In their next-door suite called the safe house, they impose three rules: "No alcohol or drugs. You have to work. You have to go to school." Jesse-Ray expresses gratitude. But what does he want? The couple struggles to determine his true motives....

Through this series of poems, Eunice Olsen, a former Nominated Member of Parliament in Singapore, Miss Universe Singapore 2000, actress, host, and executive producer of WomenTalk, hopes to encourage girls from all over the world to know they can be who they want to be and to never give up, just like these women role models whose stories give us hope and strength. This book is for the boys as well, who will play a really important role and be there to empower these girls, to respect women, and to help bring our world to gender parity.

Martin Rising is a stunning, poetic presentation of the final months of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life - told in a rich embroidery of visions, color, musical cadence, deep emotion, and multiple layers of meaning. Against a backdrop of the sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, Tennessee, the book builds to its rousing crescendo as King delivers his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech - where his life’s commitment to peaceful activism and his dream of equality ascend to their highest peak.

Ancient Mesopotamia is often referred to as the “cradle of civilization”, and there’s good reason for it. If you take a look at history, a lot of firsts happened in Mesopotamia. These origins were soon adapted by different civilizations around the world. They were refined until almost perfected.

Sixth grade is coming to an end, and so is life as Macy McMillan knows it. Soon, her mother will upend their perfect little family, adding a stepfather and six-year-old twin stepsisters. She sends Macy next door to help 86-year-old Iris Gillan, who is getting ready to move into an assisted-living facility. Iris can't pack a single box on her own, and, worse, she doesn't know sign language. Soon, through notes and books and cookies, a bond grows between them, and this friendship, odd and unexpected, may be just what Macy needs to face the changes in her life.

There are times in life when we are faced with decisions having everlasting effects. Hunter is a high school student, forced to choose which path to take. Hitting his head during an LDS church basketball game, his memory is shaken. The results leave him scrambling to make sense of his relationships with his family, his friends, and the teachings harbored deep inside him. Hunter is left to choose between his best friend and his old life or to embrace his family and the feelings pushing against his past. And then there's Jessie. She won't give the old Hunter the time of day.

"I lie in the dust and lookup at the world...." So begins the narration of an allegory revealing irony behind a perspective twist of education. "...I gaze up at the grasses towering above me. I watch the feet of people as they pass, some shuffling, some lightly and barely touching the ground. Some with steps like a dance. I have lain in rain and sun and seen the lightening streak across the sky. I wonder if today is the day my life will move on again...."

In moving verse, Children's Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis gives new voice to seventeen heroes of civil rights. This commanding collection of poems invites the listener to hear in each verse the thunder that lies in every voice, no matter how small. Featuring civil rights luminaries Coretta Scott King, Harvey Milk, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Sylvia Mendez, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mamie Carthan Till, Helen Zia, Josh Gibson, Dennis James Banks, Mitsuye Endo, Ellison Onizuka, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Yunus, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.

Distilled from his successful 2003 book, A Radical Incarnation, Colin reads this amusing but very insightful spiritual fantasy that hints at a possible re-frame of what appears to look like a terrible disaster in Iraq and the Middle East. Could it be the unfoldment of a Divine Plan to heal America and awaken humanity? The story line suggests that it might be. It is about a soul being prepared by Harley, his Angel of Incarnation for his upcoming incarnation.

Award-winning author Helen Frost takes us into the breathtaking Alaskan winter landscape in this thrilling adventure with a touch of fantasy. Twelve-year-old Willow - whose heritage is both Athabascan Indian and European - wants nothing more than to mush the sled dogs to her grandparents’ home. After pressing her parents for some time, she is finally allowed to go alone. But when she commits a critical mistake, Willow wonders how she’ll ever make things right again.