YA "Best-Of" 2024 | Messenger Public Library of North Aurora

1) Everything we never had

Author

Series

Thorndike Press youth large print young adult

Description

Set in the 1930s to today, four generations of Filipino American boys grapple with identity, masculinity, and father-son relationships. Watsonville, 1930. Francisco Maghabol barely ekes out a living in the fields of California. As he spends what little money he earns at dance halls and faces increasing violence from white men in town, Francisco wonders if he should've never left the Philippines. Stockton, 1965. Between school days full of prejudice...

2) Twenty-four seconds from now: a love story

Author

Reynolds, Jason

Series

Thorndike Press youth large print young adult

Description

Twenty-four months ago: Neon gets chased by a dog all around the parking lot of a church. Not his finest moment. And definitely one he would have loved to forget if it weren't for the dog's owner: Aria. Dressed in sweats, a t-shirt, hair in a ponytail. Aria. Way more than fine. Twenty-four weeks ago: Neon's dad insists on talking to him about tenderness and intimacy. Neon and Aria are definitely in love, and while they haven't taken that next big...

3) Black girl you are Atlas

Author

Description

"Poet Renée Watson looks back at her childhood and urges readers to look forward at their futures with love, understanding, and celebration in this fully illustrated poetry collection"-- Provided by publisher.

4) Bright red fruit

Author

Description

"Samira is determined to have a perfect summer filled with fun parties, exploring DC, and growing as a poet--until a scandalous rumor has her grounded and unable to leave her house. When Samira turns to a poetry forum for solace, she catches the eye of an older, charismatic poet named Horus. For the first time, Samira feels wanted. But soon she's keeping a bigger secret than ever before--one that could prove her reputation and jeopardize her place...

5) The Deep Dark

Author

Ostertag, Molly Knox

Description

From Molly Knox Ostertag, writer-illustrator of the New York Times and ABA Indie bestselling The Witch Boy trilogy and The Girl from the Sea, comes a darkly beautiful story of identity, family, love, loss, and magic.

Everyone has secrets. Mags's has teeth.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing

...

Author

Description

"In the old tales, it is written that the egg of a seadragon, dragonfruit, holds within it the power to undo a person's greatest sorrow. But as with all things that offer hope when hope has gone, the tale comes with a warning. Every wish demands a price. Hanalei of Tamarind is the cherished daughter of an old island family. But when her father steals a seadragon egg meant for an ailing princess, she is forced into a life of exile. In the years that...

7) Heir

Author

Series

Heir Duology
Good morning America book club

Description

Told in alternating voices, three teens, whose fates intertwine to stop the murder of innocent children, journey across two warring nations to ensure a better future for their people.

Author

Ancrum, K. (Kayla), 1991-

Description

A thief who steals priceless art and replaces it with his father's impeccable forgeries while targeting Mr. Black, the man responsible for his mother's death, Icarus Gallagher is torn between family loyalty, revenge, escape and Mr. Black's son--the boy he's come to love. "Icarus Gallagher is a thief. He steals priceless art and replaces it with his father's impeccable forgeries. For years, one man--the wealthy Mr. Black--has been their target in...

9) Lunar New Year love story

Author

Yang, Gene Luen

Description

Graphic novel superstars Gene Luen Yang and Leuyen Pham join forces in this heartwarming rom-com about fate, family, and falling in love. Val is ready to give up on love. It's led to nothing but secrets and heartbreak, and she's pretty sure she's cursed--no one in her family, for generations, has ever had any luck with love. But then a chance encounter with a pair of cute lion dancers sparks something in Val. Is it real love? Could this be her chance...

10) On the bright side

Author

Description

When eighteen-year-old Ellie's Deaf boarding school shuts down, she attends a public high school where she struggles to adjust, but finds an ally in Jackson, a soccer player going through a disability diagnosis of his own.

Author

Lee, Agnes (Artist)

Series

Description

Day 1. Gotta get up. Gotta keep moving. This map - it says I have to cross over here. Wait, what's that...? And so begins a graphic novel story unlike any other: 49 Days. In Buddhist tradition, a person must travel for forty-nine days after they die, before they can fully cross over. Here in this book, readers travel with one Korean American girl, Kit, on her journey, while also spending time with her family and friends left behind. Agnes Lee has...

12) Ariel crashes a train

Author

Description

Ariel grapples with her fear of her own mind and violent fantasies, driven by her desire to meet her parents' expectations and societal norms, until a summer job at a carnival leads her to new friends who help her discover her struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and find acceptance and support for her true self. "Ariel is afraid of her own mind. She already feels like she is too big, too queer, too rough to live up to her parents' exacting...

13) The color of a lie

Author

Johnson, Kim, 1979-

Description

In 1955, a Black family relocates to the suburbs where they must pass for white, but dark secrets about the town and its inhabitants threaten their new home.

14) Compound fracture

Author

White, Andrew Joseph

Description

After being nearly beaten to death for evidence he holds against the corrupt sheriff, sixtee-year-old transgender Miles joins his fellow townsfolk to end the blood feud and oppressive politics that plague his town.

15) Flamboyants: the queer Harlem renaissance I wish I'd known

Author

Johnson, George M. (George Matthew), 1985-

Description

"From New York Times-bestselling author of ALL BOYS AREN'T BLUE comes an illuminating set of profiles of Black and Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance, interspersed with personal essays and spot illustrations by a Steptoe Award-winning illustrator"-- Provided by publisher.

16) fledgling

This entry no longer exists in the catalog

17) Immortal dark

Author

Series

Description

Nineteen-year-old orphan Kidan Adane, heiress to a fallen House of humans tethered to vampiric creatures called draniacs, navigates her duty to foster human-draniac relations, but when her sister is kidnapped, Kidan suspects a draniac and will do anything to find her. Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears,...

18) The judgment of Yoyo Gold

Author

Description

"Yoyo Gold has always played the role of the perfect Jewish daughter. She keeps kosher, looks after her siblings, and volunteers at the local food bank. She respects the decisions of her rabbi father and encourages her friends to observe the rules of their Orthodox faith. But when she sees her best friend cast out of the community over a seemingly innocent transgression, Yoyo's eyes are opened to the truth of her neighbors' hypocrisies for the first...

Author

Description

After the war is over, seven outlawed kindlings - elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives - must confront their pasts, their trauma and their grim fates to reclaim who they once were and fight one last time.

20) Rising from the ashes: Los Angeles. 1992, Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a city on fire

Author

Description

Paula Yoo's latest is a compelling, nuanced account of Los Angeles's 1992 uprising and its impact on its Korean and Black American communities. In the spring of 1992, after a jury returned not guilty verdicts in the trial of four police officers charged in the brutal beating of a Black man, Rodney King, Los Angeles was torn apart. Thousands of fires were set, causing more than a billion dollars in damage. In neighborhoods abandoned by the police,...