Titles to check out, award winning and/or just interesting


 This is the winner of the 2025 Printz (top honor a teen book can have).  I'll be posting this article in both the graphic novel and the teen reads blogs as it deserves all the hype.  The story definitely deserves the awards it got!  On the surface, it's a story of a girl getting to know her estranged father after never having met him in her 14 years of life.  However, there is more than that....Almudena has never known her heritage, being raised by her very blonde, white mother.  She doesn't speak Spanish either.  Her summer is being spent with her Guatemalan father who doesn't speak much English, surrounded by those who prefer to speak Spanish and helping her father fix up a brownstone to help those who are being displaced due to the gentrification of the neighborhood.  She is trying to learn who she is, how she fits in and also how her upbringing has influenced her opinions.  I don't want to explain more as the journey is half the fun, but the writers do an amazing job making everyone feel real and the situations faced emotional and grounded.  You should definitely check out this title!


Reynolds has done it again, winning the Coretta Scott King award for teen fiction 2025 with this title.  What this is, is essentially a beautiful love story.  A love story set up with what is happening in the present, what happened 24 seconds prior, 24 hours before that, and in continuing flashbacks covering the entire relationship and then coming back around to the moment we started.  It's a format I haven't seen before and never in a love story but it definitely works to keep your attention and makes you wonder how and why this matters with what is happening NOW.  This is a title meant for older teens as it mentions love and sex in a relationship between two teens.  Reynolds bringing in family and history and trauma just makes the story so much more layered for the reader who wants to delve deep but for those who just want a romantic, amazing love story....it delivers!  Highly recommended.




This book is a beast (pun intended) as it is LARGE, but also so beautifully illustrated and well researched.  Yes, it's an animal book but focusing on how beautifully evolved nature can be and reminding readers that "ugly" is a judgement and not a realistic way of looking at why an animal looks and acts the way it does.  Spring also brings up how the current environmental and manmade changes are impacting the varying species.  This was so interesting, that I didn't want to stop reading it (but trust me, do NOT try to read this in bed, you WILL end up with either an aching arm or smacking yourself in the head with it as you fall asleep).  



Thanks for reading, hope you check these out!  I promise to keep up with the blogs better in 2025.


Saleena Longmuir, Teen Librarian



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