Recommended Reads for Teens: Award Winners

WINNER
Misbah is a dreamer, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States from Paksistan and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, Misbah and Toufiz’s son Salahudin and his best friend Noor understand each other better than anyone. But as Misbah's health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism, Sal scrambles to run the family motel himself. When his attempts at saving the business spin out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what it takes to break free from the past.

HONOR
Sixteen-year-old Prudence Perry is a legacy Ladybird Scout, born to a family of hunters sworn to protect humans from inter-dimensional parasites who feast on human emotions. Three years ago, Prue's best friend was killed during a hunt, so she kissed the Scouts goodbye. However, unable to move on from her guilt and trauma, Prue devises a risky plan to infiltrate the Ladybirds in order to swipe the Tea of Forgetting, a tincture laced with a powerful amnesia spell. But old monster-slaying habits die hard and Prue finds herself falling back into the fold. When her town is hit with a mysterious wave of demons, Prue knows it's time to confront the most powerful monster of all: her past.

HONOR
Uriel the angel and Little Ash are the only two supernatural creatures in their village. The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have led all the young people away to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her. Along the way they encounter humans s in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) abandoned her to marry a man whose father died mysteriously. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they've left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold.

HONOR
A research-based exploration of queer behavior in different animal species interspersed with personal anecdotes and interviews with scientists.

WINNER
During the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith, the gold medal winner in the 200-meter sprint, and John Carlos, the bronze medal winner, stood on the podium and raised their fists to protest racial injustice. Both men were forced to leave the Olympics, received death threats, and faced ostracism. In this graphic novel-style memoir, Smith looks back on his childhood growing up in rural Texas through to his stellar athletic career, culminating in his historic victory and Olympic podium protest..

HONOR
In this companion-in-verse to “Free Lunch,” Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on--to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in. Throughout a coming of age marked by violence and dysfunction, Abuela's red-brick house in Abilene, Texas, offered the possibility of home, and Abuela herself the possibility for a better life.

HONOR
Imagine microscopic worms living in the soil. They enter your body through your bare feet, travel to your intestines, and stay there for years sucking your blood like vampires. You feel exhausted. You get sick easily. It sounds like a nightmare, but that's what happened in the American South during the 1800s and early 1900s. Doctors never guessed that hookworms were making patients ill, but zoologist Charles Stiles knew better. Working with one of the first public health organizations, he and his colleagues treated the sick and showed Southerners how to protect themselves by wearing shoes and using outhouses so that the worms didn't spread. Although hookworm was eventually controlled in the United States, the parasite remains a serious health problem throughout the world.

HONOR
At only 8 months old, identical twin sisters Ariel and Zan were diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome--a rare condition where the bones in the head fuse prematurely. They were the first twins known to survive it. Growing up, Ariel and her sister endured numerous appearance-altering procedures. While the physical aspect of their condition was painful, it was nothing compared to the emotional toll of navigating life with a facial disfigurement.

HONOR
Interconnected stories present a picture of racial inequality in America, showing systemic discrimination in all areas of society and showing the unbroken line of Black resistance to this inequality.