Unique Book Types: Novels in Verse

Bobby, who is bullied by the kids at school for living in a home with a front yard that is filled with garbage, meets a young artist who teaches him to see himself as more than "Junk Boy."

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people. In New York City, Yahaira's mother tells her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash. Separated by distance -- and Papi's secrets -- the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they've lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.

Picked on at home, criticized for talking trash while beating boys at basketball, and always seen as less than her best friend, a girl struggles to like and accept herself.

Sixteen-year-old Archne turns to weaving for solace, but when word spreads of her skill she is confronted by the goddess Athena and the two enter a weaving contest that results in transformation and redemption.

For seventeen-year-old Denver, music is everything. Writing, performing, and her ultimate goal: escaping her very small, very white hometown. So Denver is more than ready on the day she and her best friends Dali and Shak sing their way into the orbit of the biggest R&B star in the world, Sean Mercury Ellis. Merc gives them everything: parties, perks, wild nights -- plus hours and hours in the recording studio. Even the painful sacrifices and the lies the girls have to tell are all worth it. Until they're not.

Allison runs away and, in what she thinks is an abandoned house, finds a home with Marla, an elderly woman with dementia who believes her to be an old friend named Toffee.

Five months ago, Liv's big brother, Jonah, shot himself. It was an accident. He didn't know that the gun was loaded. But the damage was done. Now he won't ever be leaving their small mill town like he planned. Jonah can't speak, can't walk, can't take care of himself at all. Clay is Jonah's best friend and the gun belonged to Clay's father. Many people blame Clay and his father for this terrible accident. Liv knows that Clay is nearly as broken as Jonah. She knows his life also changed forever the same moment as Jonah's. And she refuses to turn away from Clay, just as she refuses to give up on Jonah.

After school one day, Frankie, a lover of physics and astronomy, has her first sexual experience with quiet and gorgeous Benjamin--and gets her period. It's only blood, they agree. But soon a gruesome meme goes viral, turning an intimate, affectionate afternoon into something sordid, mortifying, and damaging. In the time it takes to swipe a screen, Frankie's universe implodes. Who can she trust?

Told in two voices, sisters Row and Ariana are frozen by grief over their mother's death, years before, until Ariana leaves for reasons Row does not understand.

Nima doesn't feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself. Until she doesn't.

Two seventeen-year-old trans boys in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, struggling to understand themselves and their love for each other, are inspired by an online story about trans soldiers who fell in love during the American Revolution.

While a highly publicized sexual assault case threatens to destroy her and her mother, sixteen-year-old Mimi Dovewick tries to understand their tense relationship by reaching out to the women of her maternal line through the journals they all kept.

Seventeen-year-old twins Storm and Lake have always been in perfect sync. They faced the worst a parent could do and survived it together. In the wake of their mother’s rejection, they’ve spent the last five years moving from foster home to foster home—sometimes placed together, sometimes apart. Told in dual perspectives through unsent letters, at turns heartbreaking and always honest, this is a searing and unforgettable account of two teens caught in the teeth of the foster care system, fighting their way out and back to each other.

A mixed-heritage dancer's coming of age within the African diaspora is shaped by abuse at the hands of a cousin, her mother's descent into addiction, and her father's efforts to create a Nigerian-inspired home in America.

This novel in verse captures one young woman's struggle for independence, equality, and identity as the daughter of Greek and French immigrants in tumultuous 1930s Detroit.

After having her heart broken, seventeen-year-old Nora Nichols decides to escape her hometown and take a summer job as an arts and crafts counsellor at an all-girls' camp in the mountains of West Virginia. There, she meets girls and women from all walks of life with their own heartaches and triumphs. But when a letter from home comes bearing unexpected news, Nora finds inner strength in her devastation with the healing power of female friendship

Told in alternating voices, determined to make a difference and heal from their troubled pasts, teens Ana and Leandro fight to protect California wildlife and the endangered puma.

NASA has assured everyone the passage of rogue planet Malachite will be safe, but Crosby's been getting other messages--from a fortune teller and Malachite truther message boards. And now she believes that Malachite will kill everyone who doesn't ascend to the fourth dimension--a higher plane that transcends physicality. She tries to prepare her friends and family to leave their bodies behind and raise their frequency by changing their diets, wearing the right crystals, and moving into her friend's bunker before it's too late. But no one is listening. The more time she spends trying to talk her roommate and her quirky friends into her apocalypse plans, the more Crosby is forced to face the cracks in everything she believes to be true.

Kiran flees her home in Punjab for a fresh start in Canada after a sexual assault leaves her pregnant with a daughter, Sahaara, but when Sahaara learns the truth about Kiran's past, she feels compelled to seek justice, even if it means challenging a powerful and dangerous man.

With the help of her cousin and their friends, Danna scours the city, searching for her grandfather's favorite foods and hoping the remembered flavors will bring back his memories.

"Moth, who lost her family in an accident, and Sani, who is battling ongoing depression, take a road trip that has them chasing ghosts and searching for ancestors, which helps them move forward in surprising, powerful and unforgettable ways."

"When hospitalized for her clinical depression, Whimsy connects with a boy named Faerry, who also suffers from the traumatic loss of a sibling, and together they work to unearth buried memories and battle the fantastical physical embodiment of their depression."

"In the room beneath a theater stage, the ghosts of Juliet, Ophelia, Cordelia, and other teenage girls who died tragically in Shakespeare's plays, share their experiences and trauma and get the chance to retell the stories of their lives in their own terms."

Em Morales’s older sister was raped by another student after a frat party. A jury eventually found the rapist guilty on all counts–a remarkable verdict that Em felt more than a little responsible for, since she was her sister’s strongest advocate on social media during the trial. Her passion and outspokenness helped dissuade the DA from settling for a plea deal. Em’s family would have real justice. But the victory is short lived. In a matter of minutes, justice vanishes as the judge sentences the rapist to no prison time. Em and her family are stunned & sick with rage. From this low point, Em must find a new reason to go on and help her family heal, and she finds it in the unlikely form of the story of a 15th-century French noblewoman, Marguerite de Bressieux, who is legendary as an avenging knight for rape victims.

June is fat. June also has an eating disorder, but no one sees. When she doesn't eat, her friends and family think they see a fat girl on a diet, not someone starving herself. When June's secret is found out by Toby, the new boy next door, she is panicked. Then she learns he also has a secret. Everyone has their own little lies.

When fourteen-year-old Evie is diagnosed with anorexia, she begins the slow process of recovery with the help of caregivers and peers who are battling their own disordered-eating habits.

On her eighteenth birthday, Hilde leaves her orphanage in 1930s Berlin, and heads out into the world to discover her place in it. But finding a job is hard, at least until she stumbles into Café Lila, a vibrant cabaret full of expressive customers. Rosa, one of the club's waitresses and performers, immediately takes Hilde under her wing. As the café denizens slowly embrace Hilde, and she embraces them in turn, she discovers her voice and her own blossoming feelings for Rosa.

Told from different points of view--protesters, students, National Guardsmen, and "townies"--recounts the story of what happened at Kent State in May 1970, when four college students were killed by National Guardsmen, and a student protest was turned into a bloody battlefield.

Tells the story of Sophie Scholl, a young German college student who challenges the Nazi regime during World War II as part of the White Rose, a non-violent resistance group.

Two girls. One wild and reckless day. Years of tumultuous history unspooling like a thin, fraying string in the hours after they set a fire. They were best friends. Until they became more. Their affections grew. Until the blurry lines became dangerous. Over the course of a single day, the depth of their past, the confusion of their present, and the unpredictability of their future is revealed. And the girls will learn that hearts, like flames, aren't so easily tamed. It starts with a fire. How will it end?

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. "Boys just being boys" turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?