A selection of the many new and forthcoming YA and middle grade works in verse.
Ain’t Burned All the Bright
Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin. Atheneum/Dlouhy, out now, ages 12–up
“Author Reynolds and artist Griffin, friends and previous collaborators, explore recent events in America through a poetic multimedia partnership,” our starred review said, noting Reynolds’s “spare lines” and Griffin’s “captivating collages.”
more
Augusta Savage
Marilyn Nelson. Little, Brown/Ottaviano, out now, ages 14–up
“Nelson gives voice to the Black sculptor Augusta Savage (1892–1962), a key Harlem Renaissance figure,” PW’s starred review said. “Written primarily in the first person, moving poems convey Savage’s artistic ‘hunger/ to pull something out of yourself.’ ”
more
Baby Teeth
Meg Grehan. Little Island, May, ages 14–up
Grehan, author of the YA verse novels The Space Between and The Deepest Breath, explores LGBTQ identity and desire in the story of a vampire, Imma, who falls in love with Claudia, who is human.
Golden Girl
Reem Faruqi. HarperCollins, Feb., ages 8–12
“A teen of Pakistani descent faces her penchant for ‘borrowing’ things and navigates puberty-related changes,” per PW’s review, which praised the novel for having “a well-characterized, flawed heroine and a lot of heart.”
more
Moonwalking
Zetta Elliott and Lyn Miller-Lachmann. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Apr., ages 10–14
A punk rock–loving white boy with autism and an artistic Afro-Latinx kid befriend each other in 1980s Brooklyn in this verse novel by Elliott, author of the Caldecott Honor title A Place Inside of Me, and Miller-Lachmann, coauthor of the forthcoming She Persisted: Temple Grandin.
The Name She Gave Me
Betty Culley. HarperTeen, June, ages 13–up
An adopted teenager seeks out her birth family and learns she has a biological sister in foster care two towns away. Culley’s previous books include the YA novel in verse Three Things I Know Are True.
Singing with Elephants
Margarita Engle. Viking, June, ages 8–12
Pura Belpré Award winner Engle imagines a friendship between an 11-year-old Cuban American girl in Santa Barbara, Calif., and poet Gabriela Mistral, who lived in the beach town in the 1940s and was the first Latin American winner of a Nobel Prize for Literature.
Turn the Tide
Elaine Dimopoulos. Clarion, Mar., ages 8–12
When 12-year-old Mimi’s family moves from Massachusetts to Florida, she’s alarmed by the pollution she sees on the beaches. She takes inspiration from the real-life Wijsen sisters, young climate activists in Bali, and forms a kid-led movement to ban plastic bags.
Vinyl Moon
Mahogany L. Browne. Crown, out now, 14–up
After a violent incident with her boyfriend, Angel is sent from her California home to live with her uncle in New York, where she finds a new group of friends and a passion for Black literature. Our starred review said Browne “portray[s] with nuance a group of Brooklyn teens unpacking their traumas and finding their joy.”
more
