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  Teen Books: Verse Novels  
Forever Is Now

Mariama J. Lockington - Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Format: Hardcover

A poignant and lyrical young adult novel-in-verse about a Black teen coming of age in an anxiety-inducing world, from the author of For Black Girls Like Me and In the Key of Us.. I'm safe here.. That's how Sadie feels, on a perfect summer day, wrapped in her girlfriend's arms....
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An Appetite for Miracles

Laekan Zea Kemp - Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

Award-winning author Laekan Zea Kemp's heart-wrenching novel-in-verse follows two teens who must come together to heal the pain from their pasts, perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and Nicola Yoon. Danna Mendoza Villarreal's grandfather is slowly losing himself as his memories...
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We Are All So Good at Smiling

Amber McBride - Feiwel & Friends
Format: Hardcover

They Both Die at the End meets The Bell Jar in this haunting, beautiful young adult novel-in-verse about clinical depression and healing from trauma, from National Book Award Finalist Amber McBride.Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression. When she meets a boy named...
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Spin

Rebecca Caprara - Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

The Song of Achilles and Circe get a sapphic, young adult twist in this gorgeously lush, feminist retelling of the myth of Arachne spun in moving verse.. Sixteen-year-old Arachne is ostracized by all but her family and closest friend, Celandine. Turning to her loom for solace, Arachne learns...
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Enter the Body

Joy McCullough - Dutton Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

In the room beneath a stage's trapdoor, Shakespeare's dead teenage girls - Juliet, Ophelia, Cordelia, and others - compare their experiences and retell the stories of their lives in their own terms.. Enter the Body gives voice to a cast of the young women who die in Shakespeare's...
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Rising Out (YA Verse)

M. Azmitia

Anaya knows great things are expected of her: go to college, find a good man, and make her mother proud. But going to college means leaving behind her best friend, Eri. Eri is an Afrolatina transgender woman living in a closed-minded world and only Anaya knows her secret. The two
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Nothing Burns As Bright As You

Ashley Woodfolk - Versify
Format: Hardcover

From acclaimed author Ashley Woodfolk,Nothing Burns as Bright as You is an impassioned story about queer love, grief, and the complexity of female friendship that will keep your heart racing, and breaking, until the very last page. Two girls. One wild and reckless day. Years of tumultuous...
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Baby Teeth

MEG GREHAN - Little Island Books
Format: Hardcover

From the multi-award winning author of The Deepest Breath (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) , a Junior Library Guild Selection, comes a YA verse novel about LGBTQ desire, identity - and vampires. The bloodFeeds the hungerThat threatens everythingIt starts when Claudia offers her a yellow...
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Vinyl Moon

Mahogany L. Browne - Crown Books for Young Readers
Format: Book

When Darius told Angel he loved her, she believed him. But five weeks after the incident, Angel finds herself in Brooklyn, far from her family, from him, and from the California life she has known.
 
Angel feels out of sync with her new neighborhood. At school, she can't...

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This Impossible Light

LILY MYERS - Philomel Books
Format: Hardcover

From the YouTube slam poetry star of "Shrinking Women" (more than 5 million views!) comes a novel in verse about body image, eating disorders, self-worth, mothers and daughters, and the psychological scars we inherit from our parents.Fifteen-year-old Ivy's world is in flux....
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We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire

Joy McCullough - Dutton Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

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....
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Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case

Patricia Hruby Powell - Chronicle Books
Format: Print book

From acclaimed author Patricia Hruby Powell comes the story of a landmark civil rights case, told in spare and gorgeous verse. In 1955, in Caroline County, Virginia, amidst segregation and prejudice, injustice and cruelty, two teenagers fell in love. Their life together broke the law, but their...
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Only on the Weekends

DEAN ATTA - BALZER BRAY
Format: Hardcover

From the Stonewall Award-winning author of The Black Flamingo comes a romantic coming-of-age novel in verse about the beautiful - and sometimes painful - fallout of pursuing the love we deserve. The ideal next read for fans of Kacen Callender, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Becky Albertalli.Fifteen-year-old...
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A Million Quiet Revolutions

Robin Gow
Format: Hardcover

A modern love story, told in verse, about two teenaged trans boys who name themselves after two Revolutionary War soldiers. A lyrical, aching young adult romance perfect for fans of The Poet X, Darius the Great is Not Okay, and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Universe.For as long as they...
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Alma Presses Play

Tina Cane - Make Me a World
Format: Hardcover

Alma's life is a series of halfways: She's half-Chinese, half-Jewish; her parents spend half the time fighting, and the other half silent; and she's halfway through becoming a woman. But as long as she can listen to her Walkman, hang out with her friends on the stoops of the Village,...
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The Most Dazzling Girl In Berlin

Kip Wilson - Versify
Format: Hardcover

A fascinating historical novel about Hilde, a former orphan, who experiences Berlin on the cusp of World War II and discovers her own voice and sexuality and finds a family when she gets a job at a cabaret, by award-winning author Kip WilsonAfter her eighteenth birthday, Hilde, a former...
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Me (Moth)

Amber McBride - Feiwel & Friends
Format: Book

Moth has lost her family in an accident. Though she lives with her aunt, she feels alone and uprooted.Until she meets Sani, a boy who is also searching for his roots. If he knows more about where he comes from, maybe he'll be able to understand his ongoing depression. And if Moth...

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When We Make It

Elisabet Velasquez - Dial Books
Format: Hardcover

Sarai is a first-generation Puerto Rican eighth grader who can see with clarity the truth, pain, and beauty of the world both inside and outside her Bushwick apartment. Together with her older sister Estrella, she navigates the strain of family traumas and the systemic pressures of toxic...
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Home Is Not a Country

Safia Elhillo - Make Me a World
Format: Hardcover

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,...
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Junk Boy

Tony Abbott - Katherine Tegen Books
Format: Hardcover

Bestselling author Tony Abbott's YA novel-in-verse is an unflinching and heartbreaking look at a boy's junk-filled life, and the ways he finds redemption and hope, perfect for fans of The Crossover and Long Way Down.Junk. That's what the kids at school call Bobby Lang, mostly...
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Muted

Tami Charles - Scholastic Press
Format: Hardcover

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,...
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Blood Moon

Lucy Cuthew - Walker Books US
Format: Hardcover

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,...
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Every Body Looking

Candice Iloh - Dutton Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

"Candice Iloh's beautifully crafted narrative about family, belonging, sexuality, and telling our deepest truths in order to be whole is at once immensely readable and ultimately healing." - Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times Bestselling Author of Brown Girl Dreaming"An...
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Chlorine Sky

Mahogany L. Browne
Format: Hardcover

She looks me hard in my eyes& my knees lock into tree trunksMy eyes don't dance like my heartbeat racingThey stare straight back hot daggers.I remember things will never be the same.I remember things.With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, Mahogany L. Browne delivers a novel-in-verse...
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Girls Like Me

Lola StVil - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Format: Print book

Fifteen-year-old Shay Summers is trying to cope with the death of her father, being overweight, and threats from a girl bully in school. When she falls in love with Blake, a mysterious boy online, insecure Shay doesn't want to tell him who she is. But with the help of her two best friends,...
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Switch

A. S. King - Dutton Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

Tru Beck is a teenage girl from Pennsylvania who lives in a world that has become trapped in a fold in time and space, where "real" time has stopped but humanity continues to mark artificial time based on a website called N3WCLOCK.com. Tru lives in a house that has a switch at its center....
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Your Heart, My Sky: Love in a Time of Hunger

Margarita Engle - Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

The people of Cuba are living in el perodo especial en tiempos de paz - the special period in times of peace. That's what the government insists that this era must be called, but the reality behind these words is starvation. Liana is struggling to find enough to eat. Yet hunger has also...
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Punching the Air

Ibi Zoboi - Balzer Bray
Format: Hardcover

From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo. The story that I thought...
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Clap When You Land

Elizabeth Acevedo - HarperTeen
Format: Hardcover

In a novel-in-verse that brims with grief and love, National Book Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.Camino Rios lives for the summers when...
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The Black Flamingo

Dean Atta - Balzer Bray
Format: Hardcover

A fierce coming-of-age verse novel about identity and the power of drag, from acclaimed UK poet and performer Dean Atta. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, Jason Reynolds, and Kacen Callender. Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he's navigated what...
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Three Things I Know Are True

Betty Culley - HarperTeen
Format: Hardcover

Fans of Jandy Nelson and Marieke Nijkamp will love this deeply moving novel in verse about the aftermath of a gun accident.Life changes forever for Liv when her older brother, Jonah, accidentally shoots himself with his best friend Clay's father's gun. Now Jonah needs round-the-clock care...
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Kent State

Deborah Wiles - Scholastic Inc.
Format: Hardcover

From two-time National Book Award finalist Deborah Wiles, a masterpiece exploration of one of the darkest moments in our history, when American troops killed four American students protesting the Vietnam War.May 4, 1970.Kent State University.As protestors roil the campus, National Guardsmen...
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Turtle under Ice

Juleah del Rosario - Simon Pulse
Format: Hardcover

A teen navigates questions of grief, identity, and guilt in the wake of her sister's mysterious disappearance in this breathtaking novel-in-verse from the author of 500 Words or Less - perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo.Rowena feels like her family is a frayed string of lights that...
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White Rose

Kip Wilson - Versify
Format: Hardcover

"In a searing indictment of silent complicity, White Rose shines a light on one remarkable young woman's insistence on the power of truth, no matter the cost. A timely call to resistance." - Joy McCullough, author of Blood Water Paint "White Rose is a resonant...
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The Poet X

Elizabeth Acevedo - HarperTeen
Format: Hardcover

A National Book Award Longlist title!Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth....
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Redwood and Ponytail

K. A. Holt - Chronicle Books
Format: Hardcover

Kate and Tam meet, and both of their worlds tip sideways. At first, Tam figures Kate is your stereotypical cheerleader; Kate sees Tam as another tall jock. And the more they keep running into each other, the more they surprise each other. Beneath Kate's sleek ponytail and perfect faade,...
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Long Way Down

JASON REYNOLDS - Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Format: Hardcover

A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young...
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Bull

David Elliott - HMH Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

Much like Lin-Manuel Miranda did in Hamilton, the New York Times best-selling author David Elliott turns a classic on its head in form and approach, updating the timeless story of Theseus and the Minotaur. A rough, rowdy, and darkly comedic young adult retelling in verse,...
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Freakboy

Kristin Elizabeth Clark - Farrar Straus Giroux
Format: Print book

From the outside, Brendan Chase seems to have it pretty easy. He's a star wrestler, a video game aficionado, and a loving boyfriend to his seemingly perfect match, Vanessa. But on the inside, Brendan struggles to understand why his body feels so wrong why he sometimes fantasizes having...
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A Time to Dance

Padma Venkatraman - Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Format: Print book

Padma Venkatraman's inspiring story of a young girl's struggle to regain her passion and find a new peace is told lyrically through verse that captures the beauty and mystery of India and the ancient bharatanatyam dance form. This is a stunning novel about spiritual awakening, the power...
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Solo

Kwame Alexander

New York Times bestseller!Blade never asked for a life of the rich and famous. In fact, he'd give anything not to be the son of Rutherford Morrison, a washed-up rock star and drug addict with delusions of a comeback. Or to no longer be part of a family known most for los
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Ask Me How I Got Here

Christine Heppermann - Greenwillow Books
Format: Book

How do you define yourself? By your friends? Your family? Your boyfriend? Your grades? Your trophies? Your choices? By a single choice? From the author of the acclaimed Poisoned Apples comes a novel in verse about a young woman and the aftermath of a life-altering decision. Fans...
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Crank

Ellen Hopkins - Margaret K. McElderry Books
Format: Paperback

Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina -- she's fearless. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster:...
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