This is one of those books where I saw the world from a different perspective: a 13-year-old struggling with puberty, anxiety, and their gender identity. Ollie was the avatar who took me on a journey through bullies, shifting friendships, and teenage awkwardness that was somewhat similar, but different enough from my own, to feel like I was in a world I could have inhabited in a parallel universe. I finished it feeling hopeful for Ollie’s future and my own.
Puberty, AKA the ultimate biological predator, is driving a wedge between soon-to-be 13 year old Ollie Thompson and their lifelong friends. Too much of a girl for their neighbourhood hockey team, but not girly enough for their boy-crazed BFF, Ollie doesn't know where they fit. And their usual ability to camouflage? Woefully disrupted.
When a school project asks them to write an essay on what it means to be a woman (if anyone's got an answer that'd be great), and one of their new friends is the target of bullying, Ollie is caught between the safety of fleeing from their…
It took reading the first few pages of first-person verse to catch my interest, but once I started to get to know Kate and Tam’s personalities, I was hooked. I had to find out how this story would develop, and if they’d work through their own hang-ups to accept each other. An unforgettable read for a lesbian and former teenager in love.
2020 Odyssey Honor Award
2020 Rainbow Booklist Title
NCTE 2020 Notable Poetry Book
ALSC Notable Children's Recordings
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 facade, Tam sees a goofy, sensitive, lonely girl. And Tam's so much more than a volleyball player, Kate realizes: She's everything Kate wishes she could be. It's complicated. Except it's not. When Kate and Tam…
Another unforgettable read that gripped me from the first page. So full of feels for Stevie and Nora’s plight, played out over enough time to ride the highs of the crests and the lows of despair. It was much more than an amnesia soap story—it felt vivid and real, like my own days on family farms with their sweaty labor, steep creek beds, and dry pastures. I felt closer to my family's secrets afterward.
This tender solo debut by Alyson Derrick, co-author of New York Times bestseller She Gets the Girl, is perfect for fans of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Five Feet Apart.
What would you do if you forgot the love of your life existed?
Stevie and Nora had a love. A secret, epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. They also had a plan: to leave their small, ultra-conservative town and families behind after graduation and move to California, where they could finally stop hiding that love.
But then Stevie has a terrible fall and the last two years of her…
An unexpected call from Riverton, Manitoba, in 2007 forced Janet Berg to confront her father Daniel’s life and death. He was found shot dead in a field with a shotgun, and the forty-year-old scientist needed to explain why. From her home in Seattle, half a continent away, she sifted through musty boxes and her own memories to piece together what happened to Daniel over his last twelve years of estrangement. Poring over scribbled notes, emails, police reports, and her father’s well-worn Bible, she uncovered a life that ended in one of two ways. The key to solving his murder lay in two crime scenes with the same suspects and victim. As she put the final pieces of the puzzle together, a call from Riverton confirmed her suspicions: the killer had taken her next victim, and a second family was helpless to stop her. Janet’s memoir chronicles her father’s life and death, from his youth in 1950s Saskatchewan to unraveling the mystery of his death ten years later.
