nic stone – Page 2

Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2022) Featured Review of Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton and others

Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon; narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt, A.J. Beckles, Jordan Cobb, Dion Graham, Imani Parks, Shayna Small, and Bahni Turpin
Quill Tree Books
Publication date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 9780063088122

Blackout subtly weaves six unique novellas featuring Black characters by six Black authors into one connected story in New York City during a summer blackout. Tiffany D. Jackson’s story focuses on exes Tammie and Kareem who run into each other at the same summer internship opportunity. Nic Stone’s contribution is a queer male/male love story about Tremaine and JJ. Ashley Woodfolk tells a cute sapphic romance between Joss and Nella that takes place at a senior living facility. Dhonielle Clayton tackles a friends-to-lovers romance in the New York Public Library. Angie Thomas tells of a love triangle with some emotional baggage. Nicola Yoon’s meet cute of Seymour and Grace is a heartwarming end to this high-interest book about Black Love.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Nominations Round-Up, Summer

Due to the large number of nominees, not all titles are shown here. See full list below.

Each quarter, the Selected Lists teams compile the titles that have been officially nominated to date. These books have been suggested by the team or through the title suggestion form, read by multiple members of the team, and received approval to be designated an official nomination. At the end of the year, the final list of nominations and each Selected List’s Top Ten will be chosen from these titles.

Amari and the Night Brothers. By B.B. Alston. HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, $17.99 (9780062975164).

Amari’s brother Quinton has disappeared, and her only hope of finding him is to follow in his footsteps and become a Junior Agent with the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs.

Amber and Clay. By Laura Amy Schlitz. Candlewick Press, $22.99 (9781536201222).

In ancient Greece, two unlikely friends Rhaskos and Melisto find their lives intertwined in a search for freedom and purpose. As a ghost bound to Rhaskos, Melisto must help free him before she can find her own rest in the Halls of Hades.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon

Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon
HarperCollins / Quill Tree Books
Publication Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-0063088092

It’s a hot, muggy summer day in New York City. When the power goes out, sparks fly. All across the city, an interconnected group of Black teens finds love. Bitter exes cross paths at a competitive internship before they’re forced to walk home together. Old friends reconnect on the subway and at the library. New attractions bloom at a nursing home and in a rideshare. Everyone is on their way to the same block party in Brooklyn, and who knows how their stars will have realigned when the lights finally come back on…

Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers (#QP2022) Featured Review of Take Back the Block by Chrystal D. Giles

Take Back the Block by Chrystal D. Giles
Random House Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House
Publication Date: January 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0593175170

Wes is very familiar with two things in life: accompanying his parents to protests and loving his neighborhood. When a real estate developer rolls into Kensington Oaks offering to buy their homes, Wes and his friends must take things into their own hands to fight back against an issue even greater than they imagined.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris

The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1534445451

Since his parents’ death in a car crash, Black sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus has somehow developed the ability to see the future of any object or person his hand touches. Seeing himself scooping ice cream whenever he touches the handle of a scoop at work is not much more than a nuisance, but with every inadvertent foreseeing, Alex becomes more certain that his abilities are a curse. When Alex touches a family photo and sees a series of events leading to his brother Isaiah’s death, he resolves to do something, anything, to repair their relationship and save Izzy in what little time he has left.

What to Do After Your Debut? Keep Writing, Of Course!

The 2021 Morris Award Finalists (shown above) were announced in December, and the winner will be revealed at the ALA Youth Media Awards on January 25. First granted in 2009, the William C. Morris YA Debut Award recognizes the most impressive debut published in Young Adult Literature each year.

With more than a decade of winners to look back on, let’s see which of our former debuts are still impressing readers today.

2010’s Morris Award went to L. K. Madigan’s Flash Burnout. Tragically, the author passed away just a year after receiving the award. The rest of the finalists from that year, however, have continued to contribute to YA in significant ways, perhaps none more notably that Nina LaCour, who went on to win the 2018 Printz Award for We Are Okay. LaCour’s latest novel, Watch Over Me, has been nominated for the 2021 Best Fiction for Young Adults Selected List.

In fact, several names on the 2021 BFYA nominations list were originally finalists for the Morris Award, including 2015’s Jessie Ann Foley, 2016’s Anna-Marie McLemore, 2018’s Nic Stone, and David Yoon in 2020.

Last year’s winner, Ben Phillippe, has been nominated. Both the winner of the 2019 Morris Award and one of its finalists have companion books that were nominated — Adib Khorram with Darius the Great Deserves Better and Tomi Adeyemi with Children of Virtue and Vengeance. And Becky Albertalli, the winner in 2016, is enjoying praise this year for Yes No Maybe So, cowritten with Aisha Saeed.

What about books out in 2021? Morris Award recipients have those, too!

Just released is Concrete Rose, 2018 Morris Award winner Angie Thomas’s follow up to The Hate U Give.

And out in August is In the Wild Light from 2017 Morris Award winner Jeff Zentner.

The moral of the story is this: no matter which finalist is chosen in 2021, we will look forward to reading them for years to come.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2021) Nominees Round Up, December 4 Edition

Click here to see all of the current Best Fiction for Young Adults nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger Book Cover — Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, illustrated by Rovina Cai
Levine Querido
Publication Date: August 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1646140053

Lipan Apache teenager Elatsoe “Ellie” Bride lives in an alternate modern world populated by ghosts and vampires and fairy rings. Ellie has inherited the power to call on animal spirits, and she is content to explore her abilities slowly and quietly. But then her cousin Trevor dies in a violent car accident, and his ghost appears in a dream to warn Ellie that he’s been murdered, begging her to protect his family. Now Ellie must tread carefully to track a killer in a seemingly perfect small town, helped by her overly-enthusiastic best friend, her ghost dog Kirby, and the stories she’s learned about the abuses suffered and powers wielded by her powerful sixth-great-grandmother.

Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers (#QP2021) Nominees Round Up, November 24 Edition

Click here to see all of the current Quick Picks nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Lux: The New Girl by Ashley Woodfolk Book Cover — Lux: The New Girl by Ashley Woodfolk

Lux: The New Girl by Ashley Woodfolk
Workshop / Penguin
Publication Date: September 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0593096017

When Lux is kicked out of yet another school for fighting, she has one more chance to fit in and make things work at a local high school. At Harlem’s Augusta Savage School of Arts, she meets a group of students known as the Flyy Girls. Being a good friend and leaving her old life behind is hard, even with the best of intentions.

This book is less than 150 pages and is smaller in size than a regular hardcover YA novel, with straightforward text and short chapters that include diary entries and lots of dialogue. The simple but real plot is not overly complicated and readers will end up caring about and relating to Lux’s success, stress over social media, family dynamics, and everyday obstacles.

Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2021) Nominees Round Up, November 11 Edition

Click here to see all of the current Amazing Audiobooks nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune; narrated by Daniel Henning
Macmillan Audio
Release date: 03-17-20
ISBN: 9781250264299

Linus Baker takes his job as overseer of magical children’s orphanages very seriously. His by-the-book approach to visits and reports gets him noticed by Extremely Upper Management. They select him for a special job visiting a house at what seems like the end of the world to report on a particularly special group of kids. But while there, he finds that there might be more to life than filling out forms and boxes, and in this case, the children and their enigmatic master are teaching him more than he expected to find.

Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2021) Nominees Round Up, September 23 Edition

Click here to see all of the current Amazing Audiobooks nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran; narrated by Phuc Tran
Macmillan Audio
Publication Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1250194718

Tran often felt like an outsider as the only Asian student in his school growing up in Carlisle, PA. Tran’s memoir spans from his early childhood coming to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam in 1975 after the fall of Saigon through his highschool graduation, where he finds his “wolf-pack” of punk skaters in middle school, and shows that no one is just “one thing.” Each chapter is told through the lens of a “classic” title from his must-read list like Crime and Punishment and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and shows what that book meant to him, and how it framed his life.