Richard Turere’s own story: Richard grew up in Kenya as a Maasai boy, herding his family’s cattle, which represented their wealth and livelihood. Richard’s challenge was to protect their cattle from the lions who prowled the night just outside the barrier of acacia branches that surrounded the farm’s boma, or stockade. Though not well-educated, 12-year-old Richard loved tinkering with electronics. Using salvaged components, spending $10, he surrounded the boma with blinking lights, and the system works; it keeps lions away. His invention, Lion Lights, is now used in Africa, Asia, and South America to protect farm animals from predators.

Naomi Vargas is Mexican American. Wash Fuller is Black. These teens know the town’s divisive racism better than anyone. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Naomi and Wash dare to defy the rules, and the New London school explosion serves as a ticking time bomb in the background. Can their love survive both prejudice and tragedy?

Thirteen-year-old Aaliyah is inspired to stand up to a rise in Islamophobia after a terrorist attack at a concert, and searches for ways she and her friends can combat racism.

The epic second book in the action-packed and empowering middle-grade superhero series. Perfect for 8+ fans of Percy Jackson, Amari and the Night Brothers, and Black Panther. Soon to be a feature film with a major streamer!

Power bursts through my body, and I gasp as my hair shoots out like an avenging sword. It slashes a line through the wooden decking of the walkway. With a deafening crack, the wood breaks apart, splintering with the force of the impact.

Having uncovered head teacher Dr. Dòyìnbó’s hidden agenda behind the Academy of the Sun, Onyeka and her friends are on the run. But they’ve got bigger problems to worry about—they desperately need to find a cure for the Solari disease that comes with using their Ike power and they need to locate Onyeka’s missing parents.

When their last safe house is uncovered, Onyeka turns to the only potential allies they have left; the Rogues, a group of rebels that have been trying to expose Dr. Dòyìnbó’s lies for years. Joining forces, will the two groups be able to defeat their shared nemesis, or is there a new danger on the horizon for the Solari?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them meets Neil Gaiman in this thrilling novel about an Iranian American girl who discovers that her father was secretly a veterinarian to mythical creatures and that she must take up his mantle, despite the many dangers.

Jasminne Mendez didn’t speak English when she started kindergarten, and her young, white teacher thought the girl was deaf because in Louisiana, you were either Black or white. She had no idea that a Black girl could be a Spanish speaker. In this memoir for teens about growing up Afro Latina in the Deep South, Jasminne writes about feeling torn between her Dominican, Spanish speaking culture at home and the American, English speaking one around her. She desperately wanted to fit in, to be seen as American, and she realized early on that language mattered. Learning to read and write English well was the road to acceptance. Mendez shares typical childhood experiences such as having an imaginary friend, boys and puberty, but she also exposes the anti-Black racism within her own family and the conflict created by her family’s conservative traditions.

Of Light and Shadow is a novel about magic, mayhem, love, and betrayal-the story of a bandit and a prince who change each other in unexpected ways.

After telling too many far fetched tales, Nana Busumuru is sent to spend the summer with relatives in Ghana, where she must join forces with the trickster spider Ananse to prevent an evil corporation from stealing the magic in the village forest.

This gentle, contemplative picture book about family origins invites us to ponder the meaning of home. A young boy loves listening to his mother describe the place where she grew up, a world of tall mountains and friends splashing together in the river. Mommy’s stories have let the boy visit her homeland in his thoughts and dreams, and now he’s old enough to travel with her to see it for himself. But when mother and son arrive, the town is not as he imagined. Skyscrapers block the mountains, and crowds hurry past. The boy feels like an outsider-until they visit the river where his mother used to play, and he sees that the spirit and happiness of those days remain. Sensitively pitched to a child’s-eye view, this vivid story honors the immigrant experience and the timeless bond between parent and child, past and present.

All Momo wants for her twelfth birthay is an ordinary life, but instead she finds out she is half human, half goddess and must unlock her divine powers to save her mother’s life and keep countless evil spirits from escaping Yomi, the land of the dead.