Best of 2023 & Award Winners (J)

"Award-winning author Nikki Grimes's beloved novel in verse Garvey's Choice is now a graphic novel, imaginatively and dramatically illustrated by Little Shaq artist Theodore Taylor III"--

"Twelve-year-old Henna loves living with her two papas and cultivating her beloved plants on the tiny island of Earth's End--until Papa Niall grows seriously ill. Now Henna is determined to find a legendary, long-extinct plant with miraculous healing powers, even though the search means journeying all the way to St. Basil's Conservatory, a botanical boarding school rumored to house seeds of every plant ever grown. At St. Basil's, Henna is surrounded...

A extraordinary novel-in-verse about a neurodivergent girl who comes to understand and celebrate her difference. Selah knows her rules for being normal. She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask...

"Eleven-year-old Daisy Thistledown is on the run. Her mother has been keeping big, glittering secrets, and now she has vanished. Daisy knows it's up to her to find Ma-- but someone is hunting her across London. Someone determined to stop her from discovering the truth. So when Daisy flees to safety through a mysterious hidden doorway, she can barely believe her eyes--she has stepped out of the city and into another world. This is the Greenwild. Bursting...

"When Hamra steals a magical fruit from a tiger hoping to cure her grandmother, she must repay her debt to the tiger by going on an extraordinary journey with him to make him human again"--

Henry, a first grader on the autism spectrum, attempts to navigate friendships, and sudden changes in classroom routines--like a parade on Friday instead of share time.

"Simon, an eleven-year-old coming to terms with his gender identity, is convinced that his grandmother's house is haunted"--

Max Plink’s life is complicated. Her parents aren’t getting along. The school bullies are relentless―and her own sister is the cruelest of them. Worst of all, her mouth is a mess. With a mismatched puzzle of a jaw, Max has a Class II malocclusion, otherwise known as a severe overbite. She already has braces, which means she lives on Advil and soft foods after each orthodontist appointment. But now Max has to wear painful (and totally awkward)...

When eleven-year-old foster kid Mo finds a handmade cookbook filled with someone else's family recipes, she collects the stories behind them and builds a website to share them, secretly hoping a long-lost relative will find her and give her a family recipe all her own.

Twelve-year-old Anna must dig deep into her Hawaiian roots in order to save her best friend and her island from an angry fire goddess. 12-year-old Lei is forced to spend summers in Hawaiʻi with her grandma who is determined to make sure she knows all her family's moʻolelo--stories the kids back home donʻt care about or believe. But after insulting Pele, the Goddess of Fire, she learns just how real these legends are when the goddess takes her...