ABSOLUTELY SMASHING LIST OF TITLES https://www.nationalbook.org/2020-national-book-awards-longlist-for-young-peoples-literature/

Love to see LIFTING AS WE CLIMB, an outstanding YA NF title from @freeblackgirl here. YA NF often gets left out of serious awards contention so it's great to see it included here. It's an accessible yet challenging text for teen readers about Black women's part/work in suffrage.

OF COURSE y'all have heard me shouting from the rooftops about WE ARE NOT YET FREE by @tracichee for months. A book about Japanese-American teens resisting and forging bonds during Internment, it's genuinely a masterpiece and a book you just cannot shake that is so IMMEDIATE.

KING AND THE DRAGONFLIES @kacencallender is a game changer in MG, it absolutely raises the bar. It's about toxic masculinity, queerness and understanding yourself, grief and hope, family, racism and assumptions ,and growth. And it's all done flawlessly. The CRAFT! The SKILL!

APPLE (SKIN TO THE CORE) by Eric Gansworth ..........

Look. LOOK. I remember the day I first heard the news @LevineQuerido was going to happen, when they announced their goals as a publisher and I KNEW it was gonna shake things up in publishing and...this book is THAT.

I think perhaps we can all agree I have read ... a few YA books. I have NEVER read anything like this book. Honestly. The way Gansworth uses the poetry format. The incorporation of illustrations. How this is a memoir...but also a memory. https://www.levinequerido.com/apple 

Rarely if ever have I read a YA book less interested in the white gaze. This is not a book FOR white readers. They are welcomed to it, if they want, but it is not FOR them. It's entirely about decolonizing the narrative form & function of YA. Reading it is genuinely EXHILARATING.

sometimes while reading APPLE (SKIN TO THE CORE) I would just stop, set the book down, and PROCESS it, let it sink in. My gosh, I love when that happens. I love when there is so much in a book my brain has to...pause. That's how strong this is as a work.