July 18, 2020
Here are a few titles for both kids and adults that address subjects on our minds today—politics, racial injustice, gender identity, activism, homelessness—proving that fiction has the power to give us new insights into real world topics.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, Center for Fiction Bookstore
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Act
By Kayla Miller
Published by Houghton Mifflin
For readers who devour Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novels and loved Click and Camp, Kayla Miller’s new book features a 6th grader navigating her female friendships when she realizes her school policies are unjust. This story about the making of a young activist is also a thoughtful tale of empowerment.
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Dress Coded
By Carrie Firestone
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
An inspiring heroine starts a school rebellion in this promising debut that addresses the issue of how our clothes can define us. For slightly older middle school readers to see what can be accomplished when you stand up and speak out.
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Running
By Natalia Sylvester
Published by Clarion Books
A terrific view of what it’s like for a 15-year-old to be the daughter of a politician—from living in a fishbowl with no privacy to seeing a new side of your Cuban-American father. Does Mari like what she sees?
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This Is My America
By Kim Johnson
Published by Random House Books for Young Readers
A 17-year-old Texas girl tries desperately to help her unjustly incarcerated father whose Death Row sentence is perilously close to an end. Note: this is coming in a week so pre-order now.
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Pew
By Catherine Lacey
Published by FSG
AND one for adults—weirdly wonderful, hard to categorize, touching upon a dozen issues at once in a concise, page-turning, totally compelling novel—that we highly recommend!
Who is Pew? A very clever and unsettling comment on the
nature of assumptions based on appearance (see above).
Read what happens in a small (-minded?) town when an ambiguously gendered homeless person turns up sleeping on the local church pew and the reverend attempts to engage the community in some charitable hospitality.