Our teen book spotlight this week is focused on books that have recently been added to our collection meaning they are new!!!! New books are the best; they have a new book smell and there is just something about being one of the first people to read it. We are featuring some amazing fiction and nonfiction this time including titles from a few of our favorite and most popular authors! These books and more can be found by searching the catalog using the search tag #2021yanewbooks as well as on Libby and Hoopla. Check back next week for a new teen book spotlight and if you have any book suggestions, please let us know!!
A Sitting In St. James by Rita Williams-Garcia--As the eighty-year-old matriarch of a Louisiana plantation, Madame Sylvie Guilbert poses for a portrait in 1860 to pay homage to the family name. In reality, however, the portrait serves as a last ditch effort to hang onto a failing plantation while the nation is on the cusp of civil war. Entwined in the lives of the Guilberts are their brutally treated slaves, including sixteen-year-old Thisbe, who is Sylvie's personal servant. As the antebellum power structure crumbles, Thisbe and the other plantation slaves wait for their moment to pursue a long road to freedom.
Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee--After she's turned away at the gangplank of the "Titanic" because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which bars her entry into the United States, Valora Luck is determined to find a way into the country anyway, beginning with getting on the ship. With the help of an aspiring fashion designer, she succeeds, and proceeds first to find her brother who is part of the crew. Trained in acrobatics by their deceased father, Valora hopes she and her brother can audition for the part owner of a circus aboard the ship who can sponsor their entry into the United States. Valora disguises herself to fit in among both the upper-class and lower-deck inhabitants but neither she nor anyone is prepared for the devastation to come and the fight for survival that will trump her dreams.
Switch by A.S. King--When time stopped on June 23, 2020, the world's youth were enlisted to spend part of their school days trying to come up with a solution. Sixteen-year-old Truda Becker has a theory that the time stoppage is a result of people not caring for one another, but she must work around her father's strange habit of obsessively covering up a light switch in their home, her mother's absence, and her sister's psychopathic tendencies, to get at the truth.
Perfectly Parvin by Olivia Abtahi--After being dumped by her only days-old boyfriend, Iranian American Parvin Mohammadi decides to forgo her least likeable qualities--Cheetos eating and bassoon playing, among other things--in favor of adopting the personalities of popular Rom-Com leading ladies to attract the guy she wants. However, she quickly learns that being someone else is exhausting and that finding someone who likes you for who you are is not only surprising, but also rewarding.
Kate In Waiting by Becky Albertalli--Best friends Kate Garfield and Anderson Walker do everything together, including carpooling to theater and discussing their latest crushes, which usually are on the same guy. When their latest communal crush from theater camp, Matt Olsson, arrives at their school and is cast opposite Kate in a school performance, the best friend's relationship is finally tested, and each will have to navigate how to pursue their feelings for Matt without hurting each other.
1789 by Marc Aronson--Collects ten stories of men and women at the forefront of social and political change in the year 1798, a time when democracies and revolutions were being solidified and enacted around the world, from the United States to France to the Caribbean. Includes stories of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Marie Antoinette, the former slave Olaudah Equaino, and painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.