May’s New Books
Posted by Diversity in YA on Apr 25, 2011 in Blog, Featured, Middle Grade, New Books, Young Adult | 11 commentsEvery month we feature all the new middle grade and young adult releases that include diversity. May 2011 brings us five middle grade and eight young adult novels, including the second book in Rick Riordan’s bestselling Kane Chronicles series starring biracial siblings Carter and Sadie Kane, The Throne of Fire.
By “diversity” we mean: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author. Unfortunately due to time constraints we are unable to include each book’s summary, but we encourage you to click on the book covers to be taken to Indie Bound, where you can read a description of the book.
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Middle Grade
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Young Adult
I think Throne of Fire is YA, not MG.
The publisher categorizes it as middle grate (for ages 9-12).
Summer Jackson, Grown up – Teresa E. Harris
Ellray Jakes is not a Chicken -Sally Warner
Beauty Queens – Libba Bray
Are You Going to Kiss Me Now by Sloane Tanen
And I always find a few new releases I didn’t know about to add to my roundup, so thank you.
Thanks, Doret! Summer Jackson and EllRay Jakes are both early readers/picture books (I can’t decide which), so they don’t fall into our purview. But thanks for telling us about both Beauty Queens and Are You Going to Kiss Me Now! I can’t believe there are two comedic books about girls trapped on desert islands. LOL.
Oh, also: a correction. Turns out Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s Under the Mesquite, which was originally slated for May, has been pushed back to August. So I removed that book from this month’s lineup. It’ll be back in a few!
I’m glad I found this blog! It is so nice to find bloggers who support diversity. I would love to be added to your link list (if you deem me worthy!)hallililburn.blogspot.com
Ooo I hadn’t heard of The Friendship Doll (the story behind the story nor the actual book), sounds cute. although dolls are rather creepy at times…. :p
Out of curiousity, does Are You Going to Kiss Me Now? feature GLBT or poc diversity? Doesn’t really matter but the cover doesn’t hint at either (which I actually like
In Are You Going to Kiss Me Now the best friend is South Asian. After reading the PW review of Beauty Queens, I learned that one of the contestants is trans and another is Black.
And dolls can be creepy. It’s the eyes.
Love this list! I can’t wait to read Divergent. I just read Beauty Queens and it’s AMAZING.
Oh, and I thought of a title you might want to consider: Starcrossed, by Josephine Angelini (5/31, HarperTEEN) features a hilarious, kickass best friend character who happens to be Japanese-American.
How about Uma Krishnaswami’ts The Grand Plan to Fix Everything. I think that’s MG.
Oh! Missed this post in the search. Glad Beauty Queens is up there. Huge fan of it. Interesting to see Divergent even though it’s ethnic character seems to be a very minor one. I do wish it had more Diversity considering the world it built.