On Tuesday, May14th, some library services will be unavailable due to system maintenance. Collections will be searchable, but patron account services will be limited.
Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, poet Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night--and discovered the magic and impact of writing. In this memoir Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards--ordinary...
"Nicu has emigrated from Romania and is struggling to find his place in his new home. Meanwhile, Jess's home life is overshadowed by violence. When Nicu and Jess meet, what starts out as friendship slowly blooms into romance as the two bond over their painful pasts and their hopes and dreams of a better future. But will they be able to save each other, let alone themselves?"--Page 4 of cover.
In Renaissance Italy, Artemisia Gentileschi endures the subjugation of women that allows her father to take credit for her extraordinary paintings, rape and the ensuing trial, and torture, buoyed by her deceased mother's stories of strong women of the Bible.
Rome, 1605: After her mother's death, Artemisia Gentileschi had a stark choice: a life as a nun in a convent or a life grinding pigment for her father's paint. She chose paint. Artemisia became...
Five months after Liv's older brother, Jonah, accidentally shot himself, Liv is the one who takes care of Jonah, and she has not spoken to Jonah's best friend, Clay, whose father owns the gun, even though she knows Clay is suffering, too.
Kiran flees her home in Punjab for a fresh start in Canada after a sexual assault leaves her pregnant with a daughter, Sahaara, but when Sahaara learns the truth about Kiran's past, she feels compelled to seek justice, even if it means challenging a powerful and dangerous man.
A young artist and poet's prospects at a diverse art school are threatened by a racially biased system and a tragic altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood.
Seventeen-year-old Cordelia Koenig intended to breeze through her senior project. While her peers stressed, Cordelia planned to use the same trace-your-roots genealogy idea her older sister used years prior. And getting partnered with her longtime crush, Kodiak Jones, is icing on the cake. All she needs to do is mail in her DNA sample, write about her ancestry results, and get that easy A. But when Cordelia's GeneQuest results reveal that her father...
High school senior Nic, seventeen, tries to salvage her tattered reputation by helping her Ivy League-obsessed classmates with college admission essays and finds herself in the process.
Over the course of one wild and reckless day, two best friends become something more and the depth of their past, the confusion of the present, and the unpredictability of their future is revealed.
On her eighteenth birthday, Hilde leaves her orphanage in 1930s Berlin, and heads out into the world to discover her place in it. But finding a job is hard, at least until she stumbles into Café Lila, a vibrant cabaret full of expressive customers. Rosa, one of the club's waitresses and performers, immediately takes Hilde under her wing. As the café denizens slowly embrace Hilde, and she embraces them in turn, she discovers her voice and her own...
Sarai uses verse to navigate the strain of family traumas and the systemic pressures of toxic masculinity and housing insecurity in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn, questioning the society around her, her Boricua identity, and the life she lives.
A first-generation Puerto Rican eighth grader, Sarai can see with clarity the truth, pain, and beauty of the world both inside and outside her Bushwick apartment. Together with her older sister Estrella she...
"Hannah, a Korean American girl from Queens, New York, and Angel, a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn, fall in love in the spring of 1993. Hannah, who comes from a strict Korean home, meets Angel, a free and beautiful boy, at a quinceañera: Beyond flushed, sweating bodies pushed, pushing like cattle below black & buzzing speakers, under a torn pink streamer loose as a tendril of hair--lush-- his eyes. Darkluminous. Warm. A blush floods her. Hannah sucks...
Moth, who lost her family in an accident, and Sani, who is battling ongoing depression, take a road trip that has them chasing ghosts and searching for ancestors, which helps them move forward in surprising, powerful and unforgettable ways.
Two seventeen-year-old trans boys in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, struggling to understand themselves and their love for each other, are inspired by an online story about trans soldiers who fell in love during the American Revolution.
Bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault. Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published twenty years ago, she has written a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless. In free verse, Anderson shares reflections, rants, and...
A mixed-heritage dancer's coming of age within the African diaspora is shaped by abuse at the hands of a cousin, her mother's descent into addiction, and her father's efforts to create a Nigerian-inspired home in America.