How I Discovered Poetry

American Ace

A Wreath for Emmett Till: A Printz Award Winner

A Taste for Red

The House That Wasn't There

Shiverton Hall

Mañanaland

The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox

A Newbery Honor winner collaborates with a new writer in this hip-hop-inspired historical thriller.

Pemba knows she's not crazy. But who is that looking out at her through her mirror's eye? And why does the apparition call her "friend?" Her real friends are back home in Brooklyn, not in the old colonial house in Colchester, Connecticut, where none of this would have happened if Daddy were still alive. But now all Pemba has is Mom and that strange old man, Abraham. Maybe he's the crazy one.

Thank goodness for Pemba's Playlist and the journal she keeps. There are so many answers deep inside that music. And so much is revealed in Pemba's poetry — the hops she writes and those coming through her iPod. Phyllys, an eighteenth-century slave girl, has answers, too. They billow out from her ghostly visits to Pemba, visits that transform both girls in ways neither expected.

In this supernatural tale, the voices of these two characters entwine to put a new spin on a paranormal story of friendship.

Discover Your Child's Next Read

How I Discovered Poetry

Marilyn Nelson, Hadley Hooper, 2014

American Ace

Marilyn Nelson, 2016

A Wreath for Emmett Till: A Printz Award Winner

Marilyn Nelson, Philippe Lardy, 2005

A Taste for Red

Lewis Harris, 2009

The House That Wasn't There

Elana K. Arnold, 2021

Shiverton Hall

Emerald Fennell, 2012

Mañanaland

Pam Munoz Ryan, 2020

The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox

Nigel Quinlan, 2015