My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler

Okoye to the People: A Black Panther Novel

A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson

This Is My America

The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person

Edgar Allan Poe

If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad

From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

The story that I thought

was my life

didn’t start on the day

I was born

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white.

The story that I think

will be my life

starts today

Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?

With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.

Discover Your Child's Next Read

My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

Ibi Zoboi, 2019

Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler

Ibi Zoboi, 2022

Okoye to the People: A Black Panther Novel

Ibi Zoboi, Noa Denmon, Marvel, 2022

A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson

Barbara Dana, 2009

This Is My America

Kim Johnson, 2020

The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person

Frederick Joseph, 2020

Edgar Allan Poe

Thomas Streissguth, 2001

If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad

Ellen Levine, Larry Johnson, 1988