Indian No More

Sure Signs of Crazy

The Chosen Prince

Merci Suárez Can't Dance

Zayd: The Rose that Bloomed in Captivity (Leading Companions of the Prophet)

Tangled

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June

Jesus, Superpowers, and the Bully: Adventures from the Throne Room

Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrus’s bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.

Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she’s going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor’s daughter. Audre’s grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won’t lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. “America have dey spirits too, believe me,” she tells Audre.

Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels–about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that’s plagued her all summer. Mabel’s reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.

Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly it’s Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.

Junauda Petrus’s debut brilliantly captures the distinctly lush and lyrical voices of Mabel and Audre as they conjure a love that is stronger than hatred, prison, and death and as vast as the blackness between the stars.

Discover Your Child's Next Read

Indian No More

Charlene Willing Mcmanis, Traci Sorell, 2019

Sure Signs of Crazy

Karen Harrington, 2013

The Chosen Prince

Diane Stanley, 2015

Merci Suárez Can't Dance

Meg Medina, 2021

Zayd: The Rose that Bloomed in Captivity (Leading Companions of the Prophet)

Resit Haylamaz, 2011

Tangled

Walt Disney Company, Lisa Ann Marsoli, 2015

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, 2009

Jesus, Superpowers, and the Bully: Adventures from the Throne Room

T M Barton, 2023