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Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander and James Patterson

Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander & James Patterson and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile

Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Readers will learn about Cassius’ family and neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky, and how, after a thief stole his bike, Cassius began training as an amateur boxer at age twelve. Before long, he won his first Golden Gloves bout and began his transformation into the unrivaled Muhammad Ali.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Hate crimes
Bullying
Mentions of the lynching of Emmett Till

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

“With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I’m delivering,” announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he’s got mad beats, too, that tell his family’s story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood.

Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story’s heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Death of a parent

Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist

After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally sOn a winter trip home to the island of Domarö, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse at Gåvasten. And Maja disappears. Leaving not even a footprint in the snow.

Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to Domarö to confront his despair. He slowly realises that Maja’s disappearance is not the first inexplicable tragedy to strike the islanders. Nor is everyone telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets. And what is it about the sea? There’s something very bad happening on Domarö. Something that involves the sea itself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual assault
Alcohol abuse
Blood depiction
Disappearance of a child

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi

After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could’ve imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too.

Now, Zélie struggles to unite the maji in an Orïsha where the enemy is just as powerful as they are. But when the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, Zélie must fight to secure Amari’s right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy’s wrath. With civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Depression
Blood & gore depiction
Amputation
Death of a parent recounted
Death of a friend
Torture
Riots
War themes

Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd

Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd

This book meanders gloriously, rather as the river does itself: here are Toad of Toad Hall and Julius Caesar, Henry VIII and Shelley, Turner and Three Men in a Boat. The reader learns about the fishes that swam in the river and the boats that plied on its surface; about floods and tides; hauntings and suicides; sewers, miasmas and malaria; locks, weirs and embankments; bridges, docks and palaces.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicide

A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached

A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached

When Zeina was born, the civil war in Lebanon had been going on for six years, so it’s just a normal part of life for her and her parents and little brother. The city of Beirut is cut in two, separated by bricks and sandbags and threatened by snipers and shelling. East Beirut is for Christians, and West Beirut is for Muslims. When Zeina’s parents don’t return one afternoon from a visit to the other half of the city and the bombing grows ever closer, the neighbors in her apartment house create a world indoors for Zeina and her brother where it’s comfy and safe, where they can share cooking lessons and games and gossip. Together they try to make it through a dramatic day in the one place they hoped they would always be safe–home.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Explosions
War themes

He Said, She Said by Kwame Alexander

He Said, She Said by Kwame Alexander

He says: Omar “T-Diddy” Smalls has got it made—a full football ride to UMiami, hero-worship status at school, and pick of any girl at West Charleston High. She says: Football, shmootball. Here’s what Claudia Clarke cares about: Harvard, the poor, the disenfranchised, the hungry, the staggering teen pregnancy rate, investigative journalism . . . the list goes on. She does not have a minute to waste on Mr. T-Diddy Smalls and his harem of bimbos.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Lesbomisia & lesbomisic slurs
Coming out themes
Revenge pornography
Teen pregnancy
Abortion discussed
Gun violence

Indivisible by Daniel Aleman

Indivisible by Daniel Aleman

Mateo Garcia and his younger sister, Sophie, have been taught to fear one word for as long as they can remember: deportation. Over the past few years, however, the fear that their undocumented immigrant parents could be sent back to Mexico has started to fade. Ma and Pa have been in the United States for so long, they have American-born children, and they’re hard workers and good neighbors. When Mateo returns from school one day to find that his parents have been taken by ICE, he realizes that his family’s worst nightmare has become a reality. With his parents’ fate and his own future hanging in the balance, Mateo must figure out who he is and what he is capable of, even as he’s forced to question what it means to be an American.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia
Racism
Panic attacks
Alcohol consumption
Deportation (theme)

In Her Eyes by Sarah Alderson

In Her Eyes by Sarah Alderson

Ava’s life is the kind other people envy: loving husband; great kids; beautiful house. Until the night that a violent home invasion plunges her world into chaos.

In the aftermath of the attack, Ava needs answers to two questions. Who has targeted her family? And why? Things aren’t adding up. She is starting to suspect that someone knows more than they are letting on. That everything she thought she knew about the people closest to her was a lie.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Cheating
Murder
Gun violence
Home invasion

Hunting Lila by Sarah Alderson

Hunting Lila by Sarah Alderson

17-year-old Lila has two secrets she’s prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just by looking at them. The second is that she’s been in love with her brother’s best friend, Alex, since forever.

After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust—her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organization called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they’ve found them.

In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realizes that she is not alone—there are others out there just like her—people with special powers—and her mother’s killer is one of them…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Death of a mother
Murder
Mugging recounted