Category Archives: Kidlit

This tag contains all books tagged as Children’s Literature, including picture books, Middle Grade fiction, Young Adult fiction, and relevant non-fiction.

We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Seventeen-year-old Revna is a factory worker, manufacturing war machines for the Union of the North. When she’s caught using illegal magic, she fears being branded a traitor and imprisoned. Meanwhile, on the front lines, Linné defied her father, a Union general, and disguised herself as a boy to join the army. They’re both offered a reprieve from punishment if they use their magic in a special women’s military flight unit and undertake terrifying, deadly missions under cover of darkness. Revna and Linné can hardly stand to be in the same cockpit, but if they can’t fly together… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Death of a friend
  • Airplane crash
  • Explosion
  • Blackmail
  • Incarceration of a parent
  • War themes

Quiet No More by Nikki Barthelmess

College freshman Victoria Parker is trying to move on with her life after surviving sexual assault by her father and six months in foster care. She’s focusing on the positives–attending college, living on her own, repairing old relationships and making new ones, and getting involved with an abuse survivors activist group on campus. But everything’s thrown into disarray when a strange woman shows up, claiming to be Victoria’s aunt and asking Victoria to lie about what happened to her. With her father’s sentencing in a few months, she’s nervous about having to share the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incestuous sexual assault & rape (father-daughter), and subsequent foster care experiences, recounted
  • Incarceration of a parent

The Quiet You Carry by Nikki Barthelmess

Victoria Parker knew her dad’s behavior toward her was a little unusual, but she convinced herself everything was fine—until she found herself locked out of the house at 3:00 a.m., surrounded by flashing police lights. Now, dumped into a crowded, chaotic foster home, Victoria has to tiptoe around her domineering foster mother, get through senior year at a new school, and somehow salvage her college dreams . . . all while keeping her past hidden. But some secrets won’t stay buried—especially when unwanted memories make Victoria freeze up at random moments and… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incestuous sexual assault (father-daughter), and subsequent foster care experiences
  • Attempted suicide by drinking bleach & self-harm
  • Eating disorder, trauma & nightmares

Rebound by Kwame Alexander

Before Josh and Jordan Bell were streaking up and down the court, their father was learning his own moves. In this prequel, Chuck Bell takes center stage, as readers get a glimpse of his childhood and how he became the jazz music worshipping, basketball star his sons look up to.   

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father from a heart attack & stroke
  • Gun violence

Nothing by Annie Barrows

Nothing by Annie Barrows

Nothing ever happens to Charlotte and Frankie. Their lives are nothing like the lives of the girls they read about in their YA novels. They don’t have flowing red hair and hot romantic encounters never happen—let alone meeting a true soul mate. They just go to high school and live at home with their parents, who are pretty normal, all things considered. But when Charlotte decides to write down everything that happens during their sophomore year to prove that nothing happens and there is no plot or character development in real life, she’s surprised to find that being… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • September 11 attacks mentioned

You Don’t Know Me but I Know You by Rebecca Barrow

There’s a box in the back of Audrey’s closet that she rarely thinks about. Inside is a letter, seventeen years old, from a mother she’s never met, handed to her by the woman she’s called Mom her whole life. Being adopted, though, is just one piece in the puzzle of Audrey’s life—the picture painstakingly put together by Audrey herself, full of all the people and pursuits that make her who she is. But when Audrey realizes that she’s pregnant, she feels something—a tightly sealed box in the closet corners of her heart—crack open, spilling her dormant fears and unanswered questions all over the life she loves… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Adoption (protagonist)
  • Teen pregnancy & abortion (protagonist)

This Is What It Feels Like by Rebecca Barrow

It doesn’t matter what the prize for the Sun City Originals contest is this year. Who cares that’s it’s fifteen grand? Who cares about a gig opening for one of the greatest bands to ever play this town? Not Dia, that’s for sure. Because Dia knows that without a band, she hasn’t got a shot at winning Sun City. Because ever since Hanna’s drinking took over her life, Dia and Jules haven’t been in it. And ever since Hanna left — well, there hasn’t been a band. It used to be the three of them, Dia, Jules, and Hanna, messing around and making music and planning for the future… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Toxic relationship recounted
  • Anxiety & magical thinking discussed
  • Alcoholism recovery with discussions of past alcohol abuse (protagonist)
  • Teen pregnancy & motherhood (protagonist)
  • Death of a boyfriend in a car accident recounted

Reaper of Souls by Rena Barron

After so many years yearning for the gift of magic, Arrah has the one thing she’s always wanted—at a terrible price. Now the last surviving witchdoctor, she’s been left to pick up the shattered pieces of a family that betrayed her, a kingdom in shambles, and long-buried secrets about who she is. Desperate not to repeat her mother’s mistakes, Arrah must return to the tribal lands to search for help from the remnants of her parents’ people. But the Demon King’s shadow looms closer than she thinks. And as Arrah struggles to unravel her connection to him, defeating him begins… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child

Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron

Arrah is a young woman from a long line of the most powerful witch doctors in the land. But she fails at magic, fails to call upon the ancestors and can’t even cast the simplest curse. Shame and disappointment dog her. When strange premonitions befall her family and children in the kingdom begin to disappear, Arrah undergoes the dangerous and scorned process of selling years of her life for magic. This borrowed power reveals a nightmarish betrayal and a danger beyond what she could have imagined. Now Arrah must find a way to master magic, or at least buy it, in order to save herself and everything she holds dear.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Suicide
  • Graphic self-injury for blood magic (on-page)
  • Murder & mass murder of children
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control)
  • Animal sacrifice mentioned (off-page)

The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods by Emily Barr

Arty has always lived in the Clearing, a small settlement in the forests of south India. But their happy life, hidden from the rest of the world, is shattered by a terrible accident. For the first time in her sixteen years, Arty must leave the only place she’s ever known, into the outside world she’s been taught to fear. Her only goal is to get help from a woman called Tania, who used to live in the forest, and the Uncle she knows is out there, somewhere. As she embarks on the terrifying journey, pursued by an enemy she can’t fathom, Arty soon realises that not everyone is to be trusted… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Substance addiction
  • Plague
  • Death of a parent & sibling
  • Fire