Category Archives: Kidlit

The Shadow Bride by Shelby Mahurin

Célie’s life is over. She took her final breath trying to save the people she loves—including the powerful and enigmatic vampire king, Michal, who refused to let her go. When Célie wakes, she cannot walk in the sun; she can hear her friends’ heartbeats and she craves their blood. Michal has cursed her to the eternal existence of a vampire. But Célie isn’t the only dead roaming the earth. Her sister, Filippa, has returned as a shadow of her former self, and other revenants are rising from their graves intent on revenge. The fragile… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction including blood-drinking, dead bodies, body horror & decapitation
  • Sword & spear violence
  • Torture

The Cartoonists Club by Raina Telgemeier & Scott McCloud

Makayla is bursting with ideas but doesn’t know how to make them into a story. Howard loves to draw, but he struggles to come up with ideas and his dad thinks comics are a waste of time. Lynda constantly draws in her sketchbook but keeps focusing on what she feels are mistakes, and Art simply loves being creative and is excited to try something new. They come together to form The Cartoonists Club, where kids can learn about making comics and use their creativity and imagination for their own storytelling adventures!

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a father from illness mentioned (secondary character)

Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson

In the spring of 1776, thirteen-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper wakes to the sound of cannons. It’s the Siege of Boston, the Patriots’ massive drive to push the Loyalists out that turns the city into a chaotic war zone. Elsbeth’s father—her only living relative—has gone missing, leaving her alone and adrift in a broken town while desperately seeking employment to avoid the orphanage. Just when things couldn’t feel worse, the smallpox epidemic sweeps across Boston. Now, Bostonians must fight for their lives against an invisible enemy in addition to the visible one… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & smoking mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Hospital scene with multiple injured & ill secondary characters
  • Knife violence (protagonist is threatened with a knife & cut on their throat)
  • Siege (theme) including cannon fire, building collapse & explosions

Watch Me by Tahereh Mafi

James Anderson had a plan. Or half of one. All that matters is that he managed to do what his older brother, the famous Aaron Warner Anderson, never did: infiltrate Ark Island, the last refuge of The Reestablishment. In the past decade no outsider has breached the stronghold of the authoritarian regime, but James is in. In a prison cell, sure, but as far as James is concerned, a win is a win. It’s been ten years since the fall of The Reestablishment. Ten years since the notorious duo — Juliette Ferrars and… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Graphic murder
  • Blackmail

Sibylline by Melissa de la Cruz

Raven, Atticus, and Dorian have dreamed of attending Sibylline for as long as they can remember. But when the magical ivy league rejects them, the friends’ plans of a future together studying the arcane begin crashing down. Until they decide to steal an education. Getting jobs on campus, they sneak into lectures and swipe forbidden texts, dodging the administration’s watchful eye. In the quiet of night, in the thrill of secrecy, their magic awakens. And so do long-buried attractions that turn their friendship into something more… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dubious consent scenario (including borderline necrophilia)
  • Blood & injury depiction

Dead Happy by Josh Silver

Friends. Welcome to Elmhallow. Seb, along with a select group of participants, finds himself washed up on an isolated island called Elmhallow, under the guardianship of a mysterious couple. As the experiment steps up another level, Seb is forced to team up with Eleanor once more. But where is Finn? And what does HappyHead have in store for them next?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Eugenics
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Drug use recounted
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Murder & torture
  • Physical assault
  • Animal death & cruelty

HappyHead by Josh Silver

We are in an epidemic. An epidemic of unhappiness. Friends, here is the good news: HappyHead has the answer. When Seb is offered a place on a radical retreat designed to solve the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to change how people see him and make his parents proud. But as he finds himself drawn to the enigmatic Finn, Seb starts to question the true nature of the challenges they must undergo. The deeper into the programme the boys get, the more disturbing the assessments become, until it’s clear there may be no escape…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & outing mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use mentioned
  • Overdose mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Animal death

The Couple at No. 9 by Claire Douglas

When pregnant Saffron Cutler moves into 9 Skelton Place with boyfriend Tom and sets about renovations, the last thing she expects is builders uncovering human remains. The remains of two bodies, in fact. Forensics indicate the bodies have been buried at least thirty years. Saffy has nothing to worry about–until the police launch a murder inquiry and ask to speak to the cottage’s former owner. Her grandmother, Rose. Rose is in a nursing home and Alzheimer’s means her memory is increasingly confused. She can’t help the police, but its’ clear she remembers something. As… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grandparent with Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Pregnancy (protagonist)
  • Dead bodies
  • Murder recounted

Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine

Sixteen-year-old Iris itches constantly for the strike of a match. But when she’s caught setting one too many fires, she’s whisked away to London before she can get arrested—at least that’s the story her mother tells. Mounting debt actually drove them out of LA, and it’s greed that brings them to a home Iris doesn’t recognize, where her millionaire father—a man she’s never met—lives. Though not for much longer. Iris’s father is dying, and her mother is determined to claim his life’s fortune, including his priceless art collection. Forced to live with him as part of an exploitive scheme, Iris soon realizes her father is far different… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape (on-page)
  • Pyromania & fire (theme, protagonist)
  • Parent with terminal ilness

Crimson Reign by Amélie Wen Zhao

The Red Tigress, Ana Mikhailov, has returned to Cyrilia, but the country she once called home has fallen under a dark rule. Across the land, the Empress Morganya is tightening her grip on Affinites and non-Affinites alike. Ana dealt a blow to the Empress when she and her allies turned back Morganya’s troops in Bregon, but she couldn’t stop Morganya from gaining possession of the last remaining Bregonian siphon: a dangerous new weapon with the power to steal Affinities. Ana’s forces are scattered, and her tenuous alliance with the Cyrilian rebel group, the Red Cloaks, is becoming… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Torture
  • War themes & battle scenes