Raul loves the guitar and volunteers as a music therapist with his uncle, a pastor, although he holds secret doubts about his family’s faith. It’s while volunteering that Raul meets Danna, who loves lists, poetry and food. In fact, Danna loves food so much that she believes that it can help restore her beloved grandfather, whose memories are beginning to fade from dementia. Together, Raul and Danna go on a journey to find the perfect dishes to heal her grandfather. Along the way, they help each other heal too.
Pura Belpré Honor author Laekan Zea Kemp’s third YA novel, An Appetite for Miracles, is her first written entirely in verse. As she writes from Raul’s and Danna’s perspectives, Kemp develops distinct, realistic voices for each teen. Danna’s pages are expressive and lilting, while Raul’s are cutting and raw. Kemp also incorporates lists, text messages and other ephemera into the novel, and this blend of forms makes it feel like you’re really witnessing two people as they fall in love for the first time.
An Appetite for Miracles explores weighty subjects without dwelling in darkness; instead, it turns toward the light of hope at every opportunity. Danna struggles with loss and self-image, and Raul wrestles with faith and his relationship with a close family member who is incarcerated, but when the two teens meet, their connection sparkles with vulnerability and affection. Kemp perfectly captures the feelings of excitement and relief that come from realizing you’ve finally found someone who truly understands you.
The novel is interested in more than romance, however. Kemp surrounds Raul and Danna with complex, compelling family and friends who bring multiple perspectives on food, faith, healing and love—perspectives that conflict and evolve over the course of the book. As Raul and Danna’s relationship grows, it gives them the strength and insight to make vulnerable, daring and transformative choices that ultimately lead to a well-earned and satisfying ending.
Honesty and hopefulness can often seem like fundamentally opposed concepts. With An Appetite for Miracles, Kemp has created a novel replete with both.
In her first novel written entirely in verse, Laekan Zea Kemp perfectly captures the excitement and relief of finding someone who truly understands you.
Every day, thousands of young American citizens who live in Mexico cross the border into the U.S. to receive their education, from elementary school all the way to college. Their families endure early mornings, arduous commutes, long lines and stressful interactions with border agents, simply to make it to class on time. In his second novel, Brighter Than the Sun, author Daniel Aleman unpacks the consequences of splitting a life in two—and the joys of putting it back together.
For years, Sol Martinez would wake before dawn to travel from Tijuana, Mexico, to attend school in San Diego. Sol desperately wants to embody the shortened form of her name, which means sun, and not her full name, Soledad, which means solitude, but lately it’s been difficult for her to feel anything but isolated. She just moved in with a friend in the U.S. so that she could get a part-time job to help her family, whose business is failing.
Despite the money Sol earns at her warehouse job, and even with glimmers of hope like new friends and a connection with a kind, cute boy, the move seems to cause more problems than it solves. Sol feels cleaved from her family and pushed beyond exhaustion. She must endure racist behavior and her grades slip, threatening her dream of going to college. Increasingly, Sol wonders whether all her hard work and sacrifice will amount to nothing. “Deep down,” she thinks, “I wish I could return to a time when I could just let someone else carry all this weight for me. I wish I could be a child again, and not have to worry about anything.”
Aleman navigates Sol’s difficult experiences with nuance and a gentle touch. He imbues Sol with a steady resilience, even when she begins to feel guilt for enjoying her new life in the U.S. In his skilled hands, Sol bends but never breaks. After his acclaimed debut, Indivisible, Brighter Than the Sun affirms Aleman’s gift for telling the stories of Mexican and Mexican American teens with care and love.
Many young people in situations like Sol’s grapple with false binaries: Are you one of us or one of them? Will you stay or will you leave? Will you pursue your dreams or sacrifice them to help those you love? These impossible questions have no right answers, but Aleman’s sophisticated writing and tender storytelling remind us that there are no wrong answers either. Brighter Than the Sun is a healing and joyous read.
With Brighter Than the Sun, Daniel Aleman affirms his gift for telling stories about Mexican and Mexican American teens with care and love.
Sixteen-year-old Winifred Blight lives in a small house near the gates of one of the oldest cemeteries in Toronto with her father, who runs the crematory. For as long as Winifred can remember, her father has been in mourning for her mother, who died giving birth to her. Winifred, too, has been shaped by this absence, as she knows her mother only through the now-vintage clothes and records left behind.
Desperate to assuage her father’s grief and form her own deeper connection with her mother, Winifred goes to her favorite part of the cemetery one day and calls out to her mother’s spirit—but she summons the ghost of a teenage girl named Phil instead. Soon, Winifred no longer aches with loneliness, nor does she care that her best (and only) friend doesn’t reciprocate her romantic feelings. But Winifred and Phil’s intimate connection is threatened when a ghost tour company wants to exploit the cemetery and Winifred’s con-artist cousin risks exposing Phil’s existence. To protect Phil, Winifred will have to sacrifice the only home she’s ever known.
Acclaimed author Cherie Dimaline’s Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a lyrical coming-of-age ghost story that’s more interested in capturing emotion than explaining the nuts and bolts of its supernatural elements. Phil is a specter who appears when Winifred thinks of her, but her body is, at times, corporeal; in one scene, Winifred braids Phil’s long hair. The novel instead focuses on how the bond between the girls lessens the grief that roots them both in place as Phil slowly reveals to Winifred what happened in the months leading up to her death.
Dimaline is a registered member of the Métis Nation of Ontario, and Winifred and Phil’s Indigenous identities play crucial roles in the novel. Winifred’s mother and great aunt Roberta were Métis, and Winifred infers that Phil is Ojibwe. The stories Phil tells about her life as a queer Indigenous girl growing up in the 1980s are often harrowing, as she recounts moving from the reservation to the city to escape a miserable situation at school only to find herself in even worse circumstances that ultimately lead to tragedy.
Wrenching and poignant, Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a haunting tale about what it means to search for home—not the place, but the feeling you carry with you.
This lyrical ghost story portrays how a bond between two girls—one living, one not—transforms the grief that roots them both in place.
Hidden in the woods beyond the Idle River lies the village of Greymist Fair. Traveling merchants who follow the road to the village discover that their watches stop and their sense of distance becomes distorted, while those who try to mark paths through the surrounding forest find their markers obliterated. Wolves and wargs (and possibly worse) stalk the shadows between the trees, and village children are warned never to stray from the lantern-lit path lest they be stolen away, leaving only their empty boots behind.
In Greymist Fair, seven intersecting stories move back and forth in time. The tailor’s daughter seeks the witch in the woods and makes a shattering discovery. A prince grants magical wishes to those who correctly answer his riddles. A ghost’s revelation exposes a terrible secret. An itinerant doctor discovers the nature of home. Death, alone on the road, longs for companionship. A beautiful noble yearns for a normal life. And a Yuletide celebration takes on particular significance as the ordinary and the extraordinary collide.
Readers of traditional fairy tales have certain expectations: Animals will talk, wishes will go awry, male and female characters will pair up and everyday people will vanquish evil. In Greymist Fair, author Francesca Zappia nods at such expectations before subverting and exceeding them. She freely remixes her source materials, which include familiar Brothers Grimm tales such as “Hansel and Gretel” and more obscure stories like “The Fisherman and His Wife,” “The Riddle” and “Godfather Death.” The book’s nonlinear structure allows effects to be introduced long before their causes, creating revelatory moments as dots connect and wider pictures emerge. Meanwhile, platonic and familial relationships, rather than romantic connections, provide the most compelling sources of love.
Much of the action is driven by the village teenagers’ emerging senses of selfhood and power, and Zappia frequently places the heartwarming and the frightening side by side, enabling them to reflect and amplify each other. The strongest element in these stories are their redemptive arcs, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes sorrowful but always deeply satisfying. In Greymist Fair, even when darkness threatens, second chances for lasting harmony are still possible if we make peace with our worst fears.
In the seven intersecting stories that compose Greymist Fair, author Francesca Zappia nods at fairy-tale conventions before subverting and exceeding them.
Lucha Moya is a fighter. Born and raised in Robado, on a lifeless strip of land known to its inhabitants as the Scar, Lucha has grappled her way through life alongside her community. Robado is surrounded on all sides by a strange and monstrous forest, and grotesque, skeletal creatures stalk along its edges, leaving the people who live there isolated from the rest of an unknown world.
Haunted by legends of a demonic presence known as El Sediento, Robado lives under the violent thumb of Los Ricos, who control access to a powerful drug called olvida, which makes users forget their troubles. Lucha’s mother has been losing increasing amounts of time to the drug while Lucha struggles to support herself and her younger sister, Lis.
When Lucha’s mother fails to return from her latest bender, Lucha and Lis are evicted from their home and their precarious existence becomes even more fraught. Amid this desperate situation, Lucha discovers a power she didn’t know she possessed and strikes a dark bargain that will change the path of Robado—and the wider world—forever.
Acclaimed YA and middle grade author Tehlor Kay Mejia’s Lucha of the Night Forest is a powerful allegorical fantasy novel. Embedded in its story of magic and sisterhood are important questions about addiction, justice and the price of activism. The Scar mirrors real neighborhoods where infrastructure is failing, food deserts are growing and crime is too often the only way to survive. In a place where nothing is nurtured, how can anything grow? Robadan tales of El Sediento and a long-lost forest goddess echo these contradictions, as one figure brings rot and decay while the other promises verdant life. Lucha, too, learns harsh truths about who, in her world, hopes for change and who must bear the brunt of the pain and sacrifice required to make that change happen.
Lucha of the Night Forest is a multilayered novel that will appeal to fantasy readers and young activists alike. Seasoned genre fans will enjoy its fast-paced storytelling as well as its fresh take on nature-based magic within a vivid setting filled with glowing mushrooms and otherworldly forests. A sweet queer romance adds another appealing level to the narrative. But it’s Mejia’s clever and compelling incorporation of familiar social justice themes that make this such an impactful, enduring read.
This powerful allegorical fantasy embeds questions of justice and the price of activism within a fresh, fast-paced story of magic and sisterhood.
Sixteen-year-old Samantha “Sam” Kang has long felt like the odd one out in her family. Her older brother, Julian, is a “literal genius” studying science at Yale, while Sam is a B-minus student who’s more into podcasts and movies than college application-friendly activities like clubs or sports. Her mom, Priscilla, is a lawyer, and her father is a doctor; Sam observes that together, they look “like an attractive, wealthy Asian couple in a BMW commercial. The American Dream realized.” What that dream consists of, exactly, is at the heart of Sam’s ongoing conflict with her mother in Maurene Goo’s inventive, funny and moving Throwback.
Goo (I Believe in a Thing Called Love) does an excellent job conveying the acute pain of clashing with someone you love fiercely—and who makes you feel profoundly misunderstood. When Halmoni, Sam’s beloved grandmother, has a heart attack, the differences between Sam’s relationships with her mother and grandmother are thrown into even sharper relief, culminating in an argument between Sam and her mom that Sam fears they’ll never recover from. Will Sam and her mother end up like Priscilla and Halmoni, distant and polite but with no affection in sight?
As if all that isn’t stressful enough, Sam winds up stranded at the mall, so she downloads a rideshare app called Throwback Rides and steps out of the driver’s beat-up old hatchback . . . and into 1995. The students at her high school are all wearing supremely baggy jeans; there are no cellphones to be seen; and everyone’s backpacks dangle from their shoulders by a single strap. Oh, and the gorgeous, popular, mean-girl cheerleader downplaying her Korean heritage as she campaigns for homecoming queen? Yep, that’s Priscilla at age 17.
Like Marty McFly before her, Sam quickly realizes that she’d better figure out what her goal is here, and fast, because her cellphone is the only way to hail a ride back to the present and its battery is rapidly draining. In the whirlwind week before homecoming, Sam works to befriend Priscilla and help her get elected queen; contends with racism, sexism and heteronormativity from students and teachers alike; and struggles to hide her true identity even as she gains precious insight into Priscilla’s relationship with Halmoni.
Goo’s characters are wonderfully drawn, and she explores the challenges and joys of intergenerational relationships with empathy and heart. Readers will root for Sam as she achieves new understandings of her family and herself. By story’s end, they’ll also resoundingly agree with Sam’s declaration that, no matter the decade, “Mariah [Carey] heals all wounds.”
This inventive and funny Back to the Future-esque tale explores the challenges and joys of intergenerational relationships with empathy and heart.
Maude hasn’t spoken to Odette, her childhood best friend, in four years—ever since Maude’s magic “dried up.” But when Odette disappears and everyone assumes that she’s dead, Maude feels a mysterious pull toward Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant that no one seems to be able to remember. As Maude enters Sicklehurst in search of Odette, she draws strength from the stories they used to share, tales of princes and monsters with happy endings. But the further Maude ventures into Sicklehurst, the more she discovers that her mysterious past may finally be catching up to her.
In A Hunger of Thorns, Australian author Lili Wilkinson creates a lush coming-of-age story that upends narrative expectations about witches and fairy tales. The world of the novel feels fantastical yet familiar: Magic exists, but it’s regulated by the government and controlled by corporations. Witches go to school, but the spells they learn are superficial and commoditized—enchanted laundry detergent, charms to find lost keys. Maude has grown up in this world, but as she uncovers truths about her family, their home and magic itself, she brings readers along through the twists and turns of a forgotten past.
Wilkinson’s prose is full of sensuality, shifting between the gorgeous and the grotesque. Maude’s fluctuating feelings have a visceral quality; her obsession with Odette is all-consuming, and the loss of her magical powers is tangibly painful. The physical body itself is also a central concern. In one scene, Maude observes that the presence of magic feels like “a heavy pull in my abdomen, like I’m getting my period,” and the performance of magic can require all kinds of bodily fluids.
A Hunger of Thorns isn’t a book for readers with weak stomachs or faint hearts, but it’s not devoid of hopefulness, either. Maude struggles with loss and loneliness but also finds a way to move beyond her past and appreciate her present. As she realizes how she’s allowed her search for Odette to drive her—and cause her to harm others—she also takes responsibility for her actions and holds others responsible for theirs. The narrative itself challenges Maude’s view of herself, demonstrating the power in genuine, honest self-reflection.
Gritty, bold and unflinching, A Hunger of Thorns turns a mirror on the darkest parts of growing up and asks readers to look closely at what’s reflected. Only by facing the truth, Wilkinson assures us, can we learn, heal and grow. It’s an ideal read for anyone in search of a surprising and original witchy fantasy.
Gritty, visceral and unflinching, A Hunger of Thorns is a lush coming-of-age story that upends narrative expectations about witches and fairy tales.
Seventeen-year-old Alonda is a straight-A student who never gets in trouble and does whatever her strict, overprotective guardian, Teresa, asks of her—all while keeping her dreams locked up tight inside. But when the sweltering June heat has her fleeing to the window of her Coney Island apartment in search of a cool breeze, Alonda spots something that sends those dreams tumbling out into the open: four teens practicing professional wrestling on the playground below.
It takes Alonda a week to work up the nerve, but she introduces herself to the ragtag group, and soon she’s joining them. In between her chores and her new job at a nearby amusement park, Alonda cuts promos (the speeches that establish characters and the personal stakes of matches), perfects hip tosses and hurricaranas and forms deep friendships with King, Lexi, Spider and Pretzel. But figuring out her own wrestling persona, the titular Alondra, is harder, because Alonda isn’t sure what she wants. Is it to wrestle in front of a crowd of adoring fans? Is it doing what her mother, who died when Alonda was 7, would have wanted? Is it to pursue her attraction to King, the handsome self-proclaimed antihero of their group, or her feelings for Lexi, the artistic in-ring superhero?
Award-winning playwright Gina Femia’s first YA novel, Alondra, is a fast-paced, queer homage to summer in Brooklyn. Alonda and her band of hardworking misfit wrestlers are well-crafted and grounded, and Femia captures their close connections as she places them in dramatic yet familiar situations: making art, fighting with parents and caregivers, deciding what college to attend and exploring who they could be if they allowed themselves to be anything. Readers will yell, cringe and cheer as Alonda finds her bisexuality and her voice, as her friends find their footing as a troupe and as her guardian, Teresa, finds self-confidence after years of shouldering her burdens alone.
Alondra is set in 2015, which prevents Femia from referencing the numerous female professional wrestlers who achieved widespread popularity after shifts in the industry, beginning in 2016, resulted in greater support of female talent. Instead, readers will find mentions of figures such as John Cena, Eddie Guerrero and AJ Lee, which may make the novel feel dated for teens deep in the wrestling fandom. However, Alonda’s love for wrestling’s technical aspects, from the way her friends edit their video packages to the bruises she earns while squaring up with Lexi, shines through and acts as the perfect backdrop for her internal struggles with identity.
Like the best professional wrestling performances, Alondra is a heartfelt story that provides a realistic yet blissful experience.
In this heartfelt novel, Alonda joins a group of teens practicing professional wrestling and confronts questions of identity and desire in and out of the ring.
Nigeria Jones is a teenager. She’s a warrior princess. She’s a sister. She’s a stand-in mother. She’s a queen. She’s a student. Within the Movement, the Black separatist utopian community founded in West Philadelphia by her parents, Kofi Sankofa and Natalie Pierre, Nigeria is all of these things and none of them. Alongside the Movement’s members, whom Nigeria knows as aunties and uncles, sisters and brothers, Nigeria has spent her life being home-schooled and learning about Blackness—its traditions, its histories, its struggles, its triumphs. The Movement isolates itself from the world, divesting from white supremacist systems, all in service of a vision for the future in which Black communities can thrive, independent from oppressive forces.
But Nigeria’s mother has left, disappeared, and without the woman under whose care and attention the Movement thrived, Nigeria is floundering and filled with doubt. She has internalized her father’s teachings, from his loving, community-oriented leadership to his ire toward all systems, including education, corporate capitalism and health care. Then Nigeria discovers that her mother secured a spot for her at a wealthy private school, and she begins attending classes there. As Nigeria embarks on a journey of self-discovery, she also learns about the world outside the Movement and meets other teens, some Black, some not. As Nigeria moves further from everything she’s ever known, she’s forced to ask: Who is Nigeria Jones?
The best word to describe acclaimed author Ibi Zoboi’s Nigeria Jones is heavy. The novel depicts the horrors of generational trauma while also placing the personal traumas of one girl, one family and one community within a national and even global context. All the while, Zoboi (Pride, Punching the Air) strikes a delicate balance with the story’s political topics, never moralizing or seeking to provide answers but also not leaving things so open-ended as to appear ambivalent. Through Nigeria and her peers’ interactions with the complex, nuanced subjects they encounter, Zoboi offers a flawless depiction of Generation Z’s activist relationship to such topics.
Nigeria’s upbringing and experiences are unique, and her inner world, her thoughts and reactions, feels exceptionally true to life. Zoboi tells a singular story of a singular girl, and Nigeria Jones opens wide and welcoming arms.
In this story of a girl who questions her parents' Black separatist utopian community, author Ibi Zoboi strikes a delicate balance with weighty themes.
Five teenagers, spread across two rival countries, each have a story to tell in The Isles of the Gods, the first book in a fantasy duology from Australian author Amie Kaufman.
Selly is an Alinorish sailor whose magician’s marks never matured, leaving her without the ability to communicate with elemental spirits. Alinor’s Prince Leander knows that he should have fulfilled his royal obligation—sailing to the Isles of the Gods to make an important sacrifice—a year ago, but he delayed making the journey for reasons of his own. In neighboring Mellacea, Laskia will do anything to convince her older sister, Ruby, the head of a bustling but illicit business empire, that she’s not a little kid anymore. And while Jude needs to stay in Ruby’s favor to keep his sick mother alive, Keegan is desperate for the chance to study at the world-renowned Bibliotek. All the while, Alinor’s goddess, Barrica the Sentinel, keeps watch over her twin brother, Macean the Gambler, god of Mellacea, for if he wakes, war between their lands is all but inevitable.
Fantasy readers who favor fast-paced, intricate plots will find much to love here, including a multitude of characters and settings, explorations of the intersections between religion and politics, a proliferation of scheming and counter-scheming, a healthy dose of moral ambiguity and plenty of action, including some intense moments of violence. A budding romance between initial enemies leads to zesty sparks, and unexpected friendships form among teens with contrasting social identities (the popular party kid, the nerdy bookworm).
Kaufman builds her world gradually, trusting readers to put its myriad parts together as her characters’ paths intersect. Automobiles exist side by side with playful water spirits, gods walk among and communicate directly with mortals, and nightclubs, marketplaces and ship’s decks can all be places where the extraordinary can happen.
Readers left bereft by the novel’s ending and in dire need of its planned sequel are advised to reread the prologue, set 501 years before the story’s main events. In just eight pages, Kaufman offers up a vivid warning about the most dreaded outcome of her novel’s human hostilities: a war between the gods.
Fantasy readers who favor fast-paced, intricate plots will find much to love in Amie Kaufman’s The Isles of the Gods, the first book in a planned duology.
Angeline Boulley burst onto the YA scene with her bestselling, Michael L. Printz Award-winning debut, Firekeeper’s Daughter. Now the author returns to Sugar Island, Michigan, with Warrior Girl Unearthed. In this riveting companion thriller, Boulley places the niece of the protagonist of Firekeeper’s Daughter at center stage.
Sixteen-year-old Perry Firekeeper-Birch has really been looking forward to spending her “Summer of Slack” fishing, reading and generally taking it easy. But then she accidentally crashes the Jeep she shares with her sister, Pauline (aka “the nice twin”), and Auntie Daunis insists that Perry join Pauline at her summer internship to earn the funds to pay for repairs.
When Perry meets her supervisor, Cooper Turtle, at the tribal museum, she’s unsure what to expect and still disappointed about having lost her leisurely summer. Her reluctance about the job transforms into purpose when Cooper brings Perry to a meeting at Mackinac State College, where she encounters two life-changing acronyms: MACPRA, the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance, and NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a federal law that requires museums and educational institutions to return human remains and cultural artifacts back to Indigenous groups.
Perry is appalled to learn that, due to legal loopholes, the college has not returned the sacred items in its collection to the tribes, treating them as objects to hoard rather than honor. Even worse, the college’s collection of ancestral remains are treated the same way, including a set of bones stashed in a metal box and shoved onto an office shelf: the titular Warrior Girl.
With her own inner warrior girl awakened, Perry marshals support from a host of winning characters, including her sister, their fellow interns, the irrepressible Granny June and the handsome new kid in town, to help her uncover the truth about the origins of the items and remains. She wants to return them to their tribe and expose those who have surely committed thievery and desecration.
Heightened tension, dynamic action scenes, a complicated heist and plenty of revelations ensue as Perry and her cohort contend with generational trauma, delicate political dynamics and even murder. Through it all, Boulley, an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, urges readers to consider: Who owns the past?
Warrior Girl Unearthed is an edifying and deeply moving read that reminds us, in the words of Cooper Turtle, “Everything is connected, Little Sister. The past. The future. The beginning and ending. Answers are there even before the question. You’re supposed to go back to where you started. And if you step off the path, you better keep your eyes wide open.”
Firekeeper’s Daughter author Angeline Boulley returns to Sugar Island with a thriller that urges readers to consider: Who owns the past?
It’s the first day of senior year, and Euphemia “Effie” Galanos already wishes that high school were over. Effie has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, and her last year of high school is not off to a good start. The accessible door openers at the building’s entrance don’t work, an obnoxious couple keeps using one of the hallway ramps as a makeout spot (“Swapping Spit Slope”) and the school’s incompetent student accommodations coordinator fails to log part of Effie’s accommodation plan, which results in her locker being emptied by a janitor and all her belongings being sent to the main office.
As the school year gets underway, Effie continues to struggle to speak up to the principal about her concerns with on-campus accessibility problems that should have been resolved a long time ago. Repeating her needs and bringing attention to what makes her different—over and over again—is embarrassing and exhausting. It feels like her friends and classmates get to do so much without even realizing it, and Effie longs for her own taste of freedom. She’s “ready to move on . . . to something bigger. Something that gives [her] that this is it feeling.” She thinks that Prospect University, a beautiful and prestigious college in New York City, might be the answer, but her mother isn’t sure that Effie is ready for such a big change.
In Where You See Yourself, debut author Claire Forrest creates a moving portrait of a teenager finding her voice and developing the courage to advocate for herself and others. Like Effie, Forrest has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, and she renders Effie in such sharp focus that readers will instantly connect with her experiences and dreams for the future.
The novel’s frank depiction of a world that dismisses accessibility solutions as “too complicated” or “too much to ask for” and treats disabled people as “obstacles” may be eye-opening for some readers, and Forrest approaches such injustices with energy, determination and a spirit of hopefulness. She doesn’t skimp on fun, either, filling Effie’s final days of high school with parties, promposals and a sweet friends-to-lovers romance. Where You See Yourself is an effervescent, emotional story with all the makings of an instant YA classic.
This debut novel follows a disabled teen as she develops the courage to advocate for herself and others. It has all the makings of an instant YA classic.
Claire Forrest’s first YA novel, the effervescent and emotional Where You See Yourself, follows its protagonist, Effie Galanos, through her final year of high school. As a wheelchair user, Effie has been treated as an “obstacle” by her school, and she hopes that things will be different at a prestigious, big-city college. To get there, she’ll have to find the courage to speak up about what she wants—and what she needs. In this essay, Forrest recalls her own commencement ceremony and offers some advice for this year’s graduating seniors.
The year is 2009, and I sit wearing a bright purple polyester gown at my high school graduation. One of my classmates delivers the commencement speech, something about how grades aren’t the be-all and end-all of life. I try to take it in, because this is the moment, right? Everything I feel, every decision I make from here on out, feels vitally important.
When I remember my high school graduation now, I think about how the district chose a venue that wasn’t accessible to everyone. One of my classmates and I had been told that sitting in the cushioned auditorium seats, with our wheelchairs in the aisle next to us, would be a fire hazard. Instead, we were assigned seating across the room, away from our peers, and we weren’t allowed to march in procession with our class. We decided to go against what we had been told and, choosing to miss the ceremony’s opening remarks, rolled through back hallways and down the aisle like we should have been allowed. There was no pomp and circumstance for us.
At the time, though? I pushed that down. This was my graduation day, and just once, I wanted to be “normal.” It took many years of unlearning what society taught me to realize that being disabled is normal. The long process of learning that I can hold “disabled” and “normal” in both hands is what led me to write Where You See Yourself.
And so, with all due respect to our class speaker, although I agree that grades don’t define you, I wish that day that I could have told myself some other things instead.
Adults all around me said that college would be “the best years of your life.” I would have told myself that there would be no singular best years of my life. Every year has had its own mix of joy, heartbreak, challenges, memories and uncertainty. I would tell myself to make the most of my next four years, but that they won’t define me.
“The long process of learning that I can hold ‘disabled’ and ‘normal’ in both hands is what led me to write ‘Where You See Yourself.'”
Instead of focusing on my fear of moving away from dear friends, I’d tell myself to focus on the fact that I hadn’t yet met everyone who was going to love me. I will never be done making friends. There are so many inside jokes yet to be made, so many hourslong phone calls to be had.
I wish I’d known that those friendships would ebb and flow. That I would learn how to bless and release those relationships that have particular seasons that run their course, and that’s OK. I would advise myself to see things not just from my side but from my friends’ viewpoints as well. Like Effie and Harper, the best friends in my book, I would need to learn how to humble myself and apologize to those I love dearly when I was in the wrong. I also would need to learn how to express my needs so that those friendships could continue to grow and to change.
When it comes to being disabled—yeah, that thing I was pushing deep down in my pursuit of “normal”—I would have told myself that the people who love me would do the wrong thing sometimes, or wouldn’t speak up when I wished they had. There would be times I’d wish I would’ve spoken up for myself, too. Advocacy of any kind involves making mistakes. I would cringe. I would learn. I would do better next time.
I wish I’d known that a college professor would say the word ableism in class one day, and it would be the first time I’d ever hear of it. Later, when I’d Google it in my dorm room, it would crack my heart open in a way nothing ever had before. Learning about that would be the key to unlearning so many things in my life.
I wish someone had told me that being in a wheelchair doesn’t make me undateable. I wish someone told me that being dateable doesn’t define my worth.
I would tell myself that I was not, in fact, starting on the singular path to the rest of my life. I would always be pivoting, and for as many times as I’d start over—in my jobs, my relationships, the stories I’ve left unfinished—none of those new starts would wipe my slate clean. I would never be starting from scratch. I would learn as much from every wrong turn as I would from every right one.
I would tell myself that as much as I want to leave high school in the rearview mirror, my memories and feelings about that time would have a way of popping up again, much like how the songs from Taylor Swift’s Fearless album that I blasted through my headphones as a teen would get remastered and remixed when I was in my 30s. That I would start to think about how what we were told about fire hazards at graduation, and all the other inaccessibility issues throughout my schooling, really was just plain wrong. I would wish I knew then what I know now, and to address those complicated feelings, I would start to write a book. I might have been done with high school, but high school wouldn’t be done with me.
I wish I could have told myself all of this that day as I sat in the aisle in that hideous purple gown. I’m also glad I knew none of it.
So to readers embarking on their life after high school, I’ll say this: When it comes down to it, all you can do to figure out the rest of your life is to start. Your future is before you—everything, all of it. Go write your first page. But do so with the comfort of knowing you can always, always revise it.
Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
A decade and a half in the making, The Antidote brings together undertold history of 1930s America and the fantastical vision that made Swamplandia! so remarkable.
