Summer Reading 2020: Murrow Library Summer Picks

Seventeen-year-old Evan Pano works to escape his abusive mother and absentee father by isolating himself in a lonely monastery and drawing. He struggles with his growing feelings for his best friend Henry, who also shows interest in being more than friends; and with Henry's help, Evan begins to believe he deserves more than his mother's abuse and disappointment.

When Ben meets Arthur, Ben's on the heels of breaking up with his boyfriend and not terribly optimistic about the universe's greater plan for his life. Arthur, on the other hand, is hopeful that the universe has the potential to deliver love when he least expects it. When the two happen upon one another at the post office one afternoon, a spark is ignited. But life could get in the way of love even if it seems the universe might have brought them together for a reason.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

When sixteen-year-old Tariq Johnson is shot to death, his community is thrown into an uproar because Tariq was black and the shooter, Jack Franklin, is white, and in the aftermath everyone has something to say, but no two accounts of the events agree.

Sixteen-year-old gay African-American student Moss Jeffries feels stuck in his run-down West Oakland High School. Still mourning the death of his father, shot by police years earlier, a violent incident at his school prompts Moss to channel his simmering anger into community activism against a corrupt authority system.

Dorian Gray, an exceptionally beautiful young man in Victorian England, retains his youthful and innocent appearance over the years while his portrait reflects both his age and evil soul as he pursues a life of decadence and corruption.

"Six teens tell what it is like for them to be members of the transgender community."

Presents, in graphic novel format, Zeina Abirached's war time memories of growing up in Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1980's, when Christians and Muslims were fighting in her neighborhood.

The daughter of a Chinese American family is found dead, turning the family's lives upside down.

After her mother's suicide, grief-stricken Leigh Sanders travels to Taiwan to stay with grandparents she never met, determined to find her mother who she believes turned into a bird.

Alternates interrelated stories about three characters, including a Chinese American trying to participate in popular culture; a Chinese folk hero attempting to be worshipped as a god; and a teenager who is so ashamed by his Chinese cousin's behavior that he changes schools.

Sixteen-year-old Gabi Hernandez chronicles her senior year in high school as she copes with her friend Cindy's pregnancy, her friend Sebastian's coming out, her father's meth habit, her own cravings for food and cute boys, and especially, the poetry that helps forge her identity.

"A story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal told from different points in time, and in separate voices, by artists Jude and her twin brother Noah"

Twelve-year-old Nick loves soccer and hates books, but soon learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams.

"The story of a teenage girl who's literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she's ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more"--Provided by publisher.

A young girl living in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago ponders the advantages and disadvantages of her environment and evaluates her relationships with family and friends.

High school junior Leila's Persian heritage already makes her different from her classmates at Armstead Academy, and if word got out that she liked girls life would be twice as hard, but when a new girl, Saskia, shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would, especially when it looks as if the attraction between them is mutual, so she struggles to sort out her growing feelings by confiding in her old friends.

"Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread--all with the support of judges and politicians. In his no-holds-barred style, Butler, whose scholarship has been featured on 60 Minutes, uses new data to demonstrate that white men commit the majority of violent crime in the United States.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.
As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities.
In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

Told in two voices, sixteen-year-old Audre is forced to move to Minneapolis from Trinidad after being caught with a secret girlfriend, and in Minneapolis, sixteen-year-old Mabel is trying to make sense of her relationships and the nagging illness plaguing her all summer. When the two girls meet, they instantly fall in love, with Mabel taking care of Audre as she navigates high school. Then Mabel is diagnosed with a fatal illness and it's Audre's turn to take care of Mabel.

Contains the personal stories of several transgender people.

"'White Privilege' examines the historical forces that have disadvantaged people of color and discusses how these forces continue to influence the media, education, politics, and other areas of life today. Features include essential facts, a glossary, references, websites, source notes, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards"

Shaun David Hutchinson discusses coming of age in the early 1990s when a lack of positive queer representation forced his own sexuality to become a thing of negativity that left him depressed and angry. He shares passages from his own diary at the time where he reveals the self-harm and abuse he suffered, and the constant messages from a society who told him to "repent" or he would never find love. He goes on to explain how he eventually found happiness and acceptance in the gay community.