Humanities 8: Critical Literacy

After researching Glenn Burke, the first major league baseball player to come out as gay, sixth-grader Silas Wade slowly comes out to his best friend Zoey, then his coach, with unexpected consequences.

After getting caught lying on a school project about who his grandfather was, fourteen-year-old Joseph Claderno is forced to redo the assignment and learns more about his adopted Italian-American family and Korean heritage than he ever thought possible.

Prince Sebastian is looking for a bride--or rather, his parents are looking for one for him. Sebastian is too busy hiding his secret life from everyone. At night he puts on daring dresses and takes Paris by storm as the fabulous Lady Crystallia--the hottest fashion icon in the world capital of fashion! Sebastian's secret weapon (and best friend) is the brilliant dressmaker Frances--one of only two people who know the truth: sometimes this boy wears dresses. But Frances dreams of greatness, and being someone's secret weapon means being a secret. Forever. How long can Frances defer her dreams to protect a friend?

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania--derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever. In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities--and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponryand etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It's a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society's expectations.

A rare few are singleborn in each generation, and therefore given the right to rule by the gods and goddesses. Bo Trousillion is one of these few, born into the royal line and destined to rule. Though he has been chosen to succeed his great-aunt, Queen Runa, as the leader of the Alskad Empire, Bo has never felt equal to the grand future before him. . . When one twin dies, the other usually follows, unable to face the world without their other half. Those who survive are considered diminished, doomed to succumb to the violent grief that inevitably destroys everyone whose twin has died. Such is the fate of Vi Abernathy, whose twin sister died in infancy. Raised by the anchorites of the temple after her family cast her off, Vi has spent her whole life scheming for a way to escape and live out what's left of her life in peace. As their sixteenth birthdays approach, Bo and Vi face very different futures--one a life of luxury as the heir to the throne, the other years of backbreaking work as a temple servant. But a long-held secret and the fate of the empire are destined to bring them together in a way they never could have imagined.

Tierney James, sixteen, struggles to endure the year in which she and other young women are banished to the wild until, purified, the survivors are allowed to return home and marry.

Felicity Montague must use all her womanly wits and wiles to achieve her dreams of becoming a doctor--even if she has to scheme her way across Europe to do it

In a small Texas town where high school football reigns supreme, Viv, sixteen, starts a feminist revolution using anonymously-written zines

Only women and girls are allowed in the Red Abbey, a haven from abuse and oppression. Maresi arrived at the Abbey four years ago, during the hunger winter, and now lives a happy life under the protection of the Mother.

In the summer of 1965, Sophie's family becomes the first African Americans to move into their upper middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles. When riots erupt in nearby Watts, she learns that life and her own place in it are a lot more complicated than they had seemed.

Sophomores Abby, Brit, Christine, and Sasha are fed up. Hazelton High never has enough tampons. Or pads. Or adults who will listen. Sick of an administration that puts football before female health, the girls confront a world that shrugs--or worse, squirms--at the thought of a menstruation revolution. They band together to make a change. It's no easy task, especially while grappling with everything from crushes to trig to JV track but they have each other's backs. That is, until one of the girls goes rogue, testing the limits of their friendship and pushing the friends to question the power of their own voices.

Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It's the highest honor they could hope for... and the most cruel. But this year, there's a ninth girl... and she's made of fire. Lei is a member of the lowest and most oppressed class in Ikhara. She's forced to go with the royal guards after her golden eyes pique the king's interest. Forced to learn the skills and charm that befit being a king's consort, Lei does the unthinkable-- she falls in love. As an explosive plot threatens the very foundation of Ikhara, Lei must decide just how far she's willing to go for justice and revenge.

"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."

Avoiding relationships to protect her sensitive heart, plus-sized Molly supports her once-cynical twin, Cassie, when the latter has her own bout of lovesickness, a situation that is complicated by sibling dynamics and an unexpected romantic triangle.

Sixteen-year-old Gravity Delgado has been breaking records and competitors since she started boxing with a legendary coach at age twelve, and now will reach the Olympics if her home life and romance do not distract her.

Thirteen-year-old Genesis tries again and again to lighten her black skin, thinking it is the root of her family's troubles, before discovering reasons to love herself as is.

Told from two viewpoints, sixth-graders Karina and Chris use social media to stand up to racism in Houston, Texas, after an attack puts Karina's Indian American grandfather in the hospital.

High school senior Frank Li takes a risk to go after a girl his parents would never approve of, but his plans will leave him wondering if he ever really understood love--or himself--at all.

Raised by her aunt until she is six, Betty, who will later marry Malcolm X, joins her mother and stepfamily in 1940s Detroit, where she learns about the civil rights movement.

When Marvin Johnson's twin brother, Tyler, is shot and killed by a police officer, Marvin must fight injustice to learn the true meaning of freedom.

It is summer in Phoenix, and seventeen-year-old Maximo offers to help a Jordan, a fellow student in high school, with the food truck that belonged to Jordan's deceased father, and which may be the only thing standing between homelessness for Jordan and his mom;

Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he's navigated what it means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican--but never quite feeling Greek or Black enough. As he gets older, Michael's coming out is only the start of learning who he is and where he fits in. When he discovers the Drag Society, he finally finds where he belongs--and the Black Flamingo is born.

In a near-future society that claims to have gotten rid of all monstrous people, a creature emerges from a painting seventeen-year-old Jam's mother created, a hunter from another world seeking a real-life monster.

Sam Waver's older brother, Jason calls his family together to tell them that he's been struggling with a secret for a long time. A secret which quickly threatens to tear them all apart. His parents don't want to know and Sam simply doesn't understand. Because what do you do when your brother says he's not your brother at all? That he thinks he's actually... your sister?

Zenobia July, an excellent coder and hacker, investigates a mystery while wrestling with the challenges of a new school, a new family, and presenting her true gender for the first time.

An autobiographical comic in which the author discusses their path to identifying as nonbinary and asexual, and coming out to family and society.

"Twelve-year-old Ivy Aberdeen's house is destroyed in a tornado, and in the aftermath of the storm, she begins to develop feelings for another girl at school"

Tasuku is starting to feel at home at the drop-in center--just in time for him to help a younger student who also hangs out there. Misora Shuji likes to wear girls' clothing but is unsure about their gender identity. Will Tasuku's guidance offer Shuji some clarity or just make things harder?

Inspired loosely by Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, teenaged Violet is shipped off to Maine after her brother's hospitalization, where she searches for the lost shipwreck that her great-great grandmother survived and for answers about her family's long struggle with mental illness, all while falling in love.

Everyone assumes Jon Wong is a martial arts expert because he's Chinese.

Poe, a homeless young teen, struggles to keep his living situation a secret.

Escaping from a wilderness camp for young offenders, Cameron and Brianna end up in a struggle for survival.

Party in Mazey Pines! Abby can only go if her responsible bestie comes too. But the party is a bust, and the girls bail--then find themselves stuck in a mystical maze.

Cool girl Mia is perfection. And she knows it. She and her two besties rule the school. They declare what's hot and what's not. And the Scabs are definitely not. They are losers. One of the Scabs accidentally cracks Mia's phone. Mia loses her cool. She takes her popularity a step too far and uses her status to bully the girls who ruined her expensive phone. But being queen bee can change in an instant. And it does for Mia when a doctored Instagram post shows her making out with the school dweeb. Mia is floored at how fast she falls. Once the tables are turned, she learns how harsh she's been.