Summer Reading

Select one of the following books.

Ghost  by, Jason ReynoldsRunning. That's all that Ghost (real name Castle Cranshaw) has ever known. But never for a track team. Nope, his game has always been ball. But when Ghost impulsively challenges an elite sprinter to a race—and wins—the Olympic medalist track coach sees he has something: crazy natural talent. Thing is, Ghost has something else: a lot of anger, and a past that he is trying to outrun. Can Ghost harness his raw talent for speed and meld with the team, or will his past finally catch up to him?

Shuri  by, Nic StoneShuri is T’Challa’s younger sister, a martial artist and skilled in science and technology. She is also a princess of Wakanda​. Shuri is called on to find out what is killing the herb that gives the Black Panther his powers. She must leave on a quest to discover the answer.

Select one of the following books.

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam  By, Thien PhamThien's first memory isn't a sight or a sound. It's the sweetness of watermelon and the saltiness of fish. It's the taste of the foods he ate while adrift at sea as his family fled Vietnam.​ After the Pham family arrives at a refugee camp in Thailand, they struggle to survive. Things don't get much easier once they resettle in California. And through each chapter of their lives, food takes on a new meaning. Strawberries come to signify struggle as Thien's mom and dad look for work. Potato chips are an indulgence that bring Thien so much joy that they become a necessity. Behind every cut of steak and inside every croissant lies a story. And for Thien Pham, that story is about a search—for belonging, for happiness, for the American dream.

A Wrinkle in Time  By, Madeleine L'Engle

It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.​ "Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.“ A tesseract (in case the reader doesn't know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Ms. L'Engle's unusual book. A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newberry Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg's father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.

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Fast Pitch  By, Nic Stone

Nic Stone’s coming-of-age novel about Shenice, a softball player who is captain of her team. And she plans to lead them to win the Fastpitch World Series.​ Shenice becomes distracted when her uncle tells the family a secret about her great-grandfather and the lie that ended his career in baseball. Shenice is determined to find out the truth about the family mystery, but will it stop her from pursuing her dream to win the world series?

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You  By, Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

This is NOT a history book.​
This is a book about the here and now.​
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.​
A book about race.

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This is a remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, winner of a National Book Award. It reveals the history of racist ideas in America and inspires hope for an antiracist future. Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative, Jason Reynolds shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.

Select one of the following books.

The Iliad  A Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Gareth Hinds.

Originally by Homer, Hind's illustrations bring the epic tale of the Iliad to life. Perhaps the most well-known war story ever told, The Iliad recounts the history of the Trojan War. It was a war sparked by the abduction of Helen, a war that dragged on for years and led to the destruction of the great city of Troy, along with deaths of hundreds. It includes many of the stories of gods and goddesses of Greek myths. Warriors and heroes flocked to Troy to fight either the Trojans or the Greeks, to win glory for themselves and their families. The Greek gods chose sides, offering protection and help to their favorites. Homer’s poem is one of the great works of Western literature, translated multiple times over the centuries and influencing writers in each of those centuries. 

The Trojan War  By, Olivia Collidge

Olivia Coolidge’s retelling of Homer’s The Iliad, the epic tale of the Trojan War. Coolidge translates the story into modern English.

Select one of the following books.

Maus  by, Art Speigelman

In 1980, Art Spiegelman published this story of his father’s experience of surviving the concentration camp and the ravages of Nazis in Europe during WWII. Spiegelman writes and draws in a cartoon form—the Jews are depicted as mice, and the Nazis as cats—requiring the reader to look anew at a familiar story. Exploring his father’s story of survival while coming to terms with the difficulties of living with their family history, Spiegelman’s work is recognized as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal).

Almost an American Girl  by, Robin Ha

For as long as she can remember, it’s been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up in the 1990s as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn’t always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together. So, when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation—following her mother’s announcement that she’s getting married—Robin is devastated. Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn’t understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cutoff from her friends at home and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn’t fit in with her new stepfamily. And worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to—her mother. Then one day Robin’s mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined.

Life of Pi  by, Yann Martel

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbling on the wild, blue Pacific. The onlys urvivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan... and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days, Pi must find a way to survive, including finding things to eat without himself being eaten. As Pi says, “Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.”

Select one of the following books.

Maus  by, Art Speigelman

In 1980, Art Spiegelman published this story of his father’s experience of surviving the concentration camp and the ravages of Nazis in Europe during WWII. Spiegelman writes and draws in a cartoon form—the Jews are depicted as mice, and the Nazis as cats—requiring the reader to look anew at a familiar story. Exploring his father’s story of survival while coming to terms with the difficulties of living with their family history, Spiegelman’s work is recognized as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal).

Almost an American Girl  by, Robin Ha

For as long as she can remember, it’s been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up in the 1990s as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn’t always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together. So, when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation—following her mother’s announcement that she’s getting married—Robin is devastated. Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn’t understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cutoff from her friends at home and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn’t fit in with her new stepfamily. And worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to—her mother. Then one day Robin’s mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined.

Sunrise Nights  by, Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro

Two young artists have a chance meeting on the last night of summer arts camp in this YA novel in verse and dialogue cowritten by acclaimed authors Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro. ​Jude loves photography, and he’s good at it, too. Between his parents’ divorce and his anxiety, being behind a camera is the only time his mind is quiet.​ Florence is confronting the premature end of her dance career as a degenerative eye disease begins to steal her balance. She’s having a hard time letting go. The two meet at Sunrise Night, their sleepaway art camp’s dusk-to-dawn closing celebration, and decide to take a chance on each other. Their one rule: No contact for a year after the sun has risen. Over the course of three Sunrise Nights, will Florence and Jude find a deeper connection and learn who they are—and who they could be together?

Select one of the following books.

Sunrise Nights  by, Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro

Two young artists have a chance meeting on the last night of summer arts camp in this YA novel in verse and dialogue cowritten by acclaimed authors Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro. ​Jude loves photography, and he’s good at it, too. Between his parents’ divorce and his anxiety, being behind a camera is the only time his mind is quiet.​ Florence is confronting the premature end of her dance career as a degenerative eye disease begins to steal her balance. She’s having a hard time letting go. The two meet at Sunrise Night, their sleepaway art camp’s dusk-to-dawn closing celebration, and decide to take a chance on each other. Their one rule: No contact for a year after the sun has risen. Over the course of three Sunrise Nights, will Florence and Jude find a deeper connection and learn who they are—and who they could be together?

Trashed  by, Derf Backderf

Every week we pile our garbage on the curb and it disappears—like magic! The reality is anything but, of course.​

​Trashed, Derf Backderf’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed, award-winning international bestseller My Friend Dahmer, is an ode to the crap job of all crap jobs—garbage collector. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a soul-sucking gig will relate to this tale. Trashed follows the raucous escapades of three 20-something friends as they clean the streets of pile after pile of stinking garbage, while battling annoying small-town bureaucrats, bizarre townfolk, sweltering summer heat, and frigid winter storms. ​Trashed is fiction but is inspired by Derf’s own experiences as a garbage­man. Interspersed are nonfiction pages that detail what our garbage is and where it goes. The answers will stun you. Hop on the garbage truck named Betty and ride along with Derf on a journey into the vast, secret world of garbage. Trashed is a hilarious, stomach-churning tale that will leave you laughing and wincing in disbelief.​

Out of My Mind  by, Sharon M. Draper

Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory; she can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. ​She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom—the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged because she cannot tell them otherwise. But Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy. And she's determined to let everyone know it—somehow.

Select one of the following books by our 2027 Literary Festival keynote speaker, Jeff Zentner.

The Serpent King  By, Jeff Zentner

Dill has had to wrestle with vipers his whole life—at home, as the only son of a Pentecostal minister who urges him to handle venomous rattlesnakes, and at school, where he faces down bullies who target him for his father’s extreme faith and very public fall from grace. The only antidote to all this venom is his friendship with fellow outcasts Travis and Lydia. But as they are starting their senior year, Dill feels the coils of his future tightening around him. The end of high school will lead to new beginnings for Lydia, whose edgy fashion blog is her ticket out of their rural Tennessee town. And Travis is happy wherever he is thanks to his obsession with the epic book series Bloodfall and the fangirl who may be turning his harsh reality into real-life fantasy. Dill’s only escapes are his music and his secret feelings for Lydia—neither of which he is brave enough to share. Graduation feels more like an ending to Dill than a beginning. But even before then, he must cope with another ending—one that will rock his life to the core.

In the Wild Light  By, Jeff Zentner

Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction, and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his best friend, Delaney, is second nature. He’s been spending his summer mowing lawns while she works at Dairy Queen. But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full rides to an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney, and his love for the grandparents who saved him and the town he would have to leave behind.

Sunrise Nights  by, Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro

Two young artists have a chance meeting on the last night of summer arts camp in this YA novel in verse and dialogue cowritten by acclaimed authors Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro. ​Jude loves photography, and he’s good at it, too. Between his parents’ divorce and his anxiety, being behind a camera is the only time his mind is quiet.​ Florence is confronting the premature end of her dance career as a degenerative eye disease begins to steal her balance. She’s having a hard time letting go. The two meet at Sunrise Night, their sleepaway art camp’s dusk-to-dawn closing celebration, and decide to take a chance on each other. Their one rule: No contact for a year after the sun has risen. Over the course of three Sunrise Nights, will Florence and Jude find a deeper connection and learn who they are—and who they could be together?

Select one of the following books.

The Vanishing Half  by, Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of "passing." Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Chain-Gang All-Stars  by, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Enter a world where, watched by millions, prisoners fight like gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Perfect for fans of The Handmaid's Tale, Squid Game and Watchmen​. Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars, the popular and highly controversial programme inside America's prison system. In packed arenas, watched by millions of live-stream viewers, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom.​ 

The Girl with the Louding Voice  by, Abi Daré

All you have are your words.​ Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education.​ As the only daughter of a broke father, she is a valuable commodity. Removed from school and sold as a third wife to an old man, Adunni's life amounts to this: four goats, two bags of rice, some chickens and a new TV. When unspeakable tragedy swiftly strikes in her new home, she is secretly sold as a domestic servant to a household in the wealthy enclaves of Lagos, where no one will talk about the strange disappearance of her predecessor, Rebecca. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless servant, fourteen-year-old Adunni is repeatedly told that she is nothing. But Adunni won't be silenced. She is determined to find her voice - in a whisper, in song, in broken English - until she can speak for herself, for the girls like Rebecca who came before, and for all the girls who will follow.

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The Blind Assassin  by, Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood takes the art of storytelling to new heights in a dazzling novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist. Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms and clichés of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience.​ It opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

The White Tiger  By, Aravind Adiga

Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life—having nothing but his own wits to help him along.​ Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.​

The Picture of Dorian Gray  By, Oscar Wilde

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.​

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Black Cake  by, Charmaine Wilkerson

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves. Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

Red Clay  by, Charles B. Fancher

In 1943, when a frail old white woman shows up in Red Clay, Alabama, at the home of a Black former slave—on the morning following his funeral—his family hardly knows what to expect after she utters the words “… a lifetime ago, my family owned yours.” Adelaide Parker has a story to tell—one of ambition, betrayal, violence, and redemption—that shaped both the fate of her family and that of the late Felix H. Parker. With a vivid sense of place and a cast of memorable characters, Charles B. Fancherdraws upon his own family history to weave a riveting tale of triumph over adversity, set against a backdrop of societal change and racial animus that reverberates in contemporary America. Through seasons of joy and unspeakable pain, Fancher delivers rich moments as allies become enemies, and enemies—to their great surprise—find new respect for each other.

Monday's Not Coming  by, Tiffany D. Jackson

Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable—more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn’t turn up for the first day of school, Claudia’s worried. When she doesn’t show for the second day, or second week, Claudia knows that something is wrong. Monday wouldn’t just leave her to endure tests and bullies alone. Not after last year’s rumors and not with her grades on the line. Now Claudia needs her best—and only—friend more than ever. But Monday’s mother refuses to give Claudia a straight answer, and Monday’s sister April is even less help. As Claudia digs deeper into her friend’s disappearance, she discovers that no one seems to remember the last time they saw Monday. How can a teenage girl just vanish without anyone noticing that she’s gone?