This Month’s YA Comics and Nonfiction, September 12, 2024

Erika is weird and she’d tell you that herself. She mostly keeps to her own hobbies and interests, including obsessing over pop stars. But when she’s forced to go to a new school, her otherwise keep-to-herself attitude evolves, turning into an obsession with one of the school’s most popular boys, Christian.

Christian is super nice to Erika, despite her being a little off-putting, and he agrees to star in a play she’s written for him. For Erika, this is maybe a chance to hone her creative voice but the longer she’s working with Christian on the play, the more she’s doubting herself and wondering why he’d want to spend so much time with her. But her self-doubt has a way of working itself into and out of her play, just as much as Christian might have a bigger reason behind not only his kindness but his eagerness to star in Erika’s show.

As someone who loves all things Harlem Renaissance and who loves the work of George M. Johnson, I could not be more excited to dive into this visually-focused look at the Black queer artists, performers, and activists from this era. It’s told through 14 essays, and it is meant to be the celebration of queerness these creatives never got to openly celebrate during their lifetimes. I think I’m going to pick this one up in audio first then go back and look at the art because Johnson performs this, and their narration of their memoirs was out of this world good. 

This is a book for the teens and not for their parents. It’s a guide to surviving in difficult family situations, offering guidance and wisdom for young people. Included in the book are techniques for broaching tough conversations, setting boundaries, practice scripts, and more. If you work in a library or classroom, this is the kind of book you’ll want to make sure you have (same if you’re someone in the mental health field working with teens!).

In what is an essential read for everyone, young adult or not, this book explores American democracy and the continued fight for voting rights. This is a book that is historical and contemporary, showing that the fight for equal voting rights is still ongoing. Each chapter shows the ways people have fought back against powers trying to suppress that Constitutional right. Among the heroes highlighted are a Chinese American teenager, A Lakota Sioux Activist, a Mexican American student, Black World War II Veterans, and more. This sounds like a fantastic book to pair with the just-released Shift Happens by J. Albert Mann, as well as the previous Dyson/Favreau YA nonfiction collaboration, Unequal: A Story of America.

You can also catch this big roundup of YA books about civics from an earlier newsletter.

India lived under British colonial rule for almost 90 years, and in 1930, the country and her people were at their breaking point. That’s when Mohandas Gandhi invited a band of his followers to march from his ashram to the Arabian Sea. It was a journey of 24 days and extremely hot. When they arrived, Gandhi picked up a hand of salt and used it to send a message about the salt tax India faced from Britain—but it wasn’t just about the salt. This was the beginning of Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance to colonialism in India and his role in gaining freedom from Britain, even amid brutal attempts to stop him and his followers.

One of the tricky things about YA nonfiction that I always bring up is that it can span a wide age range. YA nonfiction might include books or authors who might otherwise fall under the middle grade umbrella, and Gail Jarrow is one of those authors. This book, which is about the rise of Spiritualism in the early 20th century and the people like Harry Houdini and Rose Mackenberg who worked hard to show the average person what was really going on and how they were being duped, is one of several Jarrow has written on compelling topics with snappy prose.

Whenever I think of the rise of Spiritualism in the US, I think about the era right before the Civil War. Jarrow’s book is about a lesser-known era of this rise in psychics and mediums and how that still has influence today. She dives deep into how those involved in tricking and deceiving the public were brought to task, including by Harry Houdini. If you’re interested in conspirituality, in grifting and hoaxes, as well as the ways people through history have tried to help differentiate real belief from those trying to make a quick buck, you’ll love this one.