A Letter for Bob by Kim Rogers

Ever since the day Mom and Dad brought Bob home from the car dealership, Bob has been a part of Katie's family. Bob has taken them all over, from powwows to vacations to time spent with faraway family. Bob has been there in sad and scary times and for some of the family's most treasured memories. But after many miles, it's time for the family to say goodbye to Bob.

Mascot by Charles Waters

What if a school's mascot is seen as racist, but not by everyone? In this compelling middle-grade novel in verse, two best-selling BIPOC authors tackle this hot-button issue.
In Rye, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC, people work hard, kids go to school, and football is big on Friday nights. An eighth-grade English teacher creates an assignment for her class to debate whether Rye’s mascot should stay or change. Now six middle-schoolers — all with different backgrounds and beliefs — get involved in the contentious issue that already has the suburb turned upside-down with everyone choosing sides and arguments getting ugly. Told from several perspectives, readers see how each student comes to new understandings about identity, tradition, and what it means to stand up for real change.

Rez Ball by Byron Graves

This compelling debut novel by new talent Byron Graves tells the relatable, high-stakes story of a young athlete determined to play like the hero his Ojibwe community needs him to be. These days, Tre Brun is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake Reservation high school team — even though he can't help but be constantly gut-punched with memories of his big brother, Jaxon, who died in an accident. When Jaxon's former teammates on the varsity team offer to take Tre under their wing, he sees this as his shot to represent his Ojibwe reservation all the way to their first state championship. This is the first step toward his dream of playing in the NBA, no matter how much the odds are stacked against him. But stepping into his brother's shoes as a star player means that Tre can't mess up. Not on the court, not at school, and not with his new friend, gamer Khiana, who he is definitely not falling in love with. After decades of reservation teams almost making it, Tre needs to take his team to state. Because if he can live up to Jaxon's dreams, their story isn't over yet.

A Nearby Country Called Love by Salar Abdoh

This is a sweeping, propulsive novel about the families we are born into and the families we make for ourselves, in which two brothers struggle to find their place in Iran on the brink of combusting.

Amid the alleyways of the Zamzam neighborhood of Tehran, a woman lights herself on fire in a desperate act of defiance, setting off a chain reaction of violence and protest. Haunted by the woman's death, Issa is forced to confront the contradictions within his own family as his brother Hashem, a prominent queer artist in Tehran's underground, defies their father, a skilled martial artist bound to traditional notions of honor and masculinity. Issa soon finds himself thrown into a circle of people living on the margins of a society at the brink of combusting, negotiating a razor-like code of conduct that rewards loyalty and encourages aggression and intolerance in equal measure. As the city explodes around him, Issa realizes that it is the little acts of kindness that matter most, the everyday humanity of individuals finding love and doing right by one another.

Vibrant and evocative, intimate and intelligent, A Nearby Country Called Love is both a captivating window into contemporary Iran and a portrait of the parallel fates of a man and his country — a man who acknowledges the sullen and rumbling baggage of history but then chooses to step past its violent inheritance.

While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence by Meg Kissinger

This is a stark examination of the tragic cost of untreated mental illness. Award-winning Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigative reporter Kissinger examines the country's inadequate mental health system through the experiences of her own troubled family.