National Network for Equitable Library Service

Annaka has always hated her first name. That's why, when her mother packed her up at age seven and moved from Yarmouth to Halifax, she decided she would go by Anna. Now Anna is back in Yarmouth after the death of her beloved Grampy, and sorting through memories from her younger self. She discovers a journal Grampy gifted her years ago; it is filled with snapshots of a happy childhood: sketches of Nan braiding Anna's hair on the porch, stories about road trips Anna and Grampy took in his antique truck, and memories of her best-kept secret, who also happened to be her best friend.

Full of colourful, authentic characters and set in Toronto, Confessions of a Teenage Drag King highlights diversity of race, gender, sexual orientation, and identity. Seventeen-year-old Lauren tries to navigate the tricky waters of teen romance that brings high school to the drag show and back, all while Lauren must keep up their two personas -- Ren, a drag king, and Lauri, a typical student -- and come to terms with their feelings both for mixed-race student Clover and for their own identity as an LGBTQ+ teen.

Avalon Monday doesn't mind telling schoolmates that her mother ran off to California to live with a guy she met on the internet. After all, that's way less embarrassing than the truth. One fresh start and three years later Avalon discovers there are things you can never truly leave behind. When the past collides with the present it exposes her secret and threatens to leave her new life in ruins.

Evoking Beyoncé's Lemonade for a teen audience, these authors who are truly Octavia Butler's heirs have woven worlds to create a stunning narrative that puts Black women and gender-nonconforming individuals at its center. A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters through which you cannot help but see yourself reflected.

August 18, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibited states and the US government from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of sex. This book reveals how the seventy-year-long fight for women's suffrage was hard-won by leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt, and others. It demonstrates how their success led to the civil rights and feminist movements of the mid- and late- twentieth century, as well as today's #MeToo, #YesAllWomen, and Black Lives Matter movements.

Magic doesn't exist in the human world. As far as I know. But when I fling a fireball at a bully, my horrified mom dumps me at Crystal Wing Academy, a place straight out of my favorite fantasy books. They tell me I'm an Outling, a wizard born from non-magical parents. Mom's human. Dad? I don't exactly know who he is... One thing I do know is I'm not an Elite-descendants of the original six families who split from the Fae ages ago. At seventeen, their children and despised Outlings like me attend the Academy to learn to control our power.

Many years ago, the magical kingdom of Avalon was left desolate and encased in ice when the evil Snow Queen waged war on the powerful country. Its former citizens are now refugees in a world mostly devoid of magic-which is why the crown prince and his protectors are stuck in...Arizona. Prince Alexei, the sole survivor of the Avalon royal family, is in hiding in a town so lame that magic doesn't even work there. Few know his secret identity, but his friend Tala is one of them. Tala doesn't mind-she has secrets of her own-namely, that she's a spell breaker, someone who negates magic.

During the tumultuous year of 1968, four teens are drawn together: Ronnie Bingham, who is grieving his brother's death in Vietnam; Milo, Ronnie's bookish best friend; Ramrod, a star athlete who is secretly avoiding the draft; and Hana, the new girl, a half-Japanese badass rock-n-roller whose presence doesn't sit well with their segregated high school. The four outcasts find sanctuary in The Vinyl Underground, a record club where they spin music, joke, debate, and escape the stifling norms of their small southern town. But Ronnie's eighteenth birthday is looming.

In a world where everyone wears masks and superstitions abound, the color of your chrome determines who you are and where you will live. And if you will live. Asheva, a fourteen-year-old Chrome of the Black Nation, will see his world crumble underneath him as events too big for his age will force him to run away from his native city of Axyum. A new journey will take him to lands with different colors and different ways from the Black.

The Seer was trained to see the fate of others, but nothing prepared her for her own destiny... In the last leg of Asheva's journey, new stories and secrets will be revealed. Secrets that will shake the very foundation of the Territories. Secrets that have to do with a young prince, a monarch, and a Seer...