Young Adult Nonfiction

This book demands each of us look in the mirror and get real before we get behind the wheel.

When fragile human bodies have to occupy the same spaces as big, heavy, complex machines that can travel at high speeds, the outcome is inevitable. Some people will die. So why do we identify with the driver in the car rather than the person they have killed? Would you still shrug and chalk it up to random bad luck if that dead person was someone you loved?

Using the comic book format, this book vehemently dispels the notion that traffic accidents are inevitable and/or acceptable on any level, insisting that drivers own their responsibility, and consider the consequences of careless and dangerous behavior. It is part thought experiment, part testimonial, and part indictment of a dysfunctional transit environment that puts convenience for drivers ahead of logic, natural resources, and even ahead of human life. Crash Course questions the decisions that shape all our lives. Why don't roads serve everyone who needs to use them? What makes some people not worth protecting? Where do we start in fixing a broken system that facilitates the use of vehicles as murder weapons in places like Charlottesville, VA?

One of the 2024 Best Graphic Novels for Teens by the American Library Association

Life at home is so unbearable that these kids will risk their lives and face colossal challenges to escape to the United States and find safety. 

This book tells the true stories of five brave teens fleeing their home countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guinea, on their own, traveling through unknown and unfriendly places, and ultimately crossing into the US to find refuge and seek asylum. Based on extensive interviews with teen refugees, lawyers, caseworkers, and activists, Tracy White shines a light on five individual kids from among the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who enter the US each year. In stark black and white illustrations, she helps us understand why some young people would literally risk their lives to seek safety in the US. Each one of them has been backed into a corner where emigration to the US seems like their only hope. 

One of the Best Books for Young Adults of 2020, as chosen by Kirkus Reviews

A provocative collection of narrative essays with a unique point of view.
In this book a first generation American New Yorker uses her bold voice to share life experiences through the lens of race, culture, and spirituality. Exploring topics ranging from night terrors, to schizophrenia, to gentrification, to the author’s personal September 11th story. Illustrated with stunning artwork created in response to the essays, this book is a unique collection.

A celebration of the wacky and wonderful Jewish grandmothers who nurtured the author as she grew from a kid struggling with anxiety and insecurity to a teen finding her own voice.

Danny Noble grew up in an eccentric family with two weird and wonderful Jewish grandmas living right around the corner. One grandma stuffed her full of love and gefilte fish, and the other pinched her cheeks shrieking “shayn punim!” The strange words hung in the air, sounding like ”shame pudding.” Was this some sort of insult? It was never explained that those words meant ”beautiful face” in Yiddish.

This memoir, told in graphic novel format, is a personal celebration of the author’s charming and vibrant family and how they saved her from the machinations of her own brain. It explores resonant adolescent topics of body image, self-determination, insecurity, fear, religious identity, politics, friendship, romantic love, and family relationships. Danny Noble's expressive style brings this delightful cast of characters to life.

“A refreshing conversation that disarms limiting gender beliefs and debunks patriarchal myths, allowing those of us with vaginas to look directly at our bodies with curiosity and love.” —adrienne maree brown, author of the New York Times best seller Pleasure Activism

Half of all people on earth have vaginas. But how much do we know about that part of our body? And why are we too shy to talk about it? 

Lili Sohn thought she knew all she needed to know about her own anatomy, but then she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 29, and she didn’t recognize her own body. So, what is a woman anyway? What if I don’t have breasts or a uterus? You are what you feel, that’s what Sohn discovers in Vagina Love. Come along as she strays from the classical anatomical path created by a patriarchal society, and instead uses vibrant illustrations and disarming humor combined with concrete scientific facts to form an easily accessible and comprehensive guide to the reproductive anatomy of people with vaginas, from periods to menopause, from orgasms to contraceptives.