Burnaby Public Library | We Recommend (teens)

This Place: 150 Years Retold

Foreword by Alicia Elliott

Explore the past 150 years through the eyes of Indigenous creators in this groundbreaking graphic novel anthology. Beautifully illustrated, these stories are an emotional and enlightening journey through Indigenous wonderworks, psychic battles, and time travel. See how Indigenous peoples have survived a post-apocalyptic world since Contact.

A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts A Collection of Deliciously Frightening Tales

Ying Chang Compestine

According to Chinese tradition, those who die hungry or unjustly come back to haunt the living. Some are appeased with food. But not all ghosts are successfully mollified. In this chilling collection of stories,Ying Chang Compestine takes readers on a journey through time and across different parts of China. From the building of the GreatWall in 200 BCE to themodern day of iPods, hungry ghosts continue to torment those who wronged them.

At once a window into the history and culture of China and an ode to Chinese cuisine, this assortment of frightening tales complete with historical notes and delectable recipes will both scare and satiate!

Surviving the City

Tasha Spillett

Miikwan and Dez are best friends. Miikwan's Anishinaabe; Dez is Inninew. Together, the teens navigate the challenges of growing up in an urban landscape - they're so close, they even completed their Berry Fast together. However, when Dez's grandmother becomes too sick, Dez is told she can't stay with her anymore. With the threat of a group home looming, Dez can't bring herself to go home and disappears. Miikwan is devastated, and the wound of her missing mother resurfaces. Will Dez's community find her before it's too late? Will Miikwan be able to cope if they don't? Colonialism and the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People are explored in beautiful illustrations.

Happiness volume 1

Shūzō Oshimi

Nothing interesting in happening in Makoto Ozaki's first year of high school. HIs life is a series of quiet humiliations: low-grade bullies, unreliable friends, and the constant frustration of his adolescent lust. But one night, a pale, thin girl knocks him to the ground in an alley and offers him a choice.

Now everything is different. Daylight is searingly bright. Food tastes awful. And worse than anything is the terrible, consuming thirst. The tiny shames of his old life have been replaced by two towering horrors: the truth of what will slake his awful craving, and high school itself.

The Girl From the Other Side Vol. 1, Siúil, A Rún

Nagabe

In a land far away, there were two kingdoms: the Outside, where twisted beasts roamed that could curse with a touch, and the Inside, where humans lived in safety and peace. The girl and the beast should never have met, but when they do, a quiet fairytale begins.

Rendez-vous in Phoenix

Tony Sandoval

Tony Sandoval was born and raised in northwestern Mexico, where the temptation to cross the border in the US ultimately becomes a matter of the heart. Drawn by the need to reunited with his American girlfriend and faced with an insurmountable visa process standing in the way of their relationship, he makes the ultimate romantic gesture: smuggling himself across the border, despite the dangers he'll face from the blistering heat, vicious bandits, barbed wire, and - most daunting of all - the US border patrol. An autobiographical account by the three-time Eisner-nominated writer/artist, this true story shines reliable light on the hot-topic immigration issue in the news today.

Jonesy

Sam Humphries

Jonesy's a typical disaffected teenager-- makin' zines nobody reads, posting pictures of her favorite pop groups on her blog, and watching anime on the weekends. But Jonesy has a secret-- she can make anybody fall in love with anyone-- or anything-- she wants! But there's only one catch-- Jonesy's powers don't work on herself, and she's gonna find out the hard way that shooting Cupid's arrow ain't all it's cracked up to be.

We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide

Carol Anderson

When America achieves milestones of progress toward full and equal black participation in democracy, the systemic response is a consistent racist backlash that rolls back those wins. We Are Not Yet Equal examines five of these moments: The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with Jim Crow laws; the promise of new opportunities in the North during the Great Migration was limited when blacks were physically blocked from moving away from the South; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to laws that disenfranchised millions of African American voters and a War on Drugs that disproportionally targeted blacks; and the election of President Obama led to an outburst of violence including the death of black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri as well as the election of Donald Trump.

Pride

Ibi Aanu Zoboi

Zuri Benitez has pride. Brooklyn pride, family pride, and pride in her Afro-Latino roots. But pride might not be enough to save her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood from becoming unrecognizable. When the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street, Zuri wants nothing to do with their two teenage sons, even as her older sister, Janae, starts to fall for the charming Ainsley. She especially can't stand the judgmental and arrogant Darius. Yet as Zuri and Darius are forced to find common ground, their initial dislike shifts into an unexpected understanding. But with four wild sisters pulling her in different directions, cute boy Warren vying for her attention, and college applications hovering on the horizon, Zuri fights to find her place in Bushwick's changing landscape, or lose it all. In a timely update of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, critically acclaimed author Ibi Zoboi skillfully balances cultural identity, class, and gentrification against the heady magic of first love in her vibrant reimagining of this beloved classic.

You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys

Betsy Franco (editor)

Teenage boys speak out "without the filter of adult sensibility” in a compelling collection of poetry and prose.

In a powerful collection of more than seventy uncensored poems and essays, more than fifty teenage boys from across the country explore their many-layered concerns: identity, love, envy, gratitude, sex, anger, competition, fear, hope. Here, unadorned and without the filter of adult sensibility, is the raw stuff of their lives, in their own words. Isnâ€™t it time to listen?