Featured titles for tweens

Twelve-year-old Meg is pulled into a mysterious treasure hunt at her new boarding school and must learn to work with her new classmates, who all have secrets of their own.

Pablo Ortiz, an anxious sixth-grader, had no desire to be the hero called to defeat the Aztec goddess who came through a portal-- his locker!-- from the monster realm. Good thing his friends and his abuela have what he needs to succeed.

Mariam Hassan is an Iraqi American Muslim girl navigating sixth grade at a Catholic school. She faces "burden of representation" while navigating friendships, a class president race and being cast as Mary in the Nativity play, all while managing her sister's serious illness.

This love letter to Black life in the United States highlights the unspeakable trauma of slavery, the faith and fire of the civil rights movement, and the grit, passion and perseverance of some of the world's greatest heroes.

Two 10-year-olds must decide whether they should join forces to create an unbeatable duo that is sure to win their school's annual creative storytelling contest.

Hassan faces a hectic month of homework, soccer and gaming while fasting every day for the holy month of Ramadan, in a story about balancing family traditions and secular middle-school life.

This collection includes 13 scary stories with shocking twists on everyday reality, from an innocent set of dark, dusty basement stairs to a piano recital that requires unusual sacrifices.

Spend some time with these hilarious historical ghosts and their living landlords.

Set in London during World War II, a 12-year-old orphan who accidentally unleashes a shadow monster must team up with unlikely allies to hunt it down.

After her best friend is cast out of their insular Orthodox Jewish community for a seemingly innocent transgression, Yoyo Gold's eyes are opened to the truth of her neighbors’ hypocrisies for the first time. And what she sees leaves her shocked and unmoored.

In 1845, Sir John Franklin and a crew of 129 sailors set out from England for the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage, but both ships and every member of their party vanished without a trace.

A 12-year-old Japanese American baseball superfan forced to spend his summer in Oregon with his grandfather instead of playing elite ball.

Danilo's baseball talent lands him the opportunity to train in the States and find his absentee father, who may be the key to saving the family he abandoned as they deal with the devastating effects of the U.S. military invasion of Panamá.

Aw, beans! Hurry up and acquaint yourself with this modern classic full of gentle magic, catchy tunes and spooky surrealism.

This timeless tale gets the long-form PBS treatment and I, for one, am not complaining.

Promised safety outside of San Francisco, twelve-year-old Mei Mei travels by herself to Eureka, California where she navigates increasing violence against her community leading up to the expulsion of Chinese immigrants in 1885.

Quetzalcoatl Anguiano, Queso for short, knows that he has a good life but, he still can't stop his mourning his father's death. After he whispers a wish he wakes up the next morning in 1985 with twelve-year-old Pancho-- who will one day be his dad. 

Set in two timelines, this graphic novel tells the hidden history of the first female racecar driver to race in the Indy 500 and follows a spunky 12-year-old mechanic discovering that history while restoring a vintage Jaguar.

Pineda, a Cuban American boy, must join forces with his friends to help reunite an alien girl with her parents while their Texas town is swarming with military officers.

After attempting to prove the existence of a famous ghost for their school newspaper, Josie, Jackson and Alison begin to receive sinister memes on their phones and must uncover the truth behind the terrifying messages before time runs out.

Wesley's hopeful plans for Indigenous Peoples' Day (and asking her crush to the dance) go all wrong, until she finds herself surrounded by the love of her Indigenous family and community at the intertribal powwow.

Discover how Mount Tambora's catastrophic eruption plunged the world into darkness, altering the global climate and inspiring the likes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in a nonfiction story of disaster and survival.

Roxie wants to blend in at her new school, which means hiding the fact her parents are blind, in this remarkable novel about friendship, misperceptions and family-- plus a dog's view of the world.

Twelve-year-old Bea joins her school's first all-girls hockey team to support her best friend, navigates rocky relationships with her crush Gabi and best friend Celia and steps up to help save the hockey team when its funding is threatened.

The final installment in the Out of My Mind series follows Melody, an eleven-year-old with cerebral palsy, to London, where she goes on a series of adventures, including attending a conference for increasing accessibility and maybe even bumps into a prince!

Piano-prodigy Isabella, 11, whose Black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police.

Ever since sixth grade, Ashton Price and their best friend and enduring crush, Ivy Santos, have spent their summers together at theater camp. Now it's their last year before they part ways for high school, and Ash is determined to confess her feelings.

Set against the backdrop of the Great Migration, a Southern girl attends an elite girls boarding school in the North and must find the courage to be herself and to dream of a brighter future.

Each tale pulls readers into a dark world of contemporary stories based on myths and legends from around the world. Haunted battlefields? Talking heads? Ghosts? Nefarious creatures in the night? Read all about scary field trips, ghostly omens, cautionary tales and more.

Eighth-grader Jasper feels abandoned when his brother Callan leaves for college, so he starts their promised fossil dig alone only to hear the voice of a saber-toothed tiger calling to him as he unleashes a monster he cannot control.

Twelve-year-old B, a young nonbinary person who wants to be a dog trainer someday, convinces their new foster parents to adopt a stray dog named Gooseberry, but training the dog ends up being much harder than they expected until they learn to trust each other.

Thirteen-year-old Alondra fronts an alt-rock band she formed with her sisters under her dad's guidance, but when she secretly joins a choir group at school, she must try to bring the different parts of her life into harmony.

Amidst the backdrop of Nazi Germany during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, gymnast Evie is recruited to help rob the Nazis. With lives on the line and her family's future at stake, she has to choose between following her Olympic dreams and standing up to evil.

This true story of America's first female astronauts shows how they fought to enter STEM fields, endured claustrophobic and sexist media attention, underwent rigorous survival training and prepared for years.

Grab some cheesecake and a caftan and meet your friends, pals and confidants down in sunny Florida.

An undead fox serving as the Usher of Souls has his life upended when a mysterious badger soul appears.

Exploring the story of information throughout human history, this highly visual book shows how our ability to record information in the form of writing and collecting data has caused an explosion of technological progress.

In 1939 North Carolina, an all-Black baseball team "trespasses" on the whites-only baseball field, and the resulting racial outrage can only be resolved on the mound.

Did you know that entire tiny habitats can form on a pile of poo? In the prairies of North America bison roam the land and their poo becomes an important building block for diverse prairie ecosystems.

12-year-old Lu travels across a world of gigantic, living animal-landscapes to find her missing grandmother. Joined by her friend, Lu follows her grandmother's journal, uncovering family secrets, exploring breathtaking creatures and learning to understand her heritage.

Molly Teng, a girl who can see secrets by touching objects, moves into an old house and meets Jade, a hungry ghost trapped for over a century. They work together to uncover secrets from Jade's past and stop her hunger.

Bumped from seventh grade directly to high school, 13-year-old Tara gets a dramatic jolt to reality. Thrust into a new, unfamiliar world, she navigates social pressures, the chaos of high school and her first crush, all while trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be.

Twelve-year-old Piper Shapiro, a nonbinary middle schooler, struggles with the idea of change, so when their mom starts dating Gwinny, the mother of Piper's classmate Colton, Piper and Colton team up to try to break up the relationship, only to realize that change might not always be bad.

Moving to the Shady Pines trailer park, Tasha hears rumors of a terrifying creature sucking the life from its victims after an elderly neighbor dies suddenly, and as more people become unwell, Tasha fears the stories are true-- and that danger is much closer than she thinks.

Kaylani McKinnon is spending the summer with family friends on Martha's Vineyard. There are beaches, ice cream and a town full of fascinating Black history. Plus a few kids her age who seem friendly, until the shocking death of a popular teenage boy. Was it a drowning? A shark attack? Murder?

Omar and his younger brother Hassan live in a refugee camp, and when an opportunity for Omar to get an education comes along, he must decide between going to school every day or caring for his nonverbal brother.

When anxious 12-year-old chess prodigy Milo Bloom meets the half-sister he never knew he had and they get to know each other, he learns a new game-- the only thing that makes sense when everything else is falling apart.

When 13-year-old Rosemary is evacuated from WWII London to her grandmother's home in America, she uncovers a hidden family truth-- that they are Anishinaabe-- leading her to embrace her heritage, forge new bonds and find beauty in unexpected places.

Birdie has big plans for eighth grade, including getting a boyfriend, but after her best friend Deve fights against it, the trickster West African god Anansi appears and grants Birdie's wish, which she soon regrets and tries to undo.

Eleven-year-old Lebanese American Bashir discovers a ring containing a jinn. When a demon lord kidnaps his parents, Bashir joins a secret society to stop the demon, traveling across Arab cities to find the legendary Jewel of the Nile.