Summer Reading Ideas: Short Summer Reads (Stories/Poems/Essays)

A resentful member of a high school Quiz Bowl team with an unrequited crush. A Valentine's Day in the life of Every Day's protagonist "A." A return to the characters of Two Boys Kissing. 19 Love Songs delivers all of these stories and more. Born from Levithan's tradition of writing a story for his friends each Valentine's Day, this collection brings all of them to his readers for the first time. With fiction, nonfiction, and a story in verse, there's something for every reader here.

Interleaving eleven completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.

Dreams collide with reality, modernity with antiquity, and myth with identity in the twelve arresting stories of A House Is a Body. In "Earthly Pleasures," a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India's biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare. In "A Simple Composition," a husband's professional crisis leads to his wife's discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy. And in the title story, an exhausted mother watches, hypnotized by fear, as a California wildfire approaches her home. Immersive and assured, provocative and probing, these are stories written with the edge and precision of a knife blade. Set in the United States and India, they reveal small but intense moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world.

For centuries, accomplished women--of all races--have fallen out of the historical records. The same is true for gifted, prolific, women poets of the Harlem Renaissance who are little known, especially as compared to their male counterparts. In this poetry collection, bestselling author Nikki Grimes uses "The Golden Shovel" poetic method to create wholly original poems based on the works of these groundbreaking women-and to introduce readers to their work. Each poem is paired with one-of-a-kind art from today's most exciting female African-American illustrators.

This dazzling collection of art, poetry, essays, and fashion tips is meant for people of all sizes who desire to be seen and heard in a culture consumed by a narrow definition of beauty. By combining the talents of renowned fat YA and middle-grade authors, as well as fat influencers and creators, The (Other) F Word offers teen readers and activists of all ages a tool for navigating our world with confidence and courage.

Un paraje en medio de la carretera habitado por mujeres abandonadas por sus parejas. Viajeros cautivos en una prision de manjares y tareas domesticas, incapaces de tomar el tren de regreso a casa. Un pueblo en el que los ninos han sido tragados por la tierra. Nonatos que, a traves de un tratamiento experimental, han suspendido su gestacion para volverse conservas. El proceso a traves del cual el empleado de una jugueteria se vuelve a comportar como un infante. Estos son algunos de los argumentos de los relatos que componen esta coleccion, en los que la cotidianidad se enrarece para mostrar su perfil mas irracional. Los distintos personajes que encontramos en este libro, habitan paisajes en los que la infancia, lo domestico y lo familiar se distorsionan hasta niveles angustiantes. Los acontecimientos se ciernen sobre ellos lentamente, con la calma que precede toda tormenta. Tal vez las circunstancias a las que se enfrentan los personajes de estos relatos difieren en los detalles del destino que los confronta, pero todos tienen en comun el hecho de recibir un llamado a la accion, la oportunidad de romper con las inercias que amenazan con apresarlos.

Inspired by the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum, these poems pay tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists insisting that Black Lives Matter. Elliott engages poets from the past two centuries to create a chorus of voices celebrating the creativity, resilience, and courage of Black women and girls. This collection features forty-nine powerful poems, four of which are tribute poems inspired by the works of Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and Phillis Wheatley. This provocative collection will move every reader to reflect, respond - and act.

For the first time in seven years, Allie Brosh--beloved author and artist of the bestseller Hyperbole and a Half--returns with a new collection of comedic, autobiographical, and illustrated essays. Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh's childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.

Spurred by the realization that they had nearly completed high school without hearing any substantive discussion about racism in school, two young women deferred college admission for a year to collect first-person accounts of how racism plays out in this country every day--and often in unexpected ways. This collection invites us to explore the power of telling our stories--and listening deeply to the stories of others. Featuring interviews with over 150 Americans accompanied by their photographs, this intimate toolkit also offers a deep examination of the seeds of racism and strategies for effecting change.

Fifteen celebrated authors deliver fantasy stories about a princess without need of a prince, a monster long misunderstood, memories that vanish with a spell, and voices that refuse to stay silent in the face of injustice. This powerful and inclusive collection contains a universe of wishes for a braver and more beautiful world. Authors include: Samira Ahmed, Jenni Balch, Libba Bray, Dhonielle Clayton, Zoraida Córdova, Tessa Gratton, Kwame Mbalia, Anna-Marie McLemore, Tochi Onyebuchi, Mark Oshiro, Natalie C. Parker, Rebecca Roanhorse, V. E. Schwab, Tara Sim, and Nic Stone.

From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us. As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura,World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.