Luisana Recommends

Picturebooks

Fiction

  • Barnes, Derrick. Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut. (Illus: Gordon C. James). Bolden, 2017. 
  • Klassen, Jon. I Want My Hat Back. Candlewick, 2011. 
  • Santat, Dan. The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend. Little, Brown Books, 2014. 
  • Scott, Jordan. I Talk Like a River. Illus. Sydney Smith. Neal Porter Books, 2020. 
  • Smith, Sydney. Do You Remember? 
    But really, anything by Sydney Smith. 
  • Slater, Dascka. Escargot. Illus. Sydney Hanson. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. 
  • Sorell, Tracy. At the Mountain’s Base. (Illus: Weshoyot) Alvitre. Kokila, 2019. 
  • Wenzel, Brendan. They All Saw a Cat. Chronicle, 2016. 

Non-Fiction

  • Flemin
Middle Grade

Fiction

  • Behar, Ruth. Lucky Broken Girl. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2018.   
  • Bradley, Kimberly Brubaker. The War that Saved My Life. Puffin Books, 2016.   
  • Brosgol, Vera. Be Prepared. First Second, 2018.   
  • Bowling, Dusti. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus. Sterling Children’s Books, 2017. 
  • Burg, Ann. Unbound. Scholastic, 2018.   
  • Cisneros, Ernesto. Efrén Divided. Quill Tree Books, 2021.   
  • Duarte Armendáriz, Luisana. Julieta and the Diamond Enigma. TU Books, 2020. 
  • Guterson, Ben. Winterhouse. Henry Holt, 2018. 
  • Hiranandani, Veera. The Night Diary. Puffin Books, 2019. 
  • Johnson, Varian. The Parker Inheritance. Arthur A. Levine, 2018.  
  • Lord, Bette Bao. In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. Harper Collins, 1984.  
  • Lloyd, Megan Wagner and Michelle Mee Nutter. Squished. Graphix, 2023.   
  • Medina, Meg. Merci Suárez Changes Gears. Candlewick Press, 2018. 
  • Soontornvat, Christina. The Last Mapmaker. Candlewick, 2022.  
  • Venkatraman, Padma. Born Behind Bars. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2021.   
  • Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2016.  
  • Yang, Kelly. Front Desk. Arthur A. Levine, 2018.   
  • Yep, Laurence. Dragonwings. Harper Collins, 2001. 

Non-Fiction

  • Day, Nicholas. The Mona Lisa Vanishes. Random House Studio, 2023. 
Young Adult

Fiction

  • Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. Square Fish, 1999. 
  • Berry, Julie. Lovely War. Viking Books for Young Readers, 2019.  
  • Boulley, Angeline. The Fire Keeper’s Daughter. Henry Holt & Co., 2021. 
  • Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. DCB, 2017 
  • Jackson, Tiffany D. Monday’s Not Coming. Katherine Tegen Books, 2018. 
  • Kemp, Laekan Zea. Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2021. 
  • Mafi, Tahere. A Very Large Expanse of Sea. HarperCollins, 2019. 
  • Méndez, Yamile Saied. Furia. Algonquin Young Readers, 2020. 
  • Moriarty, Laura. American Heart. Harper Teen, 2018. 
  • Oh, Axie. XOXO. HarperTeen, 2021. 
  • Ribay, Randy. Patron Saints of Nothing. Penguin Books, 2020.  
  • Schlitz, Laura Amy. The Hired Girl. Candlewick, 2015. 
  • Tahir, Sabaa. All My Rage. Razorbill, 2022. 
  • Teller, Janne. Nothing. (This book really sucks, but it’s a great look into nihilism) 
  • Torres Sánchez, Jenny. We Are Not from Here. Philomel, 2020. 

Non-Fiction

  • Fleming, Candace. The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia. Anne Schwartz Books, 2014. 
  • Heiligman, Deborah. Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers. Square Fish, 2019. 
  • Hendrix, John. The Faithful Spy: Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler. Abrams Fanfare, 2018. 
  • Krosozcka, Jarret J. Hey, Kiddo. Graphix, 2018. 
  • Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. Pantheon, 2004.  
  • Spiegelman, Art. Maus. Pantheon, 1986. 
  • Takei, George. They Called Us Enemy. Top Shelf Productions, 2019.  
  • Wiesel, Ellie. Night. Hill and Wang, 2006. 
Non-ChYA Literature

Fiction

  • Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment.  
  • Towles, Amor. A Gentleman in Moscow. Penguin Books, 2019. 

Non-Fiction

  • Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago.
  • O’Gieblyn, Megan. God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning. Vintage, 2022.   
Writing Craft

  • Bang, Molly. Picture This: How pictures work. Chronicle, 1991. 
  • DeSalvo, Louise. The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity. St. Martine’s Griffin, 2014.  
  • Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Shambhala, 2005.  
  • King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Pocket Books, 2001.W.W. Norton & Co., 2016.  
  • Klein, Cheryl. The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults. (THIS WAS OUR COURSE TEXT) 
  • Klein, Cheryl. Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults. Asterisk Books, 2011. 
  • Lambert, Megan Dowd. Reading Picturebooks to with Children: The Whole Book Approach.  
  • Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anchor, 1995.  
  • Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew. 1st ed., The Eighth Mountain Press, 1998.  
  • Lerner, Betsy. The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers. Riverhead Books, 2010. 
  • Nordstrom, Ursula. Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, edited by Leonard S. Marcus, HarperCollins, 2000. 
  • Cron, Lisa. Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel. Ten Speed Press, 2016. 
  • Paul, Anne Whitford. Writing Picture Books. Writer’s Digest Books, 2009. 
  • Salesses, Matthew. Craft in the Real World. Catapult, 2021. 
  • Stewart, Melissa. Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award Winning Children’s Book Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing. NCTE, 2020 
  • Strunk, Jr., William, and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. 4th ed., Longman, 1999. 
  • Yolen, Jane. Take Joy: A Writer’s Guide to Loving the Craft. Writer’s Digest Books, 2006. 
Academic

Trauma

  • Sasser, M. Tyler. “The Pattern of Trauma in YA Adaptations of Shakespeare.” Liberating Shakespeare: Adaptation and Empowerment for Young Adult Audiences, edited by Jennifer Flaherty, and Deborah Uman, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2023. 
  • Tribunella, Eric L. Melancholia and Maturation: The Use of Trauma in American Children’s Literature. University of Tennessee Press, 2009. 

Translation

  • Mouse or Rat.