RPS Teen Novels in Verse

"A smash up of art and text that viscerally captures what it means to not be able to breathe, and how the people and things you love most are actually the oxygen you most need"--

Harlem. Ever since her body grew into curves, Xiomara Batista has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. She pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers-- especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. Mami is determined to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, and Xiomara understands...

In the summer of 1988, twelve-year-old Chuck Bell is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers jazz and basketball and learns more about his family's past. Hoop kings soar / in kicks with wings. / Game so sweet / it's like bee sings. / (OUCH!) / He swished you / in your face. / Stung you like / a can of mace. / These boys so fly / they're outta SPACE! / Before he's Chuck "Da Man" Bell, proud father of Jordan and Josh Bell, Charlie is...

With both joy and fear, seventeen-year-old Ariel begins to explore her sexuality, while living with her controlling, abusive father who has told Ariel that her mother deserted her years ago.

A mixed-heritage dancer's coming of age within the African diaspora is shaped by abuse at the hands of a cousin, her mother's descent into addiction, and her father's efforts to create a Nigerian-inspired home in America.

A novel in prose and verse by the author of the National Book Award-longlisted Blood Water Paint follows the experiences of a teen who finds courage in the story of a 15th-century avenger when her sister's rapist is set free without prison time.

Five teenagers struggle to find their way out of prostitution. Five teens victimized by sex trafficking try to find their way to a new life. There's Eden, the preacher's daughter who turns tricks in Vegas and is helped into a child prostitution rescue. Seth, the gay farm boy disowned by his father who finds himself without money or resources other than his own body. Whitney, the privileged kid coaxed into the life by a pimp and whose dreams are ruined...

Allison runs away and, in what she thinks is an abandoned house, finds a home with Marla, an elderly woman with dementia who believes her to be an old friend named Toffee.

While trying to impress a beautiful, unattainable classmate, fourteen-year-old Andy discovers that a fellow social outcast may be planning an act of school violence.

Asking for help is only the first step. Jennifer can't go on like this--binging, purging, starving, and all while trying to appear like she's got it all together. But when she finally confesses her secret to her parents and is hospitalized at the Samuel Tuke Center, her journey is only beginning. As Jennifer progresses through her treatment, she learns to recognize her relationship with food, and friends, and family--and how each is healthy or unhealthy....