From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun
by Jacqueline Woodson
Middle grade · ages 8–12 · grades 3–7 · 710L · 176 pages · 2010
Why we'd hand it over
A quiet, deeply intelligent book about a 13-year-old boy processing his mother's relationship with a woman—Woodson's prose is spare and poetic, and Melanin's voice is utterly genuine; parents report kids want to talk about it afterward.