Imagine sharing a story with a young reader where they not only embark on thrilling adventures but also gain insight into experiences vastly different from their own. Diverse young adult books do just that—they open doors to new perspectives and foster empathy in our interconnected world. If you’re ready to introduce the young people in your life to stories that celebrate differences and champion inclusivity, keep reading for some must-read titles in the YA genre.
Young adult books have long inspired and entertained readers. Now, there’s a growing recognition of the need for diverse YA literature that reflects the multifaceted lives of today’s teens. Diversity in YA books enriches the reading experience and broadens horizons, making them essential reads for every young reader (and let’s be real–adults, too!).
Disclaimer: Parents and care givers, please be aware that some of these books may contain content suited for more mature readers. We have not vetted ALL the books on this list for explicit content (and the term “explicit” can be defined in various ways), but many of these titles are award-winning and/or recommended by our community.
We recommend screening titles if you have concerns about potentially explicit material, and having conversations with your young reader before/during/and after reading about difficult topics is always a good idea!
Diverse Teen/YA Books Top Picks
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Ash by Malinda Lo
Code Name: Butterfly by Ahlam Bsharat, translated by Nancy Roberts
.Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero
If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson
Monster: A Graphic Novel by Walter Dean Myers and adapted by Guy A. Sims
Orleans by Sherri L. Smith
None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
See No Color by Shannon Gibney
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan
Diverse Teen/YA Nonfiction Picks
A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 by Claire Hartfield
Dreaming in Indian: Contemporary Native American Voices edited by Lisa Charleyboy
American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky by Sherri L. Smith and Elizabeth Wein
#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women edited by Lisa Charleyboy
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Book Details
- 384 pages
- Affectionately dubbed “the Nigerian Harry Potter”
- 12+
Sunny Nwazue lives in Nigeria, but she was born in New York City. Her features are West African, but she’s albino. She’s a terrific athlete, but can’t go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing—she is a “free agent” with latent magical power. And she has a lot of catching up to do.
Soon she’s part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But as she’s finding her footing, Sunny and her friends are asked by the magical authorities to help track down a career criminal who knows magic, too. Will their training be enough to help them combat a threat whose powers greatly outnumber theirs?
World Fantasy Award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor blends magic and adventure to create a lush world. Her writing has been called “stunning” by The New York Times and her fans include Neil Gaiman, Rick Riordan, John Green, Ursula K. Le Guin, and many more!
Ash by Malinda Lo
Book Details
- Haunting romantic lesbian retelling of Cinderella
- Modern queer classic
- 272 pages
- 14+
In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Their friendship, as delicate as a new bloom, reawakens Ash’s capacity for love–and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
Entrancing and empowering, Ash beautifully unfolds the connections between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.
Code Name: Butterfly by Ahlam Bsharat, translated by Nancy Roberts
Book Details
- International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Honour List book
- 110 pages
- 12+
Translated from Arabic, Code Name: Butterfly is a captivating YA novel that transcends language to deliver a tale of love, loyalty, and coming of age in the midst of upheaval.
Life in occupied Palestine isn’t easy. Butterfly is a spirited teenager grappling with the complexities of growing up. Tinged with irony and fueled by unwavering idealism, she navigates a maze of adult duplicities, challenging friendships, and volatile sibling relationships.
Butterfly confronts some of life’s most profound questions: Are the whispers of her father’s potential alliance with the occupiers true? And will Nizar ever return her feelings of affection?
Thrust into a whirlwind of emotions and doubts, Butterfly learns to face the storms of young adulthood where ‘honour’ becomes a word charged with peril and meaning.
Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Book Details
- Winner of the William C. Morris Debut Award
- Explores intersectional identity
- 12-17 years
- 336 pages
Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s a Fractional Persian—half, his mom’s side—and his first-ever trip to Iran is about to change his life.
Darius has never really fit in at home, and he’s sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn’t exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they’re spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city’s skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush—the original Persian version of his name—and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab.
Adib Khorram’s brilliant debut is for anyone who’s ever felt not good enough—then met a friend who makes them feel so much better than okay.
Make sure to also check out the follow-up sequel, Darius the Great Deserves Better.
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero
Product Features
- William C. Morris Debut Award Winner
- Mexican-American perspective
- 208 pages
- 14+
Gabi Hernandez chronicles her last year in high school in her diary: college applications, Cindy’s pregnancy, Sebastian’s coming out, the cute boys, her father’s meth habit, and the food she craves. And best of all, the poetry that helps forge her identity.
July 24
My mother named me Gabriella, after my grandmother who, coincidentally, didn’t want to meet me when I was born because my mother was unmarried, and therefore living in sin. My mom has told me the story many, many, MANY, times of how, when she confessed to my grandmother that she was pregnant with me, her mother beat her. BEAT HER! She was twenty-five. That story is the basis of my sexual education and has reiterated why it’s important to wait until you’re married to give it up. So now, every time I go out with a guy, my mom says, “Ojos abiertos, piernas cerradas.” Eyes open, legs closed. That’s as far as the birds and the bees talk has gone. And I don’t mind it. I don’t necessarily agree with that whole wait until you’re married crap, though. I mean, this is America and the 21st century; not Mexico one hundred years ago. But, of course, I can’t tell my mom that because she will think I’m bad. Or worse: trying to be White.
If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
Book Details
- Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children’s/Young Adult
- 272 pages
- 14+
Seventeen-year-old Sahar has been in love with her best friend, Nasrin, since they were six. They’ve shared stolen kisses and romantic promises. But Iran is a dangerous place for two girls in love–Sahar and Nasrin could be beaten, imprisoned, even executed. So they carry on in secret until Nasrin’s parents suddenly announce that they’ve arranged for her marriage. Then Sahar discovers what seems like the perfect solution: homosexuality may be a crime, but to be a man trapped in a woman’s body is seen as nature’s mistake, and sex reassignment is legal and accessible. Sahar will never be able to love Nasrin in the body she wants to be loved in without risking their lives, but is saving their love worth sacrificing her true self?
Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson
Book Details
- On Publisher’s Weekly “An Anti-Racist Children’s and YA Reading List”
- 484 pages
- 15+
Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable—more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn’t turn up for the first day of school, Claudia’s worried.
When she doesn’t show for the second day, or second week, Claudia knows that som
ething is wrong. Monday wouldn’t just leave her to endure tests and bullies alone. Not after last year’s rumors and not with her grades on the line. Now Claudia needs her best—and only—friend more than ever. But Monday’s mother refuses to give Claudia a straight answer, and Monday’s sister April is even less help.
As Claudia digs deeper into her friend’s disappearance, she discovers that no one seems to remember the last time they saw Monday. How can a teenage girl just vanish without anyone noticing that she’s gone?
Monster: A Graphic Novel by Walter Dean Myers and adapted by Guy A. Sims
Book Details
- Michael L. Printz Award
- National Book Award Finalist
- Coretta Scott King Honor selection
- 160 pages
- 13+
Monster is a multi-award-winning, provocative coming-of-age story about Steve Harmon, a teenager awaiting trial for a murder and robbery. As Steve acclimates to juvenile detention and goes to trial, he envisions how his ordeal would play out on the big screen.
Guy A. Sims, the acclaimed author of the Brotherman series of comic books, collaborated with his brother, the illustrator Dawud Anyabwile, in this thrilling black-and-white graphic novel adaption of Monster. Fans of Monster and of the work of Walter Dean Myers—and even kids who think they don’t like to read—will devour this graphic adaptation.
Orleans by Sherri L. Smith
Book Details
- 352 pages
- 12+
First came the storms.
Then came the Fever.
And the Wall.
After a string of devastating hurricanes and a severe outbreak of Delta Fever, the Gulf Coast has been quarantined. Years later, residents of the Outer States are under the assumption that life in the Delta is all but extinct…but in reality, a new early society has been born.
Fen de la Guerre is living with the O-Positive blood tribe in the Delta when they are ambushed. Left with her tribe leader’s newborn, Fen is determined to get the baby to a better life over the wall before her blood becomes tainted. Fen meets Daniel, a scientist from the Outer States who has snuck into the Delta illegally. Brought together by chance, kept together by danger, Fen and Daniel navigate the wasteland of Orleans. In the end, they are each other’s last hope for survival.
None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio
Book Details
- Main character based on a real person
- Powerful story of discovering one’s true identity
- 352 pages
- 14+
This relatable and groundbreaking story for the LGBTQIA+ audience is about a teenage girl who discovers she was born intersex… and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Perfect for fans of If I Was Your Girl and Ask the Passengers.
When Kristin Lattimer is voted homecoming queen, it seems like another piece of her ideal life has fallen into place. She’s a champion hurdler with a full scholarship to college and she’s madly in love with her boyfriend. In fact, she’s decided that she’s ready to take things to the next level with him.
But Kristin’s first time isn’t the perfect moment she’s planned—something is very wrong. A visit to the doctor reveals the truth: Kristin is intersex, which means that though she outwardly looks like a girl, she has male chromosomes, not to mention boy “parts.”
Dealing with her body is difficult enough, but when her diagnosis is leaked to the whole school, Kristin’s entire identity is thrown into question. As her world unravels, can she come to terms with her new self?
Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between.
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
Book Details
- Book 1 of 3
- 320 pages
- 12+
Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging out with her friends. But then a corpse crashes their first party. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep tears… Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on.
With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one. Now Sierra must unravel her family’s past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for generations to come.
See No Color by Shannon Gibney
Book Details
- Kirkus Reviews Best Teen book of the Year
- 192 pages
- 13+
For as long as she can remember, sixteen-year-old Alex Kirtridge has known two things about herself: She’s a stellar baseball player. She’s adopted.
Alex has had a comfortable childhood in Madison, Wisconsin. Despite some teasing, being a biracial girl in a wealthy white family hasn’t been that big a deal. What mattered was that she was a star on the diamond, where her father, a former Major Leaguer, coached her hard and counted on her to make him proud. But now, things are changing: she meets Reggie, the first black guy who’s wanted to get to know her; she discovers the letters from her biological father that her adoptive parents have kept from her; and her changing body starts to affect her game. Suddenly, Alex begins to question who she really is. She’s always dreamed of playing pro baseball just like her father, but can she really do it? Does she truly fit in with her white family? Who were her biological parents? What does it mean to be black? If she’s going to find answers, Alex has to come to terms with her adoption, her race, and the dreams she thought would always guide her.
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
Book Details
- Burt Award for First Nations, Inuit and Métis Young Adult Literature
- Amy Mathers Teen Book Award
- 260 pages
- 12+
Just when you think you have nothing left to lose, they come for your dreams.
Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden – but what they don’t know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Book Details
- Winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award
- 384 pages
- for ages 13-17 years
A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world. Debut novel of renowned slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo.
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.
But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and 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.
With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself.
So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.
Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan
Book Details
- 320 pages
- 14+
At Armstead Academy, everyone knows everything about everyone. Well, everyone thinks they know everything . . .
Leila has made it most of the way through Armstead Academy without having a crush on anyone, which is a relief. As an Iranian American, she’s different enough; if word got out that Leila liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when beautiful new girl Saskia shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would. As she carefully confides in trusted friends about Saskia’s confusing signals, Leila begins to figure out that all her classmates are more complicated than they first appear to be, and some are keeping surprising secrets of their own.
Diverse Young Adult Nonfiction Books
A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 by Claire Hartfield
Book Details
- Coretta Scott King Award Winner
- Received the Carter. G Woodson Book Award from the National Council for the Social Studies
- 208 pages
- 12+
On a hot day in July 1919, five black youths went swimming in Lake Michigan, unintentionally floating close to the “white” beach. An angry white man began throwing stones at the boys, striking and killing one.
Racial conflict on the beach erupted into days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations.
A Few Red Drops is “readable, compelling history,” The Horn Book wrote, adding that the book uses “meticulously chosen archival photos, documents, newspaper clippings, and quotes from multiple primary sources.”
Includes archival photos and prints, source notes, bibliography, and an index.
Dreaming in Indian: Contemporary Native American Voices edited by Lisa Charleyboy
Book Details
- 128 pages
- 12-17 years
Whether discussing the transformative power of art or music, the lasting trauma of residential schools, growing up poor, or achieving success, the contributors to this remarkable anthology all have something in common: a rich Native heritage that has informed who they are.
American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky by Sherri L. Smith and Elizabeth Wein
Book Details
- 384 pages
- 12+ years
In the years between World War I and World War II, aviation fever was everywhere, including among Black Americans. But what hope did a Black person have of learning to fly in a country constricted by prejudice and Jim Crow laws, where Black aviators like Bessie Coleman had to move to France to earn their wings?
American Wings follows a group of determined Black Americans: Cornelius Coffey and Johnny Robinson, skilled auto mechanics; Janet Harmon Bragg, a nurse; and Willa Brown, a teacher and social worker. Together, they created a flying club and built their own airfield south of Chicago. As the U.S. hurtled toward World War II, they established a school to train new pilots, teaching both Black and white students together and proving, in a time when the U.S. military was still segregated, that successful integration was possible.
Featuring rare historical photographs, American Wings brings to light a hidden history of pioneering Black men and women who, with grit and resilience, battled powerful odds for an equal share of the sky.
#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women edited by Lisa Charleyboy
Book Details
- 112 pages
- Poems, essays, interviews, and art
- 12+
Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book. In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change. Sometimes angry, often reflective, but always strong, the women in this book will give teen readers insight into the lives of women who, for so long, have been virtually invisible.
How Do We Get More Diverse Teen & Young Adult Books?
One way to accomplish growing the ever popular genre of diverse young adult books is to seek out and joun the “Own Voices” (or the hashtags #OwnVoices and #OwnVoicesBooks) movement. Own Voices is a movement that advocates for publishers to seek out, publish, and promote books written by members of diverse communities. This puts more diverse young adult fiction in the hands of younger readers.
This could mean, for example, a Hispanic author writing a picture book about a Hispanic family or an autistic author writing a YA novel about an autistic teen’s experiences.
#OwnVoices advocates often argue that this kind of representation furthers the call for diverse representation of characters as well as diverse authors.
The hope is that folks writing from their own lived experiences will offer more nuanced and authentic depictions of different minoritized groups. Join the movement!
