KDL Recommends

POETRY TEEN BLO

There are moments every girl knows: The pain of wanting to fi t in. The joy of being consumed by love. The shame of not feeling at home in your body. The strength in learning you’re beautiful. Exploring those unspoken feelings and words—the thorny, sparkling moments that chain us to ourselves—Block gives a startlingly personal voice to girls and women everywhere.

POETRY SPO

The written and performed works of more than 40 of the most influential slam, hip hop, performance art and contemporary poets in the world today.

TEEN FLAKE

Tow-Kaye just learned that the love of his life is pregnant. And though he knows what the right thing to do is, he’s scared to death to do it. Jeffrey hates having a mom who dresses like a teenager, but when another sexy mom moves in next door that’s a different kind of problem. In these and twenty-two other short stories and poems, plumb the inner lives of African American teenage boys.

POETRY TEEN 811.608 FAL

The poets are straight, gay, lesbian, bi, or transgender. They live next door or across an ocean; they are innocent or experienced; their lyric explorations range from new love to stale love, obsession to ennui, ecstasy to heartbreak, and every nuance in between. Whether the romantic escapades described are touching, comical, or tragic, whether the feelings expressed are tender and sweet or brutal and biting, readers will find the love these poets openly share to be exquisitely, excruciatingly, endlessly fascinating.

POETRY TEEN YOU

In a powerful collection of more than seventy uncensored poems and essays, more than fifty teenage boys from across the country explore their many-layered concerns: identity, love, envy, gratitude, sex, anger, competition, fear, hope. Here, unadorned and without the filter of adult sensibility, is the raw stuff of their lives, in their own words. Isn’t it time to listen?

POETRY JNF GEO

The first year brings an array of challenges: making new friends, moving from class to class, tests and homework, changing for PE, gossip, school dances, and, of course, budding romance. Short, accessible poems in a variety of forms, but all in a single voice—that of a new middle schooler—evoke the memorable moments of the school year, exploring situations and emotions that will resonate.

POETRY TEEN POE
POETRY POE

Poetry slams—the Olympics of poetry—have become a cultural phenomenon. This groundbreaking anthology documents 10 years of poetry slams, with 100 poems from national slam champions and a dozen essays on how to run a slam, winning strategies, tips for memorizing poems, and more.

POETRY TEEN GRA

Jessie’s a girl with strong opinions, and she isn’t shy about sharing them. Her funny, sarcastic take on high school life is revealed through concrete poetry: words, ideas, type and design that combine to make pictures and patterns.

TEEN HOPKINS

Seventeen-year-old Pattyn, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon family, is sent to her aunt’s Nevada ranch for the summer, where she temporarily escapes her alcoholic, abusive father and finds love and acceptance, only to lose everything when she returns home. Written in verse.

TEEN KOERTGE

Fourteen-year-old Kevin Boland, poet and first baseman, is torn between his cute girlfriend Mira and Amy, who is funny, plays Chopin on the piano, and is also a poet.

TEEN LEVITHAN

A variety of students at the same high school describe their ideas, experiences, and relationships in a series of interconnected free verse stories.

POETRY TEEN MOR

an original collection of poems, each with a different teen narrator sharing unique thoughts, moments, sadness, or heart’s desire: the girl who loves swimming, plunging into the water that creates her own world; the guy who leaves flowers on the windshield of the girl he likes. Each of the teens in these 50 original poems, written using a variety of poetic forms, will be recognizable to the reader as the universal emotions, ideas, impressions, and beliefs float across the pages.

POETRY TEEN NEL
POETRY JNF NEL

In 1955, people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention. Award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the boy whose fate helped spark the civil rights movement.

POETRY TEEN TIM

A celebrated poet brings together the poetry of 25 poets under the age of 25. Ranging in style and subject but all high-caliber in their artistry, these young voices speak the hopes and concerns of their generation.

POETRY TEEN POE

Filled with more than 100 remarkable poems about you, who you are, and who you are becoming. Dive in-find the poem you love, the one that makes you angry, the one that makes you laugh, the one that knocks the wind out of you.

TEEN SONES

Sophie describes her relationships with a series of boys as she searches for Mr. Right. Written in verse.

TEEN WOLFF

Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it—an occasion to rise to.