2024-2025 VA READS Young Adult Book Selections

Kween by Vichet Chum ISBN: 978-0063223356 Teen Soma can only make sense of all that is happening in her life, including the deportation of her Ba to Cambodia, with the help of her slam poetry.

All Alone with You by Amelia Diane Coombs ISBN: 978-1534493575 Grumpy high school senior Eloise finds out that she needs volunteer hours for a scholarship and is assigned to spunky senior-citizen Marianne in perpetually-sunny Austin.

Brooms by Jasmine Walls and Teo DuVall ISBN: 978-1646142682 In Mississippi in the 1930s, magic still lingers, and an illegal broom-racing team may just upend everything.

Throwback by Maureen Goo ISBN: 978-1638930204 17-year-old Sam just doesn’t understand why her first-generation Korean American mother wants her to be every all-American stereotype, but she gets more answers than she expects when she is suddenly transported back to the 1990s, right alongside her 17-year-old mother.

Rez Ball by Byron Graves ISBN: 978-0063160378 Teen Tre loves playing basketball for his reservation high school, but when he has the chance to play for his deceased brother’s former team and possibly go to the state championship, will he crack under the expectations of his entire community?

What the River Knows by Isabel Ibañez ISBN: 978-1250803375 In 1800s Buenos Aires, privileged Inez is notified of her parents’ sudden deaths in Egypt and then travels to Cairo to get answers using her father’s ring and some old magic that still lingers.

Thieves’ Gambit by Kayvion Lewis ISBN: 978-0593625361 17-year-old Ross is a master thief, so in order to save her mother’s life, she enters the Thieves’ Gambit, an exclusive heist competition, and has to decide whether to play well…or play to win.

Everyone’s Thinking It by Aleema Omotoni ISBN: 978-0063225671 Reputation is everything, especially for two Nigerian girls at an elite boarding school in the United Kingdom, so when pictures from one of their cameras are stolen and spread around the school with juicy secrets on them, the girls have to figure out the perpetrator before the school descends into chaos.

Into the Light by Mark Oshiro ISBN: 978-1250812254 One year ago, Manny was cast out of his foster family without his sister and has been learning to survive, but when he decides to try to go back for his sister, he’ll need to confront his past in order to find her.

Impossible Escape: A True Story of Survival and Heroism in Nazi Europe by Steve Sheinkin ISBN: 978-1250265722 In Europe, 1944, teen Rudi knows his only chance for survival is to escape the Auschwitz concentration camp, and teen Gerta knows that as a Jewish person secretly living in Hungary, her time is running out before the Nazis reach her.