As a child growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, author and blogger Chandra Sparks Splond spent many days in her room dreaming of forever and writing about someday. In Black Girl Dreaming: Poems about Love, Life and Loss, Splond shares some of her most cherished and personal work on her journey to learning to love herself […]
Make It Work
Sixteen-year-old Reagan Davis has landed her dream job, an internship at FIRE 107.1, the hottest radio station in town. It doesn’t take Reagan long to realize that between competitive coworkers and trying to ignore her growing feelings for her oh-so-cute coworker Jayden, there’s more drama at FIRE than she’s ever experienced at school. That might […]
Spin It Like That
YALSA 2009 Popular Paperback for Young Adults Sixteen-year-old Jasmine Richardson has a love for music. When she gets on the turntables, her gift for spinning and rhyming earn her admiration and respect. She’s also talented academically, but her parents disapprove of their daughter’s hobby, hoping it’s a phase she’s going through. Still, Jasmine finds it […]
The Promise
Since she broke up with the hottest basketball player in school, seventeen-year-old Courtland Murphy has been the subject of a million rumors. The fallout from her relationship with Allen Benson has made Courtland surer than ever that waiting to have sex is the right decision. But the drama’s not over, especially with her own father […]
The Pledge
Named YALSA 2010 Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers Raised in a strict household, sixteen-year-old Courtland Murphy never had a date. But that was before the guy of her every dream—basketball star Allen Benson—asked her out. She’s gone from never-been-kissed to dating the hottest guy in school. And now her new boyfriend is pressuring her to […]
He’s Got Game
Sixteen-year-old Noah Benjamin has dreams of being the first in his family to graduate college. All that changes when he becomes the breakout star of his high school’s basketball team. Despite his girlfriend Megan Agee trying to keep him on track, girls are showing interest, and people are in his ear telling him he should […]