Kirkus Prize: 2018 Young Readers' Literature Finalists
The 2018 finalists are:
The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo:
Xiomara is fifteen, a sophomore, a twin, the daughter of Dominican immigrants. She’s an unwilling attendee of confirmation class, an aspiring poet, a girl who is beginning to find that the expectations and restrictions and assumptions laid on her shoulders—by her mother, her church, her peers, by societal culture—don’t just chafe: they restrict, squeeze, confine.
She’s angry, scared, yearning.
Her mouth is quiet but her heart and mind are clamoring to be heard. (Full review.)
Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi
Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, by Derrick Barnes, illustrated by Gordon C. James
Merci Suárez Changes Gears, by Meg Medina
Dreamers, by by Yuyi Morales
Harbor Me, by Jacqueline Woodson