Note: Audiobook version is highly recommended.
"Award-winning author Jen Ferguson has written a powerful story about teens grappling with balancing resentment with enduring friendship—and how to move forward with a life that’s not what they’d imagined.
Before that awful Saturday, Molly used to be inseparable from her brother, Hank, and his best friend, Tray. The indoor climbing accident that left Hank with a traumatic brain injury filled Molly with anger.
While she knows the accident wasn’t Tray’s fault, she will never forgive him for being there and failing to stop the damage. But she can’t forgive herself for not being there either.
Determined to go on the trio’s postgraduation hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, even without Hank, Molly packs her bag. But when her parents put Tray in charge of looking out for her, she is stuck backpacking with the person who incites her easy anger.
Despite all her planning, the trail she’ll walk has a few more twists and turns ahead. . ."
The road to Sandy June's Legendary Frybread Drive-In slips through every rez and alongside every urban Native hangout. The menu offers a rotating feast, including traditional eats and tasty snacks. But Sandy June's serves up more than food: it hosts live music, movie nights, unexpected family reunions, love long lost, and love found again.
That big green-and-gold neon sign beckons to teens of every tribal Nation, often when they need it most.
Featuring stories and poems by: Kaua Mahoe Adams, Marcella Bell, Angeline Boulley, K. A. Cobell, A. J. Eversole, Jen Ferguson, Eric Gansworth, Byron Graves, Kate Hart, Christine Hartman Derr, Karina Iceberg, Cheryl Isaacs, Darcie Little Badger, David A. Robertson, Andrea L. Rogers, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and Brian Young.
"In this moving graphic novel, thirteen-year-old Reanna grieves the loss of her older sister. Can she find comfort through her family’s Ojibwe traditions?
It’s been a year since Reanna’s sister, Chelsea, went missing on her way home from school. Without any idea of what happened, Reanna and her family struggle to find closure.
Driven from her home by memories, Reanna’s mom moves to the big city. Left behind on the reserve, Reanna and her little brother go to live with their dad.
Reanna is hurt and angry that her mom has run away. She feels lonely and abandoned…but she is not alone. Lights turn on in empty rooms, and objects move without being touched.
There are little moons everywhere."
When Bryce’s mom walks out on her abusive boyfriend and back into jail for breaking her probation, he’s left facing the summer of his junior year with no parents, no phone, and only the clothes on his back.
With nowhere to call home, Bryce crashes at his grandparents’ house on Wolf Creek reservation. Wolf Creek is full of memories and old friends—including Robbie and Mikayla, who hang out at the local skate park.
Skateboarding reminds Bryce of his late dad: carefree, riding like he could fly. If Bryce could learn to ride like that, he’d take his crew to the top of the skateboarding championship at the end of the summer, and finally prove he’s not a loser, especially to the online-famous, captivating Mikayla. Summer is looking up, even as he’s falling on his face.
But when a fresh loss takes Bryce down, he’ll need to learn to lean on his Ojibwe community to get back on the board. Only then can he discover his father’s real legacy—and the true meaning of unconditional love.
Note: Audiobook version is highly recommended.
"A moving collection of twenty powerful essays, poems, and more that capture and celebrate the modern Native American experience, featuring entries by Angeline Boulley, Madison Hammond, Kara Roselle Smith, and many more.
With heart, pathos, humor, and insight, twenty renowned writers, performers, athletes, and activists explore what it means to be Native American today. Through a series of essays and poems, these luminaries give voice to their individual experiences while shedding light on the depth and complexity of modern Native American identity, resiliency, and joy.
The topics are as fascinating and diverse as the creators. From Mato Wayuhi, award-winning composer of Reservation Dogs, honoring a friend who believed in his talent to New York Times bestselling author Angeline Boulley exploring what it means to feel Native enough, these entries are not only an exploration of community, they are also a call for a more just and equitable world, and a road map toward a brighter future."
"For too long, stories and artistic expressions from Indigenous people have been written and recorded by others, not by the individuals who have experienced the events.
In Ours to Tell, sixteen Indigenous creators relate traditions, accounts of historical events, and their own lived experiences. Novelists, poets, graphic artists, historians, craftspeople, and mapmakers chronicle stories on the struggles and triumphs lived by Indigenous people, and the impact these stories have had on their culture and history."
Raven Miller only just moved to Bear Creek Falls, but she already hates it. There’s a clique that has it out for her, a vice principal who keeps targeting her for dress code violations, and a cruel rumor going around that Raven is a witch who killed her parents. If it weren’t for her new friends Laurel and Hazel, she’d be lost.
The “witch” stuff would be easy to shrug off, but Raven does possess magical powers in the kitchen—the treats she makes can mysteriously change the lives of those who eat them. Though she doesn’t bake anymore—not since the accident that took her parents’ lives.
Then the clique’s bullying and the vice principal’s watchful eye intensifies. When the girls’ attempts to retaliate fall flat, Raven wonders if the magical sweets she used to make could whip up a justice so powerful it would set everything right. In order to find out, she’ll have to face the things she’s been avoiding. Can Raven rise above the pain of her past to secure a better future?
"Max and Jay have always depended on one another for their survival. Growing up with a physically abusive father, the two Bribri American brothers have learned that the only way to protect themselves and their mother is to stick to a schedule and keep their heads down.
But when they hear a classmate in trouble in the woods, instinct takes over and they intervene, breaking up a fight and beating their high school's star soccer player to a pulp. This act of violence threatens the brothers' dreams for the future and their beliefs about who they are. As the true details of that fateful afternoon unfold over the course of the novel, Max and Jay grapple with the weight of their actions, their shifting relationship as brothers, and the realization that they may be more like their father than they thought. They'll have to reach back to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.
Told in alternating points of view using vignettes and poems, debut author Ari Tison crafts an emotional, slow-burning drama about brotherhood, abuse, recovery, and doing the right thing."
"Shane works with her mother and their ghost dogs, tracking down missing persons even when their families can’t afford to pay. Their own family was displaced from their traditional home years ago following a devastating flood – and the loss of Shane’s father and her grandparents. They don’t think they’ll ever get their home back.
Then Shane’s mother and a local boy go missing, after a strange interaction with a fairy ring. Shane, her brother, her friends, and her lone, surviving grandparent – who isn’t to be trusted – set off on the road to find them. But they may not be anywhere in this world – or this place in time.
Nevertheless, Shane is going to find them."
Ever since Lucy Smith’s father died five years ago, “home” has been more of an idea than a place. She knows being on the run is better than anything waiting for her as a “ward of the state”. But when the sharp-eyed and kind Mr. Jameson with an interest in her case comes looking for her, Lucy wonders if hiding from her past will ever truly keep her safe.
Five years in the foster system has taught her to be cautious and smart. But she wants to believe Mr. Jameson and his “friend-not-friend”, a tall and fierce-looking woman who say they want to look after her. They also tell Lucy the truth her father hid from her: She is Ojibwe; she has – had – a sister, and more siblings, a grandmother who’d look after her and a home where she would be loved.
But Lucy is being followed. The past has destroyed any chance at safety she had. Will the secrets she's hiding swallow her whole and take away any hope for the future she always dreamed of?
When the past comes for revenge, it’s fight or flight.
"Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever take her far from home, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.
In order to reclaim this inheritance for her people, Perry has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She can only count on her friends and allies, including her overachieving twin and a charming new boy in town with unwavering morals. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot - will not - stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.
Sometimes, the truth shouldn't stay buried."
"Ezra Cloud hates living in Northeast Minneapolis. His father is a professor of their language, Ojibwe, at a local college, so they have to be there. But Ezra hates the dirty, polluted snow around them. He hates being away from the rez at Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation. And he hates the local bully in his neighborhood, Matt Schroeder, who terrorizes Ezra and his friend Nora George.
Ezra gets into a terrible fight with Matt at school defending Nora, and that same night, Matt’s house burns down. Instantly, Ezra becomes a prime suspect. Knowing he won’t get a fair deal, and knowing his innocence, Ezra’s family sends him away to run traplines with his grandfather in a remote part of Canada, while the investigation is ongoing. But the Schroeders are looking for him…"