*Paperback Release Date - 9/22/2026*

A powerful, joyful novel in verse about a Black teen with ADHD who finds self-expression and first love during one epic summer school season, perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds and On the Come Up.

For the third summer in a row, Pernell is back in the classroom, facing the same struggles that have always made school seem more like a battlefield than a place of learning. This summer is different, though: he’s battling to become the Cypher King, leader of the lunchroom’s impromptu rap circles. Here, the rhythm flows and the words fly, creating a space where the wittiest and most rhythmically inclined reign supreme. Here, Pernell’s ADHD gives him an edge.

But life outside the cypher isn’t as forgiving. Pernell’s English teacher has it out for him. His parents are pressuring him to see a doctor for his lack of focus. And Electra, his friend-slash-crush and the only one who truly gets him, is too busy chasing her dream internship to give him the time of day.

If Pernell doesn’t pull himself together, he won’t just lose the title of Cypher King—he’ll lose his chance to graduate high school. In a world where the systems are turned against kids like him, Pernell needs to find a way to succeed with his ADHD, rather than in spite of it.

One World is proud to present THE 1619 PROJECT: A New Origin Story, a book that dramatically builds on the vision of the original magazine project with major expansions of the original essays, seven new essays by historians, and dozens of new poems and pieces of fiction. The book includes a significant elaboration of the project’s Pulitzer Prize-winning lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones and a new introduction that together offer a stirring rebuttal to critics. Hannah-Jones has also written a third essay that makes the case for reparative solutions to the legacy of injustice the project documents.

Edited by Hannah-Jones, along with New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein, features editor Ilena Silverman, and New York Times executive producer Caitlin Roper, the book offers work from some of the country’s most outstanding journalists, thinkers, historians and scholars, including: Michelle Alexander, Leslie Alexander, Carol Anderson, Jamelle Bouie, Anthea Butler, Matthew Desmond, Martha Jones, Ibram Kendi, Kevin Kruse, Trymaine Lee, Tiya Miles, Wesley Morris, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Dorothy Roberts, Jeneen Interlandi, Bryan Stevenson, and Linda Villarosa.

Woven throughout the book are works of fiction and poetry that bring to life four hundred years of history with imaginative writing by Joshua Bennett, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Rita Dove, Camille Dungy, Cornelius Eady, Eve L. Ewing, Nikky Finney, Vievee Francis, Yaa Gyasi, Forrest Hamer, Terrance Hayes, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Barry Jenkins, Tyehimba Jess, Robert Jones, Jr., A. Van Jordan, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kiese Laymon, Jasmine Mans, Terry McMillan, Lynn Nottage, ZZ Packer, Gregory Pardlo, Darryl Pinckney, Claudia Rankine, Jason Reynolds, Evie Shockley, Tim Siebles, Clint Smith, Danez Smith, Patricia Smith, Tracy K. Smith, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Natasha Trethewey, Jesmyn Ward and Sonia Sanchez.

The book also includes archival portrait photography of Black Americans paired with each essay, curated by Kimberly Annece Henderson.

Winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award!

Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth. 

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.

With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

“Crackles with energy and snaps with authenticity and voice.” —Justina Ireland, author of Dread Nation

“An incredibly potent debut.” —Jason Reynolds, author of the National Book Award Finalist Ghost

“Acevedo has amplified the voices of girls en el barrio who are equal parts goddess, saint, warrior, and hero.” —Ibi Zoboi, author of American Street

This young adult novel, a selection of the Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List, is an excellent choice for accelerated tween readers in grades 6 to 8.

Plus don't miss Elizabeth Acevedo's With the Fire on High and Clap When You Land!

During one of the most important times in the civil rights movement, one unforgettable family goes on a road trip in this Newbery and Coretta Scott King Honoree, from author Christopher Paul Curtis, recipient of the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.

When the Watson family—ten-year-old Kenny, Momma, Dad, little sister Joetta, and brother Byron—sets out on a trip south to visit Grandma in Birmingham, Alabama, they don’t realize that they’re heading toward one of the darkest moments in America’s history. The Watsons’ journey reminds us that even in the hardest times, laughter and family can help us get through anything.
 
"A modern classic." —NPR

“Marvelous . . . both comic and deeply moving.” —The New York Times

"One of the best novels EVER." —Jacqueline Woodson, Newbery Honor and National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming
 
Bonus Content
• New foreword and afterword from the author
• Map of the Watsons’ journey
• Original manuscript pages and letter from the Newbery committee
• Personal essays celebrating the book’s legacy by award-winning authors: Elizabeth Acevedo, Chris Crutcher, Kate DiCamillo, Varian Johnson, David Barclay Moore, Jason Reynolds, Jerry Spinelli, Vince Vawter, Rita Williams-Garcia, and Jacqueline Woodson

Before I Fall meets Everything, Everything in this hilarious and heart-racing #ownvoices romance from debut author Justin A. Reynolds. Now in paperback!

When Jack and Kate meet at a party, bonding until sunrise over their mutual love of Froot Loops and their favorite flicks, Jack knows he’s falling—hard. Soon she’s meeting his best friends, Jillian and Franny, and Kate wins them over as easily as she did Jack.

But this love story is . . . complicated. It is an almost happily ever after. Because Kate dies. And their story should end there. Yet Kate’s death sends Jack back to the beginning, the moment they first meet, and Kate’s there again. Beautiful, radiant Kate. Jack isn’t sure if he’s losing his mind. Still, if he has a chance to prevent Kate’s death, he’ll take it. Even if that means believing in time travel. However, Jack will learn that his actions are not without consequences. And when one choice turns deadly for someone else close to him, he has to figure out what he’s willing to do to save the people he loves.

*Use discount code SALE at checkout for 30% off*

The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book

People Like Us is Jason Mott’s electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason’s life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don’t let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.

In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.

People Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognizable as a Jason Mott novel. 

Finishing the novel will leave you absolutely breathless and, at the same time, utterly filled with joy for life, changed forever by characters who are people like us.

“Jason Allen-Paisant deftly inscribes his own signature on worlds inner and outer in these gorgeous poems. The future of Caribbean lyric poetry is in great hands.”—Lorna Goodison, author of From Harvey River

Jason Allen-Paisant has emerged in recent years as one of the most celebrated poets in the UK and across the West Indies. Winner already of the Forward Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize, his writing has been acclaimed for its artistry and the fresh perspective it offers on the relationship of the African diaspora to place and the natural world.

In this, his debut collection of poems, he recalls an idyllic boyhood in his native Jamaica, where the roots of guango and yam vines burrow deep into the bauxite soil. Walking with his grandmother to reach the yam fields she worked, he envisions how “the muscular guango trees were like beings among whom we lived.” Transplanted to England, where he lives and works now, he describes lovely rambles in entirely different landscapes. But Allen-Paisant’s experience in the dense woodlands around Leeds is complex—unleashed dogs are welcome, and Black men are found suspect. “Try to imagine daffodils / in the hands of a black family / on a black walk / in spring,” he writes, in a radical response to Wordsworth’s pastoral.

Subversive in its excavation of an imperialist past and wonderfully generous in its exploration of alternative worldviews, Thinking with Trees represents the arrival in North America of poems that expand roots and leaves into something deeper, richer, less compromising.

Sixteen-year-old Jaelyn Coleman lives for Saturdays at WestSide Roll, the iconic neighborhood roller rink. On these magical nights, Jae can lose herself in the music of DJ Sunny, the smell of nachos from the concession, and the crowd of some of her favorite people—old heads, dance crews, and other regulars like herself. Here, Jae and other Black teens can fully be themselves.

One Saturday, as Jae skates away her worries, she crashes into the cutest boy she’s ever seen. Trey’s dimples, rich brown skin, and warm smile make it impossible for her to be mad at him though. Best of all, he can’t stop finding excuses to be around her. A nice change for once, in contrast with her best friend’s cold distance of late or her estranged father creeping back into her life.

Just as Jae thinks her summer might change for the better, devastating news hits: Westside Roll is shutting down. The gentrification rapidly taking over her predominantly Black Indianapolis neighborhood, filling it with luxury apartments and fancy boutiques, has come for her safe-haven. And this is just one trouble Jae can’t skate away from.

*ships in 7 - 10 business days*

From Jas Hammonds, award-winning author of We Deserve Monuments, comes an unflinching novel about addiction that Courtney Summers, New York Times bestselling author of Sadie and I’m the Girl, called “sensitively wrought and gorgeously written.”

It’s the summer before college and eighteen-year-old Blake Brenner and her girlfriend, Ella, have one goal: join the mysterious and exclusive Serena Society. The sorority promises status and lifelong connections to a network of powerful, trailblazing women of color. Ella’s acceptance is a sure thing―she’s the daughter of a Serena alum. Blake, however, has a lot more to prove.

As a former loner from a working-class background, Blake lacks Ella’s pedigree and confidence. Luckily, she finds courage at the bottom of a liquor bottle. When she drinks, she’s bold, funny, and unstoppable―and the Serenas love it. But as pledging intensifies, so does Blake’s drinking, until it’s seeping into every corner of her life. Ella assures Blake that she’s fine; partying hard is what it takes to make the cut . . .

But success has never felt so much like drowning. With her future hanging in the balance and her past dragging her down, Blake must decide how far she’s willing to go to achieve her glittering dreams of success―and how much of herself she’s willing to lose in the process.

Four Black Japanese gay men team up against a culture where discrimination is deep-seated and revenge is just a click away. A searing, darkly funny debut from the Akutagawa Prize–winning author.

Nobody at the corporate offices of Athletius Japan knows much about the massage therapist Jackson—but rumors abound. He used to work as a model. He likes to party. He’s mixed race—half-Japanese, half-somewhere-in-Africa-n. He might be gay. Fueling the gossip is the sudden appearance of a violent pornographic video featuring a man who looks a lot like Jackson.

When Jackson serendipitously meets three other queer mixed-race guys, he learns he’s not the only one being targeted. Together they concoct a plan: find out who’s responsible and, in the meantime, switch identities and play tricks on people—a boyfriend, a boss—who’ve wronged them, exploiting the fact that nobody can seem to tell them apart.

A short, blistering gut punch of a novel, Jackson Alone is at turns satirical and deadpan, angry and tender—a frank exploration of identity, race, queerness, and discrimination in contemporary Japan that announces Jose Ando as a singular new talent in the global literary scene.