*Paperback Release Date - 1/7/27*

The Pura Belpré Honor Award winning author of Aniana del Mar Jumps In makes her YA debut with a powerful novel-in-verse about a Texas teen who is battling racism in her theatre program and book banning efforts by her town’s school board.

Yulieta Lopez is angry. Angry at her racist drama teacher who refuses to cast Black students in lead roles. Angry at the school board threatening her favorite teacher for teaching works of literature that they deem “controversial.” Angry that she has to keep quiet until she can head to college and leave Texas forever.

Yuli is accustomed to playing various roles: the diligent daughter, the honorable hija, the good girl who serves everyone else before serving herself. But as the fire of Yuli's rage spreads and lights her up, she can no longer be silent. Determined to find a way to fight back, Yuli and her friends start a guerilla theatre club which stirs things up and gets people talking, and finally, Yuli steps into the role she was always meant to play.

A young Dominican girl is excited for her first Carnaval with her parents.

Flor, Papi, and Mami zip through the streets! They're off to Carnaval! When they arrive, the plaza is bursting with sights and sounds—people shouting and laughing, fried food sizzles, and the aroma of funnel cake wafts through the air.

Flor's feet can hardly keep still as the music of tambores and trumpets thump out a rhythmic beat. Papi lifts Flor on his shoulders so she doesn't miss a thing. Below her, the Carnaval is a brilliant swirl of pinks, purples, oranges, and blues. There's so much to see!

From los lechones de Santiago, who spin in circles, dancing their African and Latin dances. They sway and shake like palmas in the wind. Flor throws her arms in the air and swings them left to right. When Los Taínos appear, their grass skirts swish in the wind, their painted bodies telling stories of the ancestors. Everything about them seems from some other time and place, but Flor knows they are apart of her.

Next comes Roba la gallina in his rainbow dress, singing and throwing candy to the crowd, telling Flor to keep her ancestors alive and strong by telling their stories. El Diablo Cojuelo is not far behind. He taunts and teases, but Flor stands tall and brave. She knows it's all just fun and games.

But then El Diablo invites her to join show! Finally! Flor, dances, whisked away by myth and magic, surrounded by Black and Brown beauty everywhere.

We're Off to Carnaval! is a joyous homage to a tradition that celebrates freedom, heritage and connection.

Una poderosa novela escrita en verso sobre una nadadora dominicano-estadounidense de 12 años a quien le diagnostican artritis juvenil.
 
Aniana del Mar pertenece al agua como un delfín al océano, pero mantiene en secreto sus clases de natación. Hace años, a su mamá se le ahogó un ser querido y no se ha recuperado de la pérdida.
 
Un día, la artritis juvenil obliga a Aniana a guardar reposo. Entonces confiesa lo importante que es para ella nadar y, aunque el doctor cree que la natación puede ayudarla a mejorar, su mamá lo prohíbe.
 
Esta es la historia de una niña que debe crecer como las mareas para encontrar su fuerza y defender lo que ama.

A powerful and expertly told novel in verse by an award-winning poet, about a 12-year-old Dominican American swimmer who is diagnosed with Juvenile Arthritis.

Aniana del Mar belongs in the water like a dolphin belongs to the sea. But she and Papi keep her swim practices and meets hidden from Mami, who has never recovered from losing someone she loves to the water years ago. That is, until the day Ani’s stiffness and swollen joints mean she can no longer get out of bed, and Ani is forced to reveal just how important swimming is to her. Mami forbids her from returning to the water but Ani and her doctor believe that swimming along with medication will help Ani manage her disease. What follows is the journey of a girl who must grieve who she once was in order to rise like the tide and become the young woman she is meant to be. Aniana Del Mar Jumps In is a poignant story about chronic illness and disability, the secrets between mothers and daughters, the harm we do to the ones we love the most—and all the triumphs, big and small, that keep us afloat.

Join for an author talk with award-winning and beloved author, Renee Watson! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, October 28 at 2PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat. RSVP WITH BOOK to grab your seat along with a copy of Renee's newest book, Ways to Build Dreams. There will be additional titles on sale. However, you must purchase her newest book to join the signing line.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award winner Renée Watson continues her bestselling young middle grade series starring Ryan Hart.

Middle school is just around the corner for Ryan Hart, which means it’s time to start thinking about the future—and not just how to prank her brother, Ray!
Ryan wonders who she wants to be and what kind of person her family hopes she’ll become. Ryan has always been known for her sunny outlook, but can she keep hoping even when things seem hopeless? During Black History Month, Ryan learns more about her ancestors and local Black pioneers and their hopes for the future, for her generation. Drawing on the ambitions of those who came before her, and her own goals, Ryan is determined to turn her dreams into reality.
Grow and shine and share with Ryan Hart in this series that brings ever more humor, more love, and more fun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her novel, Piecing Me Together, received a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Her books include the Ryan Hart series, Some Places More Than Others, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, cowritten with Ilyasah Shabazz, Watch Us Rise, cowritten with Ellen Hagan, and Love is a Revolution, as well as acclaimed picture books: Places Where Hurricanes Happen, and Harlem’s Little Blackbird, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Renée splits her times between Portland, Oregon and New York City.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR 

Jasminne Mendez is a best-selling Dominican-American poet, translator, playwright and award winning author of several books for children and adults. Including the middle grade novel in verse Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial) which was released to four starred reviews. Her other books have received prizes from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Writer’s League of Texas and the International Latino Book Awards. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a University of Houston alumni. She is the Program Director for the literary arts non-profit Tintero Projects and she lives and works in Houston, TX.

“We turn to poetry in our greatest moments of joy and sorrow to help us tune in to our emotions and connect with others,” writes Johnston. In Praisesong for the People, poetry brings us together to celebrate the people across the state who make this land feel like home.

Edited by Amanda Johnston, the 61st Texas Poet Laureate and first Black woman to receive this honor, this vibrant anthology collects the work of 70 emerging and established poets across the state. Commissioned to write original poems celebrating everyday people, the poets in Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas are as diverse as the landscapes they inhabit, and reflect the intersecting identities of Texas’s population across age, gender, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disability, and immigrant communities. In these poems, their voices gather in a heartfelt chorus to praise the people in their communities who offer small kindnesses, asking nothing in return. 

Praise the bus driver who ferries us safely across town. Praise the abuela who dries our tears. Praise the librarian who protects young curiosity. Praise the therapist with an open door, the teacher fluent in the language of affirmation. With story, testimony, and song, these poets give our unsung community heroes their flowers.

With an introduction by Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston. 

Featuring praise poems by Kendra Allen, C. Prudence Arceneaux, Sara Bawany, Gaby Benitez, Claire Bowman, Lauren Brazeal Garza, KB Brookins, drea brown, Marie Brown, Jenny Browne, Joe Brundidge, Cloud Delfina Cardona, Paola Carrasco, Camari Carter Hawkins, Avery C. Castillo, Julieta Corpus, Victor Leo Cruz, Logen Cure, Terry Dawson, Audrea Diaz, Tarfia Faizullah, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Carrie Fountain, Mag Gabbert, Jasmine Games, Daniel García Ordaz, Chera Hammons, Alicia Harmon, SG Huerta, Amanda Johnston, Katelin Kelly, Aris Kian, Ella Kim, Jennine “DOC” Krueger, Dr. Rosalee Martin, Kaitlyn Marzetta McClung, Jasminne Mendez, Lupe Mendez, Zell Miller III, Jonathan Moody, Bo Hee Moon, Lisa L. Moore, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, mónica teresa ortiz, Sebastian Páramo, Bianca Alyssa Pérez, Emmy Pérez, Phillip Periman, Kenan Phillip, Julie Poole, Amanda Puryear El, Octavio Quintanilla, jo reyes-boitel, Gerard Robledo,  Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, Jan Seale, ire’ne lara silva, Shasparay, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ebony Stewart, Nomi Stone, Robert Tinajero, Sam Treviño, Pat Tyrer, Alexandra van de Kamp, Eddie Vega, Annar Veröld-Miranda, Edward Vidaurre, April Sojourner Truth Walker, and Sasha West. 

Celebrate the release of The Story of My Anger with Jasminne Mendez!

EVENT DEETS

When: Friday, September 19 @ 6:30PM

Where: 2310 Elgin St #2, Houston, TX 77004

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.

*Only copies of The Story of Anger purchased from Kindred Stories will be allowed inside the venue. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Yulieta Lopez is angry. Angry at her racist drama teacher who refuses to cast Black students in lead roles. Angry at the school board threatening her favorite teacher for teaching works of literature that they deem “controversial.” Angry that she has to keep quiet until she can head to college and leave Texas forever.

Yuli is accustomed to playing various roles: the diligent daughter, the honorable hija, the good girl who serves everyone else before serving herself. But as the fire of Yuli's rage spreads and lights her up, she can no longer be silent. Determined to find a way to fight back, Yuli and her friends start a guerilla theatre club which stirs things up and gets people talking, and finally, Yuli steps into the role she was always meant to play.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jasminne Mendez is Pura Belpré Honor Award recipient and a Dominican-American poet, playwright and author of several books for children and adults. 

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

EVENT DEETS

When: February 26 at 6:00 PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX 77004)

How: RSVP to save your spot. Books will be on sale at the event!

ABOUT THE EVENT

ABOUT POETS

Jasminne Mendez is a Dominican-American poet, playwright, educator and award-winning author. Mendez has had poetry and essays published by The Acentos Review, The New England Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and others. She is an alumni of the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and the author of several books for children and adults including Island of Dreams which won an International Latino Book Award in 2015. She is a faculty member with the Goddard College MFA Creative Writing Program and she lives in Houston, TX. 

Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry & Poetry in translation. She is CantoMundo graduate fellow and a 2020 NYFA fellow. Her work has been published in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast and in Best of American Poetry 2021 and forthcoming in Best of American Poetry 2022. Her first collection The Pink Box is published by Willow Books & was longlisted for a PEN award. Her second collection Muse Found in a Colonized Body is forthcoming from Four Way Books, 2022. She lives in Harlem, NY.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn,  sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, , profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work.  She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She educates our present and future agitators/educators as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there.  She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.  

These sixteen stories by award-winning and bestselling YA authors center a Latinx point of view in an empowering anthology that reimagines classics through fantasy, science fiction, and with a dash of magic, for fans of A PHOENIX FIRST MUST BURN and RECLAIM THE STARS

In classic stories remixed, Latinx characters take center stage

Pride and Prejudice is launched into outer space, Frankenstein is plunged into the depths of the ocean, and The Great Gatsby floats to an island off the coast of Costa Rica.

A shape-shifter gives up her life to save the boy she loves from an evil bruja. La Ciguapa covets a little mermaid's heart of gold. Two star-crossed teens fall in love while the planet burns around them.

Whether characters fall in love, battle foes, or grow through grief, each story will empower readers to see themselves as the heroes of the stories that make our world.

Featuring original stories from:

* Olivia Abtahi
* David Bowles
* Zoraida Córdova
* Saraciea J. Fennell
* Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
* Torrey Maldonado
* Jasminne Mendez
* Anna Meriano
* Amparo Ortiz
* Laura Pohl
* Sandra Proudman
* NoNieqa Ramos
* Monica Sanz
* Eric Smith
* Ari Tison
* Alexandra Villasante