A Few Recommendations from the Past Two Years

Covers from the books Luck of the Titanic, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, and Huda F Are You?

Each of the Rich in Color bloggers reviews one book or even more every month, but we aren’t able to review everything that we read and enjoy. Today I’d like to share some of the books that shouldn’t be missed even though we haven’t had a chance to review or feature them yet.

A young woman with flowing dark hair is standing on the Titanic with birds in the sky. She's wearing a long form fitting dress and has a slight smile.Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee
G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Valora Luck has two things: a ticket for the biggest and most luxurious ocean liner in the world, and a dream of leaving England behind and making a life for herself as a circus performer in New York. Much to her surprise, though, she’s turned away at the gangway; apparently, Chinese people aren’t allowed into America.

But Val has to get on that ship. Her twin brother, Jamie, who has spent two long years at sea, is on board, as is an influential circus owner. Thankfully, there’s not much a trained acrobat like Val can’t overcome when she puts her mind to it.

As a stowaway, Val should keep her head down and stay out of sight. But the clock is ticking and she has just seven days as the ship makes its way across the Atlantic to find Jamie, audition for the circus owner, and convince him to help get them both into America.

Then one night, the unthinkable happens, and suddenly Val’s dreams of a new life are crushed under the weight of the only thing that matters: survival.

Book cover with a high sky. There is a tent at the bottom of the picture. There are hills in the background. The shadows of two people holding hands can be seen like they are walking to the hills.Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante #2) by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

In Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, two boys in a border town fell in love. Now, they must discover what it means to stay in love and build a relationship in a world that seems to challenge their very existence.

Ari has spent all of high school burying who he really is, staying silent and invisible. He expected his senior year to be the same. But something in him cracked open when he fell in love with Dante, and he can’t go back. Suddenly he finds himself reaching out to new friends, standing up to bullies of all kinds, and making his voice heard. And, always, there is Dante, dreamy, witty Dante, who can get on Ari’s nerves and fill him with desire all at once.

The boys are determined to forge a path for themselves in a world that doesn’t understand them. But when Ari is faced with a shocking loss, he’ll have to fight like never before to create a life that is truthfully, joyfully his own.

Book cover is a comic style young woman in a hijab. She is wearing rectangular shaped glasses and looks startled. A speech bubble says I dunno. In a faded background there are lockers and many students. Many are also wearing a hijab.Huda F Are You? by Huda Fahmy
Dial Books

Huda and her family just moved to Dearborn, Michigan, a small town with a big Muslim population. In her old town, Huda knew exactly who she was: She was the hijabi girl. But in Dearborn, everyone is the hijabi girl.

Huda is lost in a sea of hijabis, and she can’t rely on her hijab to define her anymore. She has to define herself. So she tries on a bunch of cliques, but she isn’t a hijabi fashionista or a hijabi athlete or a hijabi gamer. She’s not the one who knows everything about her religion or the one all the guys like. She’s miscellaneous, which makes her feel like no one at all. Until she realizes that it’ll take finding out who she isn’t to figure out who she is.

Several teens are drawn but are slightly see through up against a wall. In front of them is a pile of luggage that is more substantial. One has a sketch pad and is drawing another has crossed arms and the other has an origami crane in her hand.We Are Not Free by Traci Chee
HMH Books for Young Readers

We Are Not Free, is the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.

Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco.
Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted.
Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.
In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.

Black young woman with long braids is standing front and center. In the background there are other pictures of her. Over one shoulder she is standing near a young man with his hand on his head. Over the other shoulder, the same couple are seen holding hands and walking together. Love is a Revolution by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury YA

When Nala Robertson reluctantly agrees to attend an open mic night for her cousin-sister-friend Imani’s birthday, she finds herself falling in instant love with Tye Brown, the MC. He’s perfect, except . . . Tye is an activist and is spending the summer putting on events for the community when Nala would rather watch movies and try out the new seasonal flavors at the local creamery. In order to impress Tye, Nala tells a few tiny lies to have enough in common with him. As they spend more time together, sharing more of themselves, some of those lies get harder to keep up. As Nala falls deeper into keeping up her lies and into love, she’ll learn all the ways love is hard, and how self-love is revolutionary.

In Love Is a Revolution, plus size girls are beautiful and get the attention of the hot guys, the popular girl clique is not shallow but has strong convictions and substance, and the ultimate love story is not only about romance but about how to show radical love to the people in your life, including to yourself.

A double oval shaped photo frame is featuring two young people. One is wearing mostly black and has short hair. The other has long dark hair and a white dress.Miss Meteor by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Anna Marie-McLemore
HarperTeen

There hasn’t been a winner of the Miss Meteor beauty pageant who looks like Lita Perez or Chicky Quintanilla in all its history. But that’s not the only reason Lita wants to enter the contest, or why her ex-best friend Chicky wants to help her. The road to becoming Miss Meteor isn’t about being perfect; it’s about sharing who you are with the world—and loving the parts of yourself no one else understands. So to pull off the unlikeliest underdog story in pageant history, Lita and Chicky are going to have to forget the past and imagine a future where girls like them are more than enough—they are everything.

Witty and heartfelt with characters that leap off the page, Miss Meteor is acclaimed authors Anna-Marie McLemore and Tehlor Kay Mejia’s first book together.

Orange cover that has the texture of a basketball. A comic style face that only features square black glasses and short dark hair is under the middle black line in the running horizontally across the book cover.Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang
First Second

Gene understands stories—comic book stories, in particular. Big action. Bigger thrills. And the hero always wins.

But Gene doesn’t get sports. As a kid, his friends called him “Stick” and every basketball game he played ended in pain. He lost interest in basketball long ago, but at the high school where he now teaches, it’s all anyone can talk about. The men’s varsity team, the Dragons, is having a phenomenal season that’s been decades in the making. Each victory brings them closer to their ultimate goal: the California State Championships.

Once Gene gets to know these young all-stars, he realizes that their story is just as thrilling as anything he’s seen on a comic book page. He knows he has to follow this epic to its end. What he doesn’t know yet is that this season is not only going to change the Dragons’s lives, but his own life as well.


Are there books that you’d like us to review? We may not be able to get to every book that’s published, but we could make an effort if there is something people would like to know more about in the future.