YA + Poetry - Brown Girl Dreaming

From NationalBook.org -
Believed to be common use.

I am a teacher, and have taught K-8 (except, for some reason, I've never taught 6th graders!).  Most of my kids are brown, and so when Brown Girl Dreaming came onto the scene, I knew I had to read it and hopefully pass it along to my kids.

This one's written in free verse and telling (singing, really) the author's childhood, from Ohio to South Carolina (minus a father), to Brooklyn (plus a new brother), and her life with and without those she loves.  It's a story of finding your voice and whatever will be your gift to the world, and a snapshot of a world changing for the better.  Not every memory is beautiful but each is beautifully told.

Published in 2014 - Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven's very creation is a testament to the fact that, as the book notes, "survival is insufficient."  Twenty years have passed since the Georgia Flu swept through the world faster than anyone could have imagined.  It has been twenty years since civilization has collapsed.  This book follows the pasts and (if they dare to dream them) futures of a loosely connected group of characters.  Their connecting thread is an actor dead just one day before the world began its descent into chaos.