📚Best of 2024

This list highlights books that are available at the Minuteman High School Library Media Center or on Sora. Find these books, and more, in the Library Media Center and on Sora.

Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang (author), LeUyen Pham (illustrator) (also on Sora)

Val is ready to give up on love. It's led to nothing but secrets and heartbreak, and she's pretty sure she's cursed―no one in her family, for generations, has ever had any luck with love.

But then a chance encounter with a pair of cute lion dancers sparks something in Val. Is it real love? Could this be her chance to break the family curse? Or is she destined to live with a broken heart forever?

Listed as a Best Book of the Year by School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, NPR, Horn Book, and New York Public Library

Ruin Road by Lamar Giles (also on Sora)

Cade Webster lives between worlds. He’s a standout football star at the right school but lives in the wrong neighborhood--if you let his classmates tell it. Everywhere but home, people are afraid of him for one reason or another. Afraid he’s too big, too fast, too ambitious, too Black. Then one fateful night, to avoid a dangerous encounter with the police, he ducks into a pawn shop. An impulse purchase and misspoken desire change everything when Cade tells the shopkeeper he wishes people would stop acting so scared around him, and the wish is granted...

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Teen & YA Mystery & Thriller Books of 2024

Twenty-four Seconds from Now by Jason Reynolds (also on Sora)

Twenty-four days ago: Neon’s mom finds her—gulp—bra in his room. Hey! No judging! Those hook thingies are complicated! So he’d figured he’d better practice, what with the big day only a month away. Twenty-four minutes ago: Neon leaves his shift at work at his dad’s bingo hall, making sure to bring some chicken tenders for Aria. They’re not candlelight and they definitely aren’t caviar, but they are her favorite. And right this second? Neon is locked in Aria’s bathroom, completely freaking out because twenty-four seconds from now he and Aria are about to…about to… Well, they won’t do anything if he can’t get out of his own head (all the advice, insecurities, and what ifs) and out of this bathroom!

An NPR 2024's "Books We Love"

A Publisher's Weekly's Best Young Adult Books of 2024

A Horn Book Fanfare - Best Books of 2024

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Teen & YA Romance Books of 2024

A School Library Journal's Best Young Adult Books 2024

Enigma Girls by Candace Fleming (also on Sora)

"You are to report to Station X at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, in four days time....That is all you need to know." This was the terse telegram hundreds of young women throughout the British Isles received in the spring of 1941, as World War II raged. As they arrived at Station X, a sprawling mansion in a state of disrepair surrounded by Spartan-looking huts with little chimneys coughing out thick smoke―these young people had no idea what kind of work they were stepping into. Who had recommended them? Why had they been chosen? Most would never learn all the answers to these questions.

A Horn Book Fanfare - Best Books of 2024

Ignacio "Iggy" Garcia is an Ohio-born Colombian American teen living his best life. After bumping into Marisol (and her coffee) at school, Iggy's world is spun around. But Marisol has too much going on to be bothered with the likes of Iggy. She has school, work, family, and the uphill battle of getting her legal papers. As Iggy stresses over how to get Marisol to like him, his grandfather comes to the rescue. The thing is, not only is his abuelito dead, but he also gives terrible love advice. The worst. And so, with his ghost abuelito's meddling, Iggy's life begins to unravel as he sets off on a journey of self-discovery.

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Teen & YA Graphic Literature Books of 2024

A School Library Journal's Best Graphic Novels of 2024

A Booklist's Best Books of the Year

Thirsty by Jas Hammonds (also on Sora)

It’s the summer before college and 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 but 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 . . .

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Teen & YA Books of 2024 on Social Themes

A School Library Journal's Best Young Adult Books 2024

Safe Passage by G. Neri (Author), David Brame (Illustrator) (also on Sora)

Thirteen-year-old Darius is going through a rough time. It's almost been a year since a terrible act of violence took the life of his mother and left him with a wound both in his leg and in his heart. With his stepdad out of work; his little sister, Cissy, always on his case; and the looming prospect of foreclosure on their house, he feels his world closing in on him. But Darius's best friend, Booger, has a plan. A Brinks armored truck has crashed on a nearby highway and money is blowing everywhere. If they can get across town and back safely, they just might get rich!

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Teen & YA Graphic Literature Books of 2024

A Chicago Public Library’s Best Books of 2024

You need to work to live. That’s the truth for most people, and plenty of people in power have been abusing that truth for centuries. Long before the first labor unions were formed, workers still knew what exploitation looked like. It looked like the enslavement of Black people. It looked like generations of children dying in dangerous jobs. It looked like wealthy people hiring private militaries to attack their employees. Shift Happens is a smart, funny, and engaging look at the history of the worker actions that brought us weekends, pay equality, desegregation, an end to child labor, and so much more.

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Teen & YA Nonfiction Books of 2024

Calvin knows how to pass for white. He's done it plenty of times before. This is different. After a tragedy in Chicago forces the family to flee, they resettle in an idyllic all-white suburban town in search of a better life. Calvin's father wants everyone to embrace their new white lifestyles, but it's easier said than done. Hiding your true self is exhausting -- which leads Calvin across town where he can make friends who know all of him...and spend more time with his new crush, Lily. But when Calvin starts unraveling dark secrets about the white town and its inhabitants, passing starts to feel even more suffocating--and dangerous--than he could have imagined.

A School Library Journal's Best Young Adult Books of 2024

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Young Adult Books of 2024

Everyone has secrets. Mags’s has teeth. Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there’s her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out -- like it did once before. But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight, and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Teen & YA Graphic Literature Books of 2024

A Publisher's Weekly's Best Young Adult Books of 2024

Email: kgleason@minuteman.org & jjachowicz@minuteman.org

Website: https://minutemanhs.libguides.com/mediacenter
Location: Minuteman High School, 758 Marrett Road Lexington, MA 02421
Phone: 781-372-2879