The Danger Of Silence By Clint Smith (Grades 10+)

In his powerful TED Talk “The Danger of Silence,” poet and educator Clint Smith urges us to recognize the cost of staying silent in the face of injustice. Drawing from personal experience and social history, Smith argues that silence is not merely the absence of speech—it is a form of complicity. With measured intensity and poetic rhythm, he reflects on moments when he failed to speak up and how those moments shaped his understanding of responsibility. Smith challenges his audience to reconsider how they use their voice, emphasizing that speaking truth—even when it is uncomfortable—is an act of courage and necessary change. The talk is a call to action: to listen more carefully, think more critically, and speak more honestly. Smith uses the tools of poetry to convey a powerful message and illustrates how our language, the way we shape our words, shapes our world.

The Poet X By Elizabeth Acevedo (Grades 7-9)

Elizabeth Acevedo resides in Washington, DC and is a National Poetry Slam Champion. She is the Young People’s Poet Laureate and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook. With Mami’s determination to force Xiomara to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. However, in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

Whoo-ku Haiku: A Great Horned Owl Story By Maria Gianferrari and Jonathan Voss (Grades 4-6)

Stunning illustrations and gorgeous haikus lead young readers through the dramatic life cycle of one of America's most beloved wild animals. Pip. Pip. Pip. Poking A hole. Cracking. Cracking. Out Pecks the white owlet. Watch as a pair of great horned owlets peep and squeak in their feathered nest. Mama and Papa hunt for food and fend off predators while the chicks grow strong enough to hop and flap between the branches of their tree, then leap and fly away, ready to explore the wild world around them.

Monster Hands By Karen Kane, Jonaz McMillan, and Dion MBD (Grades 1-3)

When you first read MONSTER HANDS, you may not think it's a poem. Certainly not a rhyming poem. And it doesn't rhyme in spoken English--it rhymes in ASL, American Sign Language! In ASL rhymes are created when two words are signed using similar hand movements and rhythms. As the characters in the story create shadow puppets with their hands to scare away a spooky monster, they are also making ASL rhymes!

I Am a Body of Land By Shannon Webb-Campbell (Grades 10+)

Shannon Webb-Campbell is a Canadian writer, poet, and editor, descended from the Miꞌkmaq people of the Qalipu First Nation in Newfoundland. In I Am a Body of Land, she explores poetic responsibility and accountability, using poetry to reimagine and rethink the world. These poems focus on decolonizing, healing, and unlearning harm. Webb-Campbell’s confessional writing questions her settler-Indigenous identity, her sense of belonging, and her desire to connect with community through love and understanding.

In Praise of Mystery By Ada Limon (Grades 7-9)

Ada Limón is the 24th poet-laureate of the United States. She is the first Latina ever to hold this post. Her poem, In Praise of Mystery is engraved on the Europa Clipper spacecraft, launched in October 2024 by NASA to explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa.

Other Words for Home By Jasmine Warga (Grades 4-6)

Jasmine Warga is an American author of books for children and young adults. Her free verse book Other Words for Home received an award in 2020. Other Words for Home tells the story of 12 year old Jude and her mother immigrating to America from Syria, leaving the rest of her family and friends behind.

I Listen By Janet Wong (Grades 1-3)

Janet Wong is an American author of over thirty books for kids and teens. Her personal motto is "Be the Good" and her poem, I Listen, is gentle and comforting for kids who wake up afraid at night.

The Berry Pickers By Amanda Peters (Grades 10+)

Amanda Peters is a descendent of a revolutionary war sailor of Mi'kmaq ancestors, a Canadian, a reader of books, a teller of stories, and the author of The Berry Pickers. A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine. She is last seen sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. She is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this hunch as well as something her parents aren't telling her.

Spring By Yone Noguchi (Grades 7-9)

Yone Noguchi’s poem Spring captures the delicate beauty and ephemeral nature of the season. Through vivid imagery and lyrical language, the poem evokes a sense of renewal, joy, and the fleeting essence of springtime. Noguchi, known for his ability to blend Japanese aesthetics with Western poetic forms, uses nature as a central theme, celebrating the blooming flowers, gentle breezes, and the awakening of life. The poem’s tone is both serene and uplifting, inviting readers to embrace the season’s wonders. Spring reflects Noguchi’s deep appreciation for nature’s transient beauty, echoing themes found in traditional haiku and Japanese poetry.

Ten-Word Tiny Tales: To Inspire and Unsettle By Joseph Coelho (Grades 4-6)

Joseph Coelho is a master of rhythm and rhyme. He inspires and invites his young audiences to participate in the magic of english language through in his poems. In this little book, Coelho, collets 10 word stories to spark your imagination. It is a beautiful and interactive book to get your writer juices going. The same way Spring brings new beginnings and offers infinite possibilities, Ten-Word Tiny-Tales challenges you to create new stories and let your imagination soar.

A Magical Sturgeon By Joseph A. Dandurand & Elinor Atkins (Grades 1-3)

A Magical Sturgeon tells the story of two sisters who form a special bond with nature. The story begins with a sturgeon in the river, an ancient creature that has witnessed the passage of time. When the sisters disobey their mother's instructions, they meet the sturgeon, the spirit of the great river. Through their adventure, the book explores sharing, kinship, and our deep connection with all living things.
A Magical Sturgeon features illustrations by Elinor Atkins, an Indigenous artist from the Kwantlen First Nation, and is written by Joseph Dandurand, a member of the Kwantlen First Nation.

Boy, Snow, Bird By Helen Oyeyemi (Grade 10+)

Helen Oyeyemi is a Nigerian-born British novelist whose writing career began while she was still in secondary school. She has won multiple awards for her writing, including a Somerset Maughm Award and the PEN Open Book Award. Boy, Snow,Bird is the tale of a strange and fateful connection between three women in Flax Hill, Massachusetts. It's themes of race, passing and the mythologies of modern life are woven into a captivating tale of complex relationships.

Walking in Two Worlds By Wab Kinew (Grades 7-9)

In the real world, Bugz is a shy and self-conscious Indigenous teen who faces the stresses of teenage angst and reserve life. But in the virtual world, her alter ego is not just confident but dominant in a massively multiplayer video game universe.

Feng is a teen boy who has been sent from China to live with his aunt, a doctor on the reserve, after his online activity suggests he may be developing extremist sympathies. Meeting each other in real life, as well as in the virtual world, Bugz and Feng immediately relate to each other as outsiders and as avid gamers. And as their connection is strengthened through their virtual adventures, they find that they have much in common in the real world, too: both must decide what to do in the face of temptations and pitfalls, and both must grapple with the impact of family and community trauma.

But betrayal threatens everything Bugz has built in the virtual world, as well as her relationships in the real world, and it will take all her newfound strength to restore her friendship with Feng and reconcile the parallel aspects of her life: the traditional and the mainstream, the east and the west, the real and the virtual.

Lost at Windy River By Trina Rathgeber, Alina Pete and Jillian Dolan (Grades 4-6)

It takes courage and bravery to survive in the barrens

In 1944, thirteen-year-old Ilse Schweder got lost in a snowstorm while checking her family's trapline in northern Canada. This is the harrowing story of how a young Indigenous girl defies the odds and endures nine days alone in the unforgiving barrens. Ilse faces many challenges, including freezing temperatures, wild animals, snow blindness and frostbite. With no food or supplies, she relies on Traditional Indigenous Knowledge passed down from her family. Ilse uses her connection to the land and animals, wilderness skills and resilience to find her way home.

This powerful tale of survival is written by Ilse Schweder's granddaughter.

When We Gather (Ostadahlisiha): A Cherokee Tribal Feast By Andrea L. Rogers (Grades 1-3)

Andrea L. Rogers is an award-winning Cherokee author of historical and contemporary fiction who grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When We Gather (Ostadahlisiha): A Cherokee Tribal Feast talks about a Cherokee girl who hunts for green onions with her family in preperation for a feast to welcome spring.

The Ballad of Black Tom By Victor LaValle (Grades 10+)

The dedication to Victor LaValle's Shirley Jackson Award-winning novella The Ballad of Black Tom reads, "For H.P. Lovecraft, with all my conflicted feelings". Lovecraft casts a long shadow over horror and fantasy literature, influencing nearly every genre writer that came after him. He was also a white-supremacist, a fact that infects all of his work, and his writing has faced something a reckoning in recent years. Some of this response has been in the form of other novels, as in Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country and in this novel, which interrogates Lovecraft's racism and inverts those tropes, all while capturing the eerie awfulness of his horrifying imagination.

The Everlasting Road By Wab Kinew (Grades 7-9)

Devastated by the loss of her older brother to cancer, Bugz returns to the place where she can always find solace and strength: the Floraverse. Over the past year, she has regained her position of power in that virtual world, and while the remaining Clan:LESS members still plot against her, she is easily able to overcome their attacks. Even better, she's been secretly working on a bot that will be both an incredible weapon and a source of comfort: Waawaate.

With the Waawaate bot looking exactly like the brother she misses so much — even acting like him — Bugz feels ready to show him off to Feng, who has become a constant companion in the 'Verse. She cannot wait to team up with both friend and bot to secure her dominance once and for all. But Feng has his own issues to deal with, especially when news that his parents are alive and want to contact him threatens to send his new life on the Rez into upheaval.

As they work through their complicated feelings of grief and loss, Feng and Bugz find themselves becoming ever closer. But disturbances in the Floraverse cannot be ignored, especially when Bugz realizes that her Waawaate bot is growing in powers beyond her control . . .

Indigenous Ingenuity By Deidre Havrelock, Edward Kay (Grades 4-6)

Corn. Chocolate. Fishing hooks. Boats that float. Insulated double-walled construction. Recorded history and folklore. Life-saving disinfectant. Forest fire management. Our lives would be unrecognizable without these, and countless other, scientific discoveries and technological inventions from Indigenous North Americans. Spanning topics from transportation to civil engineering, hunting technologies, astronomy, brain surgery, architecture, and agriculture, Indigenous Ingenuity is a wide-ranging STEM offering that answers the call for Indigenous nonfiction by reappropriating hidden history. The book includes fun, simple activities and experiments that kids can do to better understand and enjoy the principles used by Indigenous inventors. Readers of all ages are invited to celebrate traditional North American Indigenous innovation, and to embrace the mindset of reciprocity, environmental responsibility, and the interconnectedness of all life.

So Loud By Sahar Golshan (Grades 1-3)

A wonderful story about a young girl discovering the power of her voice, and how it's alright for girls to be SO LOUD! like howling huskies and roaring lions. In this moment, we see the girl comparing her voice to a river on Norooz, the Irānian New Year, celebrated on the first day of Spring.

Sahar Golshan is a writer based in Mississauga, Ontario. She is the 2022 winner of the Marina Nemat Award for Creative Writing in Non-Fiction and received the 2019 Air Canada Short Film Award for her short documentary KAR.