Kindred by Octavia Butler (Grades 7-9)

Octavia Butler is widely regarded as one of the best and most influential science fiction authors of all time, and yet remains relatively unknown by the general public. She won multiple Nebula and Hugo awards, and wrote the mind-bending "Patternist" series and "Lilith's Brood" series. Perhaps her best known work is 1979's Kindred, which follows Dana, a black woman living in 1970s United States, when she uncontrollably and unexplainedly travels backward in time to the 19th century, where she is her own ancestor's slave. The story digs deeply into the complex historical reality of slavery, and its echoes in the modern day. It is both thrilling and deeply affecting.

Butler died far too young in 2006, but her legacy as a prominent writer of science fiction at a time when neither women nor people of colour were common in the field can not be overstated.