Celebrate Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month by reading young adult books written by contemporary APA YA authors! You can also go to APA Heritage Month to learn more.
YA Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Compiled by:
Jen H
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Tahir)
A family extending from Pakistan to California deals with generations of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Courtne)
Sixteen-year-old Allie, aged seven when she knew her family was different and feared, struggles to claim her Muslim and Arabic heritage while finding her place as an American teenager.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Pan)
The only things keeping Hunter from running away are his little brother, a supernatural wind, and the girl at his new high school. Luna finds her life upended by the new boy in her class, the arrival of unearthly fireflies, and an ominous crack spreading across town.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Dao)
Elva must learn to wield her magical powers in a town that fears all witches while righting her family's past wrongs before it's too late.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lai)
A Vietnam War refugee in Texas partners with a city boy with rodeo dreams to track down the younger brother she was separated from six years before when he was evacuated by American troops during the waning days of the Vietnam War.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Nazemia)
At Chandler, the elite boarding school, five teens are brought together in the Circle, a coveted writing group where life-changing friendships are born--and secrets are revealed. Their professor tells them to write their truths. But is the truth enough to change the long-standing culture of abuse at Chandler? And can their friendship survive the fallout?
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Yoon)
This imaginative and affecting new novel is beloved, bestselling, and award-winning author David Yoon at his finest: thought-provoking and heart-piercing, by turns funny and challenging, and at all times deeply human
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Menon)
Told in two voices, Jaya Rao, an East Indian princess, and Grey Emerson, an English lord, suffer the effects of a centuries-old feud when they meet at an elite Colorado boarding school.
(Juvenile Fiction - J Lee)
Min, a girl with fox-magic, stows away on a battle cruiser and impersonates a cadet in order to solve the mystery of what happened to her older brother in the Thousand World Space Forces.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Nayeri)
At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls "Daniel") stands, trying to tell a story. his story. But no one believes a word he says. Khosrou's stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Jaigird)
Everyone likes Humaira 'Hani' Khan. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they invalidate her identity. Panicked, Hani blurts out that she's in a relationship, with a girl her friends absolutely hate. Ishu is the complete opposite of Hani, an academic overachiever who hopes that becoming head girl will set her on the right track for college. But Ishita agrees to help Hani, if Hani will help her become more popular so that she stands a chance of being elected head girl.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Hiranan)
Middle schooler Ariel Goldberg's life changes when her big sister elopes following the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, and she's forced to grapple with both her family's prejudice and the antisemitism she experiences as she defines her own beliefs.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lee)
Skye Shin has heard it all. Fat girls shouldn't dance. Shouldn't wear bright colors. Shouldn't call attention to themselves. But Skye dreams of joining the glittering world of K-Pop, and to do that, she's about to break all the rules that society, the media, and even her own mother, have set for girls like her.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Khorram)
On boy band Kiss & Tell's first major tour, lead singer Hunter Drake grapples with a painful breakup with his first boyfriend, his first rebound, and the stress of what it means to be queer in the public eye.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lo)
Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Wen)
When Ever Wong's parents sent her away for the summer, she's expecting Chien Tan: a strict, educational immersion program in Taiwan. Instead, she finds the infamous "Loveboat." But summer will end and Ever will be back to her parents and the future they've planned for her. Will she let this glimpse of freedom go - or will Loveboat give her the courage to pursue the future she dreams of, and the Ever Wong she wants to be?
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Ahmed)
Told in alternating narratives that bridge centuries, this story traces the lives of two young women fighting to write their own stories and escape the pressure of familial burdens and cultural expectations in worlds too long defined by men.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Cho)
Instead of going to prom, seventeen-year-old Elena Soo wants to spend her time saving the local community center, and she is determined to keep her priorities straight even when her childhood best friend--who is now a K-pop superstar--returns to make good on their old pact to go to prom together.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y He)
In a near future when life is harsh outside of Earth's last unpolluted place, Cee tries to leave an abandoned island while her sister, STEM prodigy Kasey, seeks escape from the science and home she once trusted.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Ribay)
When seventeen-year-old Jay Reguero learns his Filipino cousin and former best friend, Jun, was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, he flies to the Philippines to learn more.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Yee)
F. C. Yee's The Rise of Kyoshi delves into the story of Kyoshi, the Earth Kingdom-born Avatar, mapping her journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice who is still feared and admired centuries after she became the Avatar.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Kagawa)
Yumeko has trained all her life to hide her yokai nature. Half kitsune, half human, her skill with illusion is matched only by her penchant for mischief. Until the day her home is burned to the ground, her adoptive family is brutally slain and she is forced to flee for her life with the temple's greatest treasure--one part of the ancient scroll.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lu)
The Karensa Federation has conquered a dozen countries, leaving Mara as one of the last free nations in the world. Refugees flee to its borders to escape a fate worse than death. Robbed of her voice and home, Talin Kanami knows first hand the brutality of the Federation. But when a mysterious prisoner is brought from the front, Talin senses there's more to him than meets the eye.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Goo)
Told from two viewpoints, teens Lucky, a very famous K-pop star, and Jack, a part-time paparazzo who is trying to find himself, fall for each other against the odds through the course of one stolen day.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Gong)
In 1926 Shanghai, eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, heir of the Scarlet Gang, and her first love-turned-rival Roma Montagov, leader of the White Flowers, must work together when mysterious deaths threaten their city.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Chee)
When a girl who's never longed for adventure is hit with a curse that begins to transform her into a demon, she embarks on a quest to reverse the curse and return to her normal life, but along the way is forced to confront her true power within.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Han)
Lara Jean writes love letters to all the boys she has loved and then hides them in a hatbox until one day those letters are accidentally sent.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Mafi)
A year after 9/11, Muslim teenager Shirin has completely withdrawn from social life, until she meets Ocean James in her biology class and is tempted to actually let her guard down.
(Juvenile Fiction - J Kelly)
Cash, Fitch, and Bird are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the country waits expectantly for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties. The siblings exist in their own orbits, circling a tense and unpredictable household, with little in common except an enthusiastic science teacher. When launch day finally arrives, it changes all of their lives and brings them together in unexpected ways
Graphic Novels
(Graphic Novels - GN 741.5092 Ha)
Growing up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn't always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together. So when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation--following her mother's announcement that she's getting married--Robin is devastated.
(Graphic Novels - GN 741.5092 Yang)
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.
(Graphic Novels - GN Becker Himawari House)
When Nao returns to Tokyo to reconnect with her Japanese heritage, she books a yearlong stay at the Himawari sharehouse.
(Juvenile Graphic Novels - J-GN Chanani)
A mysterious jukebox, old vinyl records, and cryptic notes on music history, are Shaheen's only clues to her father's abrupt disappearance. When the girls are pulled from their era and transported to another time, the jukebox sends them through decade after decade of music history, from political marches to landmark concerts. But can they find Shaheen's dad before the music stops?
(Graphic Novels - GN Trung Magic Fish)
It's hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tié̂n, he doesn't even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he's going through? Is there a way to tell them he's gay?
(Graphic Novels - GN Monstress v. 1)
Monstress tells the epic story of Maika Halfwolf, a teenage survivor of a cataclysmic war between humans and their hated enemies, the Arcanics.
(Graphic Novels - GN 741.5092 Satrapi Sat)
In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to 14, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq.
(Juvenile Graphic Novels - J GN Yee Seance Tea Party)
After watching her circle of friends seemingly fade away, Lora is determined to still have fun on her own, so when a tea party leads Lora to discovering Alexa, the ghost that haunts her house, they soon become best friends.
(Graphic Novels - GN 791.4392 Takei Tak)
A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II.