YA National Native American Heritage Month

These books honor the contributions of the world's Indigenous peoples—the descendants of a given region's original inhabitants—and the cultural heritage with which they continue to identify. As a way to engage with authentic representations of the Indigenous cultures of the United States, these great titles feature Native American characters, authors, and stories.


Compiled by:
Fern S. & Sam O.
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls

Cherie Dimaline
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Dimalin)

Winifred has lived in the apartment above the cemetery office with her father, who works in the crematorium, all of her life—close to her mother's grave. Her habit of wandering the graveyard at all hours has started a rumor that Winterson Cemetery might be haunted. Now that the ghost tours have started, Winifred just might be able to save her father's job and the only home she's ever known. But when Phil, an actual ghost of a teen girl who lived and died in the ravine next to the cemetery, starts showing up, Winifred begins to question everything she believes about life, love, and death.


Godly Heathens

H.E. Edgmon
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Edgmon)

Gem Echols hides their mental health challenges and mysterious dreams in the small town of Gracie, Georgia, but when a newcomer reveals a shocking claim of being reincarnated gods together, Gem's life takes a perilous turn as they embark on a deadly adventure, where their past and present collide.


Harvest House

Cynthia Leitich Smith
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Smith)

Halloween is near, and Hughie Wolfe is volunteering at a new rural attraction: Harvest House. He's excited to take part in the fun, spooky show—until he learns that an actor playing the vengeful spirit of an "Indian maiden," a ghost inspired by local legend, will be the star of the show. Folklore aside, unusual things have been happening at night at the crossroads near Harvest House.


Killer of Enemies

Joseph Bruchac
(Young Adult Fiction – Y Bruchac)

In a world that has barely survived an apocalypse that leaves it with pre-20th century technology, Lozen is a monster hunter for four tyrants who are holding her family hostage.


Looking for Smoke

K.A. Cobell
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Cobell)

When local girl Loren includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor Loren's missing sister, Mara thinks she'll finally make some friends on the Blackfeet reservation. Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered. Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation.


The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry

Anna Rose Johnson
(Juvenile Fiction - J Johnson)

Lucy, a spirited French-Ojibwe orphan, is sent to the stormy waters of Lake Superior to live with a mysterious family of lighthouse keepers, and—she hopes—to find the legendary necklace her father spent his life seeking.


Man Made Monsters

Andrea L. Rogers
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Rogers)

Haunting illustrations are woven throughout these horror stories that follow one extended Cherokee family across the centuries and well into the future as they encounter predators of all kinds in each time period.


Mascot

Charles Waters, Traci Sorell
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Waters)

An eighth-grade English teacher creates an assignment for her class to debate whether the school's mascot should stay or change. Now six middle schoolers—all with different backgrounds and beliefs—get involved in the contentious issue that already has everyone choosing sides and arguments getting ugly. Readers see how each student comes to new understandings about identity, tradition, and what it means to stand up for real change.


Rez Ball

Byron Graves
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Graves)

These days, Tre Brun is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake Reservation high school team—even though he can't help but be constantly gut-punched with memories of his big brother, Jaxon, who died in an accident. When Jaxon's former teammates on the varsity team offer to take Tre under their wing, he sees this as his shot to represent his Ojibwe rez all the way to their first state championship.


Saints of the Household

Ari Tison
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Tison)

When brothers Max and Jay help a classmate in trouble, they struggle with the consequences of their violent actions and worry they may be more like their abusive father than they thought, so the brothers turn to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.


School Statue Showdown

David Starr
(Young Adult Fiction – Y Starr)

When an Indigenous group demands the local schools name be changed, rifts are formed within the community and the legacies of who we honor from history are challenged.


A Snake Falls to Earth

Darcie Little Badger
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Littleb)

Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She's always felt there was something more out there. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been cast from home. Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli's best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven't been in centuries.


Strangers

David Robertson
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Roberts)

When Cole Harper returns to Wounded Sky First Nation, he finds his community in chaos—a series of murders, a mysterious illness ravaging the population, and re-emerging questions about Cole's role in the tragedy that drove him away 10 years ago.


The Summer of Bitter and Sweet

Jenny Ferguson
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Ferguso)

Lou has enough confusion in front of her this summer—she'll be working in her family's ice cream shack with her former best friend, King, who is back in their Canadian prairie town after disappearing three years ago. But, when she gets a letter from her biological father, Lou immediately knows that she cannot meet him. While King's friendship makes Lou feel safer, when her family's business comes under threat, she soon realizes that she can't ignore her father forever.


Trail of Lightning

Rebecca Roanhorse
(Science Fiction & Fantasy - SF Roanhor)

While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters. Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. 


The Unfinished

Cheryl Isaacs
(Young Adult Fiction – Y Isaacs)

When small-town athlete Avery's morning run leads her to a strange pond in the middle of the forest, she awakens a horror the townspeople of Crook's Falls have long forgotten. The black water has been waiting, watching, and hungry for the souls it needs to survive. Avery can smell the water, see it flooding everywhere; she thinks she's losing her mind. And as the black water haunts Avery, taking a new form each time, people in town begin to go missing.


Walking in Two Worlds

Wab Kinew
(Young Adult Fiction – Y Kinew)

Bugz is caught between two worlds. In the real world, she's 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 massive 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. As Bugz and Feng's connection is strengthened through their virtual adventures, they find 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.


Warrior Girl Unearthed

Angeline Boulley
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Boulley)

With the rising number of missing Indigenous women, her family's involvement in a murder investigation, and grave robbers profiting off her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry takes matters into her own hands to solve the mystery and reclaim her people's inheritance.


Where Wolves Don't Die

Anton Treuer
(Young Adult Fiction – Y Treuer)

After a terrible fight with bully Matt Schroeder, Ezra becomes the prime suspect when Matt's house burns down. Ezra is sent away to run traplines with his grandfather in a remote part of Canada while the investigation is ongoing, but the Schroeders are looking for him.


Graphic Novels
Between the Pipes

Albert McLeod
(Graphic Novels - GN Between)

Chase’s identity should be simple. He’s the goalie for his hockey team. He's Kookum's grandchild. He’s a boy. He should like girls. But it’s not that easy. With the help of an Elder and a Two-Spirit mentor, can Chase learn to be proud of who he is?


Four Faces of the Moon

Amanda Strong
(Graphic Novels - GN Strong Four Faces Of The Moon)

On a journey to uncover her family's story, Spotted Fawn travels through time and space to reclaim connection to ancestors, language, and the land—creating a path forward in this essential graphic novel.


Indiginerds: Tales from Modern Indigenous Life

Alina Pete
- editor
(Graphic Novels - GN Indiginerds)

Featuring an all-Indigenous creative team, Indiginerds is an exhilarating celebration collecting 11 stories about Indigenous people balancing traditional ways of knowing with modern pop culture.

 


Little Moons

Jen Storm
(Graphic Novels – GN Little)

It's been a year since Reanna's sister, Chelsea, went missing on her way home from school. Without any idea of what happened, Reanna and her family struggle to find closure. Left behind on the reserve, Reanna and her little brother go to live with their dad. Reanna feels lonely, abandoned, but she is not alone. Lights turn on in empty rooms, and objects move without being touched. There are little moons everywhere.


This Place: 150 Years Retold
- Various Authors
(Graphic Novels - GN This Place One Hundred Fifty Years Retold)

Explore the past 150 years through the eyes of Indigenous creators in this groundbreaking graphic novel anthology. Beautifully illustrated, these stories are an emotional and enlightening journey through Indigenous wonderworks, psychic battles, and time travel. See how Indigenous peoples have survived a post-apocalyptic world since contact.


Nonfiction
Apple: Skin to the Core

Eric Gansworth
(Adult Nonfiction - 921 Gansworth Gan)

The term "Apple" is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly "red on the outside, white on the inside." Eric Gansworth is telling his story in Apple: Skin to the Core—the story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse, prose, and imagery that truly lives up to the word "heartbreaking."


Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults

Monique Gray Smith
(Teen Nonfiction - 305.8 Kim)

Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer's best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass has been adapted for a young adult audience by children's author Monique Gray Smith, bringing Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.


Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask

Anton Treuer
(Teen Nonfiction - 970.01 Tre)

Ranging from "Why is there such a fuss about non-Native people wearing Indian costumes for Halloween?" to "What's it like for Natives who don't look Native?" and beyond, Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask does exactly what its title says for young readers—in a style consistently thoughtful, personal, and engaging. 


An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People

Jean Mendoza
(Teen Nonfiction - 970.0049 Ree)

Going beyond the story of America as a country "discovered" by a few brave men in the "New World," Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity. For middle-grade and young adult readers, it includes discussion topics, archival images, original maps, recommendations for further reading, and other materials to encourage students, teachers, and general readers to think critically about their own place in history.


Notable Native People: 50 Indigenous Leaders, Dreamers, and Changemakers from Past and Present

Adrienne Keene
(Teen Nonfiction - 920 Kee)

An accessible and educational illustrated book profiling 50 notable American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian people. Celebrate the lives, stories, and contributions of Indigenous artists, activists, scientists, athletes, and other changemakers in this illustrated collection. Also offers accessible primers on important Indigenous issues, from the legacy of colonialism and cultural appropriation to food sovereignty, land and water rights, and more.


This Indian Kid: A Native American Memoir

Eddie Chuculate
(Teen Nonfiction – 921 Chuculate Chu)

Growing up impoverished and shuttled between different households, it seemed life was bound to take a certain path for Eddie Chuculate. Despite the challenges he faced, his upbringing was rich with love and bountiful lessons from his Creek and Cherokee heritage, deep-rooted traditions he embraced even as he learned to live within the culture of white, small-town America that dominated his migratory childhood.