Books Too Good to Miss for Older Readers

Nancy Brashear and Carolyn Angus 
Here is a baker’s dozen of our favorite books for older readers published in 2025 that did not receive Children’s Literature and Reading reviews—books we would like to see added to middle school and high school library collections. 

Away (Alone #2). Megan E. Freeman. (2025). Aladdin. 
In this companion to Alone (2021), the entire community of Redhawk, Colorado, is rounded up overnight because of “imminent threat.” Herded onto trains and with phones confiscated, they are transported to Camp Rogers, an evacuation center with armed guards. It is there that four young people (ages 11 to 14) meet, their suspicions melding them into an investigative group searching for the truth, especially after the governor’s Council for Displaced Coloradans pressures their families to sell their homes. As evidenced through their multiple points of view augmented by introspective free-verse poetry, film scenes scripts, journal articles, letters, radio broadcast transcripts, newsletters, camper interviews, and incident command advisories, they uncover an unimaginable conspiracy and devise an ingenious scheme to save their families, city, and state. (Gr 6-8) 

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Bold Words from Black Men: Insights and Reflections from 50 Notable Trailblazers Who Influenced the World (The Bold Words #2). Tamara Pizzoli. Illus. by Desire Cesar “El’Cesart” Ngabo. (2025). Denene Millner. 
In this companion to Bold Words from Black Women (2022), Pizzoli spotlights 50 Black men from a variety of backgrounds and experiences including Olivier Rousteing, Nelson Mandela, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Jesse Owens. Each inspiring entry includes a digitally-created portrait of the person on either the recto or verso page of a colorful double spread with his quotation in bold print, brief biographical information, and a statement about the quote on the opposing page. The final double spread cements the book’s message with the words “BELIEVE IN BLACK MEN” in bright orange against a vivid turquoise background. (introduction) (Gr 6 Up) 

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The Corruption of Hollis Brown. K. Acrum. (2025). Harper.
In this novel-in-verse horror story, troubled 17-year-old Hollis Brown, who feels trapped in dead-end rural and haunted Rose Town, encounters Walt Eidelman, a 100-year-old ghost from the 1900s who has body-hopped into more than 200 people over the decades. Before Walt possesses Hollis’s body and moves into his mind, they make a deal: Hollis gets a personality “do-over” from Walt, and the ghost-visitor gets a safe place to “ride” inside him. The boys learn to work together amidst growing romantic feelings, and, with the help of Hollis’s two best gal friends, they must find a way to break Rose Town’s curse for a better future for all. (resources for recipes in the text, author’s note) (Gr 9-12) 

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Fascinating Fungi: Nourishers, Killers, Connectors, and Healers. Karen Latchana Kenney. (2025). Twentieth-First Century. 
Kenney provides an intriguing account of the evolution of fungal organisms once classified as plants but now recognized by scientists as belonging to their own kingdom, the Fungi Kingdom. The engaging format of short chapters with interest-catching titles, informative text boxes, and captioned full-color photographs and diagrams explores the diversity of species in the fungal world. In the final chapter, “Planet Savers, Future Builders,” Kenney considers some of the possibilities of mycorestoration as scientists continue to discover ways to use fungi to help solve environmental problems and restore balance in nature. (ways to connect with mycophiles, glossary, source notes, selected bibliography, further resources, index) (Gr 6 Up) 

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How the Word Is Passed: Remembering Slavery and How It Shaped America (Young Readers Edition). Clint Smith. Adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul. (2025). Little, Brown. 
Cherry-Paul’s engaging and accessible adaptation of Smith’s How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery in America (2021) takes readers on a tour of landmarks and monuments to explore the legacy of slavery in America: Monticello Plantation, the Whitney Plantation, Angola Prison, Blandford Cemetery, Galveston Island, New York City, and Senegal’s Gorée Island. Smith’s personal account of visits to these historical sites and the conversations he had with people he met encourages reflection on how the history of enslavement in America relates to our present-day lives. (author’s note, afterword, glossary, selected sources, index) (Gr 6 Up) 

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The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze. Derrick Barnes. (2015). Viking.
Black 13-year-old Henson Blayze, a talented football player who is only an eighth grader, is recruited for Midnight High School’s varsity team of mostly white boys in Great Mountain, Mississippi. After a stellar performance during the first half of the Midnight Marauder’s opening game, Henson is outraged to learn that his ten-year-old friend, Menkah Jupiter, has been badly beaten by state troopers. When he informs the cheering crowd at halftime that he is heading to the hospital to see the boy, they turn on him. “Just. Play. BALL!” In the midst of Henson’s fall from grace, racial dynamics create high tension and a near-death experience, and his father’s revelation about the family trust and legacy forces Henson to make hard choices about his future. (author’s note) (Gr 6-8) 

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The Invisible Wild. Nikki Van De Car. (2025). Running Press Teens. 
Sixteen-year-old Emma Arruda, who lives on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, comes upon a non-sensible teen she nicknames “Hilo” living in a shack in the woods and agrees to secretly help him stay hidden. Emma realizes that she has reawakened her lost childhood gift of seeing the menehune, the legendary spirits and original island inhabitants, whose home is threatened by construction in the old forest in which they have always dwelled. When menehune leader, Koa, expresses his anger at Hilo and Emma for perceived slights against nature, he declares that the only way he will forgive them (and lift Hilo’s curse) is by their stopping the deforestation and development before the sacred land of the menehunes is destroyed—or by finding a new solution. (author’s note) (Gr 9-12) 

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The Last Bookstore on Earth. Lily Braun-Arnold. (2025). Delacorte. 
In this post-apocalyptic world, 17-year-old Liz has not left the suburban New Jersey bookstore where she worked (or its upstairs apartment) throughout the year following the acid-rain Storm that killed her family and destroyed the town, leaving it deserted and without electricity or water. Occasional travelers stop by to trade food, batteries, or other useful items for books, stories, and mail. When an intruder, Maeve, breaks into the store, Liz reluctantly lets her stay, unaware of the angry gang in pursuit of her. Using Maeve’s construction skills, they work on Liz’s repair to-do list, and, together, they raid deserted stores and homes for supplies. When the gang finds them and a second Storm hits, Liz and Maeve must use their wits to survive. (Gr 9-12) 

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Mindworks. Neal Shusterman. (2025). Simon & Schuster. 
The intriguing design of the jacket of Mindworks, “an uncanny compendium of short stories,” will grab the attention of both fans and those new to the writings of Schusterman, a master at crafting speculative fiction. The 43 short stories are organized in seven sections with equally intriguing titles: Forces of Nature; Angels, Demons, Monsters, and a Tree; The Wheel of Destiny; Attics, Basements, Windows, and Walls; The Living, the Dead, and the Undecided; I’m Not Myself Today; and You Reap What You Sow (The World of Scythe). Because of its length, moving around in Mindworks, rather than a straight-through reading, should be most satisfying. (Gr 6 Up) 

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Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us. Felice Frankel. (2025). MiTeen Press.  
Science photographer and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Frankel introduces readers to a collection of full-color photographic images related to patterns in the world around us. Phenomenal Moments includes five themed sections: light and shadow, form, traces, transformations, and surfaces. Each section includes five or six entries with two double spreads: a strip of a photograph of an object or scene and the question “What Do You See?” set against a solid-color background followed by a double-spread page with a close-up photograph and “Moment” (why and how she made the photo) and “Phenomenon” (the science involved in what you see) text boxes. (“About the Chapter Openers”) Gr 6 Up) 

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The Raven & Other Writings (Monstrous Classics Collection). Edgar Allan Poe. (2025). Aladdin.  
This collection of writings of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1848), who is best known for his classic gothic horror short stories and poems, includes 11 chilling and macabre tales (such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”) and16 poems (such as “The Raven,” “To One in Paradise, and “Annabel Lee”). Two other new books in the Monstrous Classics Collection were published simultaneously: Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow & Other Stories and Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera.”  (Gr 6 Up) 

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(S)kin. Ibi Zoboi. (2025). Versify. 
Inspired by Caribbean magical folklore, (S)kin, a fantasy-in-verse told through the first-person points of view of two teens in alternating chapters, entwines the fates of Black 15-year-old Marisol (and her mother, Lourdes), poor recent immigrants from Haiti, and 17-year-old Genevieve (and her father—a professor of the occult, stepmother, and twin baby half-siblings) in Brooklyn. Marisol and Lourdes come from a proud ancestral line of soucouyants (skin-shedding, flying fireball witches who sip on the life force of their victims); Genevieve, whose biological mother was a Black woman, lives with her privileged White family and battles daily against burning skin. After Lourdes and her daughter move into Genevieve’s home to help with the babies, dark secrets are exposed, fiery nights and revenge explode, and the girls literally get to see the world through each other’s eyes. (author’s note) (Gr 9-12) 

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Who Owns the Moon?: And Other Conundrums of Exploring and Using Space. Cynthia Levinson & Jennifer Swanson. (2025). Margaret Quinlin. 
Levinson and Swanson address a series of intriguing questions such as “Why go back to the Moon now?” and “So how can people govern themselves and others to maintain peace and order there?” The format of the narrative text with informative insets and text boxes accompanied by a wealth of captioned photographs and diagrams offers readers a timely and accessible history of space exploration and the present-day conundrums related to new technologies to get to the Moon and how to govern activity in space as well as opportunities for space-related careers. (acronyms, authors’ note, picture credits, source notes, further resources, bibliography, index) (Gr 6 Up) 

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Nancy Brashear is Professor Emeritus of English at Azusa Pacific University, in Azusa, California. Carolyn Angus is former Director of the George G. Stone Center for Children’s Books, Claremont Graduate University, in Claremont, California.