Kirkus Prize: 2018 Young Readers' Literature Finalists

The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo

The 2018 finalists are:

The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo:

Xiomara is fifteen, a sophomore, a twin, the daughter of Dominican immigrants. She’s an unwilling attendee of confirmation class, an aspiring poet, a girl who is beginning to find that the expectations and restrictions and assumptions laid on her shoulders—by her mother, her church, her peers, by societal culture—don’t just chafe: they restrict, squeeze, confine.

She’s angry, scared, yearning.

Her mouth is quiet but her heart and mind are clamoring to be heard. (Full review.)

Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi

Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, by Derrick Barnes, illustrated by Gordon C. James

Merci Suárez Changes Gears, by Meg Medina

Dreamers, by by Yuyi Morales

Harbor Me, by Jacqueline Woodson