Description: Oak Knoll, a tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood. Professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who is headed to college in the fall. Then the Whitmans buy the property next door. They are a family with new money and a secretly troubled teenage daughter. They raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace. The two families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers. What does it mean to be a good neighbor?

Description: Paloma Marquez is traveling to Mexico City, birthplace of her deceased father, for the very first time. She's hoping that spending time in Mexico will help her unlock memories of the too-brief time they spent together. While in Mexico, Paloma meets Lizzie and Gael, who present her with an irresistible challenge: The siblings want her to help them find a valuable ring that once belonged to beloved Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Finding the ring means a big reward -- and the thanks of all Mexico. What better way to honor her father than returning a priceless piece of jewelry that once belonged to his favorite artist!

Description: Sidney and Asher should have clicked. Two star swimmers forced to spend their summers on a lake together sounds like the perfect match. But, it's the same every year -- in between cookouts and boat rides and family-imposed bonfires, Sidney and Asher spend the dog days of summer finding the ultimate ways to prank each other. And now, after their senior year, they're determined to make it the most epic summer yet. But, their plans are thrown in sudden jeopardy when their feud causes their families to be kicked out of their beloved lake houses. Once in their new accommodations, Sidney expects the prank war to continue as usual. But then she gets a note -- Meet me at midnight. And Asher has a proposition for her: join forces for one last summer of epic pranks, against a shared enemy -- the woman who kicked them out. Their truce should make things simpler, but six years of tormenting one another isn't so easy to ignore. Kind of like the undeniable attraction growing between them.

Description: Pan's life used to be very small. Work in her dad's body shop, sneak out with her friend Tara to go dancing, and watch the skies for freighter ships. It didn't even matter that Tara was a princess... until one day it very much did matter, and Pan had to say goodbye forever. Years later, when a charismatic pair of off-world gladiators show up on her doorstep, she finds that life may not be as small as she thought. On the run and off the galactic grid, Pan discovers the astonishing secrets of her neo-medieval world... and the intoxicating possibility of burning it all down.

Description: In this deeply inspiring book, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi recount their experiences talking to people from all walks of life about race and identity on a cross-country tour of America. Spurred by the realization that they had nearly completed high school without hearing any substantive discussion about racism in school, the two young women deferred college admission for a year to collect first-person accounts of how racism plays out in this country every day--and often in unexpected ways.

Review: Tell Me Who You Are is a travelogue with an equity and social justice lens written in a format very similar to the Humans of New York project. The collection is inspiring, jarring, and eye opening, but written in a very approachable and readable format. Before starting college, the young authors Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi spent a gap year traveling across the country asking one hundred and fifty people the same question: “How has race, culture, or intersectionality impacted your life?” Intersectionality means the overlapping parts of one's identity which includes their race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ability, age, and physical appearance. Each response includes the interviewee's picture along with their answer and an eloquent, insightful commentary from the authors as well as footnotes and definitions that will help the reader understand the context of the interviewee's response. The book covers a wide range of responses from those who have dealt with some type of ostracism from society due to that individual's identity. Some of the eye-opening chapters include individuals who genuinely believe racism does not exist and those who encountered virulent racism. Another revealing chapter is a Japanese woman who recanted her family's experience in living at an internment camp and accepting that was the way of their life instead of challenging or fighting it. I also very much appreciated the numerous voices of indigenous people's who are often forgotten and ignored.