YA Native American Heritage Month Reads

Books found in the Young Adult collection that highlight the Native American experience. YA novels are made up of books for a wide age range (12-18 years old) and includes a variety of different topics and interests. Not all titles will be appropriate for all readers*

Showing 1 - 20 of 27  There are a total of 44 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian"
Star rating for The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Book cover for "Apple"
Star rating for Apple
Description:
Author and visual artist "Eric Gansworth is telling his 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 and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking"--Publisher...
Book cover for "Code talker"
Star rating for Code talker
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become code talkers, sending messages in their native tongue during World War II.
Book cover for "A constellation of minor bears"
Star rating for A constellation of minor bears
Description:
"Before that awful Saturday, Molly used to be inseparable from her brother Hank and his best friend Tray. The indoor climbing accident that left Hank with a traumatic brain injury filled Molly with anger. While she knows the accident wasn't Tray's fault, she will never forgive him for being there and failing to stop the damage. But she can't forgive herself for not being there, either. Determined to go on the trio's postgraduation hike of the Pacific...
Book cover for "Dreaming in Indian"
Star rating for Dreaming in Indian
Description:
A powerful and visually stunning anthology from some of the most groundbreaking Native artists working in North America today.
Book cover for "Elatsoe"
Star rating for Elatsoe
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"Imagine an America very similar to our own. It's got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should...
Book cover for "The everlasting road"
Star rating for The everlasting road
Series:
Description:
"Devastated by the loss of her beloved older brother to cancer, Bugz returns to the place where she can always find solace and strength: the Floraverse. Over the past year, she has gained back all that she had lost in that virtual world, and while the remaining ClanLess members still plot against her, she is easily able to overcome their attacks. Even better, she's been secretly working on a bot that will be both an incredible weapon and a source...
Book cover for "Everything you wanted to know about Indians but were afraid to ask"
Star rating for Everything you wanted to know about Indians but were afraid to ask
Description:
A "book of questions and answers for Native and non-Native young readers alike. Ranging from 'Why is there such a fuss about nonnative people wearing Indian costumes for Halloween?' to 'Why is it called a traditional Indian fry bread taco?' to 'What's it like for Natives who don't look Native?' to 'Why are Indians so often imagined rather than understood?' and beyond, [this book] does exactly what its title says for young readers"--Publisher marketing....
Book cover for "Firekeeper's daughter"
Star rating for Firekeeper's daughter
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
Daunis, who's part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.
Book cover for "Funeral songs for dying girls"
Star rating for Funeral songs for dying girls
Description:
"Funeral Songs For Dying Girls is a young adult novel about an Indigenous girl who lives on the grounds of a cemetery with her widowed father."--
Book cover for "Give me some truth"
Star rating for Give me some truth
Description:
In 1980 life is hard on the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York, and most of the teenagers feel like they are going nowhere: Carson Mastick dreams of forming a rock band, and Maggi Bokoni longs to create her own conceptual artwork instead of the traditional beadwork that her family sells to tourists--but tensions are rising between the reservation and the surrounding communities, and somehow in the confusion of politics and growing up Carson...
Book cover for "Hearts unbroken"
Star rating for Hearts unbroken
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
When Louise Wolfe's boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. She'd rather spend her senior year with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, an ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper's staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director's inclusive approach to casting The...
Book cover for "Hunting by stars"
Star rating for Hunting by stars
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
French has been captured by the Recruiters, confined to one of the infamous residential schools, where the government extracts the marrow of Indigenous people in order to steal the ability to dream, and where the captured are programmed to betray others of their kind, something which he discovers has been done to his brother; meanwhile the other survivors, his found family, are hunting for him, determined to rescue him--and French has to decide just...
Book cover for "An indigenous peoples' history of the United States for young people"
Star rating for An indigenous peoples' history of the United States for young people
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"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. The original academic text is fully adapted by renowned curriculum experts Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza, for middle-grade and young adult readers to include discussion topics,...
Book cover for "Indiginerds"
Star rating for Indiginerds
Description:
"First Nations culture is living, vibrant, and evolving, and generations of Indigenous kids have grown up with pop culture creeping inexorably into our lives. From gaming to social media, pirate radio to garage bands, Star Trek to D&D, and missed connections at the pow wow, Indigenous culture is so much more than how it's usually portrayed. INDIGNERDS is here to celebrate those stories!"--
Book cover for "Killer of enemies"
Star rating for Killer of enemies
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"In a world that has barely survived an apocalypse that leaves it with pre-twentieth century technology, Lozen is a monster hunter for four tyrants who are holding her family hostage"--
Book cover for "The marrow thieves"
Star rating for The marrow thieves
Series:
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Description:
In a future world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's indigenous population--and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow--and dreams--means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a 15-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite...
Book cover for "Name your mountain"
Star rating for Name your mountain
Author:
Series:
No Name volume 5.
Description:
Name Your Mountain continues the exciting No Name series as the high-school team matures and faces new challenges. When the all American Indian high-school basketball team in Trust Your Name enters a national-level tournament, the team travels to big cities and has new experiences, but all is not well. Choctaw Bobby Byington and his new Creek friend, Eddie, are torn between struggles on the court and painful episodes back home. With the door of adulthood...
Book cover for "Peacemaker"
Star rating for Peacemaker
Description:
"A twelve-year-old Iroquois boy rethinks his calling after witnessing the arrival of a mystical figure with a message of peace in this historical novel based on the creation of the Iroquois Confederacy"--
Book cover for "Rain is not my Indian name"
Star rating for Rain is not my Indian name
Description:
"It's been six months since Cassidy Rain Berghoff's best friend, Galen, died, and up until now she has succeeded in shutting herself off from the world. But when controversy arises around Aunt Georgia's Indian Camp in their mostly white midwestern community, Rain decides to face the outside world again, with a new job photographing the campers for her town's newspaper. Soon, Rain has to decide how involved she wants to become in Indian Camp. Does...