Color Our World - Teens

Summer Reading Program 2025 picks for Teens! Some titles will be in the Juvenile Collection and others in the Young Adult Collection. The Young Adult Collection is 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 38  There are a total of 60 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Zia erases the world"
Star rating for Zia erases the world
Author:
Description:
"Zia remembers the exact night the Shadoom arrived. One moment she was laughing with her best friends, and the next a dark room of shadows had crept into her chest. Zia has always loved words, but she can't find a real one for the fear growing inside her. How can you defeat something if you don't know its name?"--
Book cover for "Art year by year"
Star rating for Art year by year
Description:
"Are you seeking a lavishly illustrated timeline that showcases a glorious gallery of art from all around the world? Then SI Art Year By Year may be the book for you! Over 500 images of art movements such as the Renaissance, Neoclassicism, Impressionism, and Pop Art are explored and explained, accompanied by striking visual detail that truly brings the artwork to life. Further featuring biographies of the key figures behind some of the world's best-known...
Book cover for "The prince and the coyote"
Star rating for The prince and the coyote
Description:
"Fifteen-year old crown prince Acolmiztli wants nothing more than to see his city-state of Tetzcoco thrive. A singer, poet, and burgeoning philosophical mind, he has big plans about infrastructure projects and cultural initiatives that will bring honor to his family and help his people flourish. But the two sides of his family, the kingdoms of Mexico and Acolhuacan, have been at war his entire life - after his father risked the wrath of the Tepanec...

4. Spin

Book cover for "Spin"
Star rating for Spin
Description:
Sixteen-year-old Archne turns to weaving for solace, but when word spreads of her skill she is confronted by the goddess Athena and the two enter a weaving contest that results in transformation and redemption.
Book cover for "The plain Janes"
Star rating for The plain Janes
Series:
Description:
When Jane moves to the suburbs and thinks her life is over, she and three new friends form a club to make public art but are soon distracted by romance.
Book cover for "Keep dancing, Lizzie Chu"
Star rating for Keep dancing, Lizzie Chu
Author:
Description:
"Twelve-year-old Lizzie Chu has lived with her Wai Gong (grandfather) in Glasgow since her parents died when she was a baby. But Wai Gong has been acting different lately. He spends a lot of time talking to his Guan Yin statue--the Chinese goddess of compassion, kindness, and mercy--at his altar and seems to be becoming more forgetful. Even the shared passion he and Lizzie have for their favorite show, Strictly Come Dancing, seems to be tailing off....
Book cover for "Of jade and dragons"
Star rating for Of jade and dragons
Author:
Series:
Description:
After her father's murder, eighteen-year-old Aihui Ying travels to the capital, where she discusses herself as her brother and infiltrates the Engineers Guild as she tries to solve her father's murder with help from a prince with plans of his own.
Book cover for "When the vibe is right"
Star rating for When the vibe is right
Author:
Description:
"She's destined to be a great Trinidadian Carnival costume designer like her renowned uncle, Russel Messina, and will one day inherit leadership of the family's masquerade band, Grandeur. Her classmate, the popular social media influencer, Brandon Richards, is the bane of her existence. Everything about him irks her, from his annoying nickname for Tess ("Boop") to his association with David, her awful ex. But when the future of Grandeur nears the...
Book cover for "Borderless"
Star rating for Borderless
Description:
Caught in the cross hairs of gang violence, seventeen-year-old fashion designer, Maya, and her mother set off on a perilous journey from Guatemala City to the US-Mexico border.

10. Unstuck

Book cover for "Unstuck"
Star rating for Unstuck
Author:
Description:
Twelve-year-old Lyla sets out to write the perfect fantasy novel in her creative writing class, but discovers some unexpected twists and turns, both on and off the page. Includes twenty-five ways to overcome writer's block.
Book cover for "Art club"
Star rating for Art club
Description:
"After the art programs are cut at his school, Dale Donovan recruits talented artists to create an after-school art club"--
Book cover for "Wings in the wild"
Star rating for Wings in the wild
Description:
When a hurricane exposes Soleida's family's secret sculpture garden, the Cuban government arrests her artist parents, forcing her to escape alone to Central America where she meets Dariel, a Cuban American boy, and together they work to protect the environment and bring attention to the imprisoned artists in Cuba.
Book cover for "Maya plays the part"
Star rating for Maya plays the part
Author:
Description:
"A heartwarming middle-grade debut with autism representation and a musical flair. Maya lives and breathes musicals. When her chance to finally be a part of the summer musical program at the community theater comes up, Maya is convinced she will get the lead. After all, who knows The Drowsy Chaperone better than she does? However, things don't turn out exactly the way Maya's planned, and the summer turns out to be jam-packed with problems: dealing...
Book cover for "The first thing about you"
Star rating for The first thing about you
Author:
Description:
"When fifteen-year-old Harris moves with his family from California (home of beautiful-but-inaccessible beaches) to New Jersey (home of some much-hyped pizza and bagels), he's determined to be known as more than just the kid in the powered wheelchair. Armed with his favorite getting-to-know-you question ("What's your favorite color?"), he'll weed out the incompatible people--the greens and the purples, people who are too close to his own blue to make...
Book cover for "Beneath the wide silk sky"
Star rating for Beneath the wide silk sky
Description:
With the recent death of her mother and the possibility of her family losing their farm, Samantha Sakamoto does not have space in her life for dreams, but when faced with prejudice and violence in her Washington State community after Pearl Harbor, she is determined to use her photography to document the bigotry around her.
Book cover for "An appetite for miracles"
Star rating for An appetite for miracles
Description:
With the help of her cousin and their friends, Danna scours the city, searching for her grandfather's favorite foods and hoping the remembered flavors will bring back his memories.
Book cover for "In limbo"
Star rating for In limbo
Author:
Description:
"Ever since Deborah (Jung-Jin) Lee emigrated from South Korea to the United States, she's felt her otherness. For a while, her English wasn't perfect. Her teachers can't pronounce her Korean name. Her face and her eyes--especially her eyes--feel wrong. In high school, everything gets harder. Friendships change and end, she falls behind in classes, and fights with her mom escalate. Caught in limbo, with nowhere safe to go, Deb finds her mental health...
Book cover for "Discover her art"
Star rating for Discover her art
Description:
"Invites young art lovers and artists to learn about painting through the lives and masterpieces of 24 women from the 16th to the 20th century"--Back cover.
Book cover for "Beneath the swirling sky"
Star rating for Beneath the swirling sky
Series:
Restorationists volume 1.
Description:
"After an experience he'd rather forget, Vincent is determined to be done with art. So when he and his little sister, Lili, spend spring break with their art conservator great-uncle, Vincent's plan is to stay glued to his phone. That is, until Lili disappears into one of the world's most famous paintings and Vincent learns his parents have been hiding something from him: Their family is the last of The Restorationists, a secret society with the power...
Book cover for "Daughters of the lamp"
Star rating for Daughters of the lamp
Series:
Description:
Twelve-year-old Sahara prefers logic and science over magic, but when she travels to Cairo for a family wedding, her resistance to magic fades when she discovers that she is next in a line of women tasked with guarding Ali Baba's treasure.