Winner

Shut Up, This Is Serious
by Carolina Ixta
High School    Quill Tree/HarperCollins    368 pp.
1/24    9780063287860    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780063287884    $10.99

It’s senior year, and while Belén’s classmates are focused on college applications, she’s flunking school and struggling to cope with a shattered home life. Since her pa walked out on their family, her ma has been withdrawn, crying and seemingly overlooking the past-due bills piling up. Belén’s best friend, Leti, is a straitlaced student determined to get into UC Berkeley, but now Leti is pregnant and worried that her boyfriend, who is Black, will be rejected by her racist parents. As Belén sinks into her loneliness, she seeks affection from a college guy to distract herself from the pain of her father’s abandonment and the constant comparisons to him from unsympathetic relatives. Misogyny, racism, religion, and unjust expectations for girls like Belén and Leti are explored within their Mexican culture with sharp rebukes and meaningful introspection about identity and breaking out of toxic familial and cultural cycles. A cast of secondary characters bolsters Belén’s development, though few (other than Leti) are given sufficient airtime to feel fully realized. The Oakland, California, setting is brought to life through rides on the BART and visits to the frutero that illustrate the city’s diversity. The protagonist’s strong narrative voice, the realistic emotional tone, and thematic touchstones will hook fans of Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (rev. 3/18). JESSICA AGUDELO

From the March/April 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Honor Books

Wild Dreamers
by Margarita Engle
Middle School, High School    Atheneum    224 pp.
4/24    9781665939751    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781665939775    $10.99

REVIEW TO COME

Libertad
by Bessie Flores Zaldívar
High School    Dial    432 pp.
8/24    9780593696125    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780593696132    $10.99

High school senior Libertad lives in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, in the lead-up to the country’s fraught 2017 presidential election. Libertad’s attempts to understand her blossoming feelings for her best friend, Camila, and her own family history become intertwined with her growing understanding of the tensions between student protest movements and the government. Her close bond with her older brother helps navigate challenges in her friend group and as she considers leaving Honduras to attend college in the United States. She turns to poetry and to new friendships to try to make sense of the difficult events in her present and in her family’s past. The novel provides an invaluable lens to help readers understand the human toll exacted when democratic governments seek to quash the voices of their citizens. It amplifies complicated and underrepresented recent Honduran history, whose themes resonate on a broader scale, and it increases representation for Honduran narratives, which remain relatively scarce in mainstream U.S. publishing. Debut author and Tegucigalpa native Zaldívar’s deeply personal storytelling centers Libertad’s humanity, as well as that of her family members. Readers experience Libertad’s own journey through her first-person narration and creative expression, and in her relationships with her blood relatives and chosen family. An author’s note establishes personal connections and fills in history since 2017. NICHOLAS A. BROWN-CÁCERES

From the November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Read reviews of the 2025 Pura Belpré Author Awards here and of the 2025 Pura Belpré Illustrator Awards here. For more, click on the tag ALA LibLearnX 2025.