Twelve-year-old Lydia, feeling threatened by the attention her changing body is getting from boys and men, finds a way to take control of her own skin.
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.
Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.
Years ago, seventeen-year-old CJ Katsuyama's family sold their flower shop to a white man for next to nothing while they were interned during WWII. Thirty years later, the family bought the store back from that family, the McAllisters, who have since prospered. Now the shop is in financial trouble and CJ's mother works for McAllister Venture Capital. When secrets about the McAllister patriarch come to light, CJ and a group of student activists find something to rally behind, though it causes great friction in the community and between CJ and her mother.
A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband -- these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see that these dreams aren't too far out of reach. But the girl's dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest where she is forced to follow her captors' radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she's been told. Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life and her future is hers to fight for.
Jasmine and Chelsea are best friends on a mission--they're sick of the way women are treated even at their progressive NYC high school, so they decide to start a Women's Rights Club. They post their work online--poems, essays, videos of Chelsea performing her poetry, and Jasmine's response to the racial microaggressions she experiences--and soon they go viral. But with such positive support, the club is also targeted by trolls. When things escalate in real life, the principal shuts the club down. Not willing to be silenced, Jasmine and Chelsea will risk everything for their voices--and those of other young women--to be heard.
High school junior Del Rainey unwittingly joins a Purity Pledge class at church, hoping to get closer to his long-term crush, Kiera.
A group of male classmates begin inappropriately touching seventh-grader Mila, and while some argue that they are merely flirting, others encourage her to report them for bullying. Hesitant to lay her burdens on her overworked mother, Mila begins taking karate lessons and learns to stand up for herself.
Xiomara Batista is a teenage girl living in Harlem who's learned to use her fists to send messages. When she's invited to join her school's poetry club, she knows her religious mother will never allow it. But Xiomara is determined to find a way because she has something to say that can only be shared through her poetry.
When middle school journalist Riley Dunne learns that an important and beloved club is being shut down, she uses the power of the pen to instigate much-needed social change.
In this debut middle-grade girl-power friendship story, an eighth grader starts a podcast to protest the unfair dress code enforcement at her middle school and sparks a rebellion.