Teacher’s Guide: Forward Me Back to You

Forward Me Back to You by Mitali Perkins

The award-winning author of You Bring the Distant Near explores identity, homecoming, and the legacy of assault in this personal and ambitious new novel.

Katina King is the reigning teen jujitsu champion of Northern California, but she’s having trouble fighting off the secrets in her past. Robin Thornton was adopted from an orphanage in India and is reluctant to take on his future. If he can’t find his roots, how can he possibly plan ahead?

Robin and Kat meet in the most unlikely of places—a summer service trip to Kolkata to work with survivors of human trafficking. As bonds build between the travelmates, Robin and Kat discover that justice and healing are tangled, like the pain of their pasts and the hope for their futures. You can’t rewind life; sometimes you just have to push play.

In turns heart wrenching, beautiful, and buoyant, Mitali Perkins’s new novel focuses its lens on the ripple effects of violence—across borders and generations—and how small acts of heroism can break the cycle.

Download the Teacher’s guide here →

MARCH GIVEAWAY: WIN A POETRY KIT!

Enter for a chance to win a set of some of our favorite and award-winning poetry books to help celebrate National Poetry Month, including Home Run, Touchdown, Basket, Goal! by Leo Landry; Wet Cement by Bob Raczka; Hypnotize a Tiger by Calef Brown; Keeping the Night Watch by Hope Anita Smith; illustrated by E.B. Lewis ; and My Book of Life by Angel by Martine Leavitt. Giveaway ends March 31st at 11:59 PM ET.

Keep reading for your chance to win →

Teacher’s Guide: The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise
by Dan Gemeinhart

Five years. That’s how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation. It’s also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash.

Coyote hasn’t been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished—the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box—she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days…without him realizing it. Along the way, they’ll pick up a strange crew of misfit travelers. Lester has a lady love to meet. Salvador and his mom are looking to start over. Val needs a safe place to be herself. And then there’s Gladys…

Over the course of thousands of miles, Coyote will learn that going home can sometimes be the hardest journey of all…but that with friends by her side, she just might be able to turn her “once upon a time” into a “happily ever after.”

Download the teacher’s guide here →

February YA Galley Chat Books

Love chatting about new YA books? Join EarlyWord’s monthly YA galley chat to hear what your fellow librarians are excited to read + add more books to your TBR list. Follow along at #ewgcya and don’t miss next month’s galley chat on Tuesday, March 26th, 2:30 to 3:30 pm.

Here are just a few of the titles that Twitter is buzzing about this month:

See more books librarians are buzzing about →