Tag Archives: Katie Abdou

New Releases: June 16, 2026

Today’s post is sponsored by FlameCon!

For more information and to get tickets, check out FlameCon.org!

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Middle Grade

Just Ask Elsie by Ari Koontz

The illustrated cover of Just Ask Elsie by Ari Koontz features a young white girl with blonde hair, standing in the middle of a school hallway and holding a stack of purple magazines that read "Elsie's Puberty Zine." Around her are cut-out doodles of birds and bees, hearts and emojis, and the progress pride flag. In the background, other students stand in front of blue lockers, watching and whispering. The title words are in mismatched fonts, with "Elsie" handwritten in gold sharpie over a piece of purple duct tape. The overall art style is soft-textured but bright, with pastel colors and rounded lines.Elsie Parker is having a totally normal fifth grade year.

Fractions and conjunctions―check.
Stressing about middle school―check.
Body-positive puberty class at church that also covers feelings and identities―check.

Okay, maybe that last one isn’t so normal. It’s a little weird (and awkward) to spend her Sundays talking periods, B.O., and pimples. But Elsie’s also learning a lot more than she’s heard in her public-school health class ― like the difference between sex and gender, and what consent is, and what it might mean that she can’t stop blushing around a certain cute girl at her school.

When her puberty lessons become the school’s latest gossip, Elsie’s totally humiliated… until she finds an anonymous note in her locker from a classmate who wants to know more, and realizes that other kids might have embarrassing questions of their own.

Starting an underground advice board wasn’t exactly in her plans, but Elsie won’t pass up a chance to turn her reputation around ― or to share words and labels that have not-so-accidentally been left off their curriculum. But when the principal tries to shut down the unauthorized puberty talk, Elsie has to decide what she’s willing to risk to tell the truth to kids who really need to hear it.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N

Continue reading New Releases: June 16, 2026

Happy (Upcoming) Pan Visibility Day 2026!

Pan Visibility Day is coming up on May 24th, and we’re celebrating as we do with books starring pan protagonists! For even more recs, check out past years’ posts

Young Adult

Moth Dark by Kika Hatzopoulou

Sascia has always loved the Dark. Six years ago, when the world she knew collided with the world of the Dark, she found it thrilling rather than terrifying. Now, she spends her days studying Darkcreatures or seeking them out in the shadows where they thrive.

Then, one day, she—impossibly—pulls a person from the Dark. A person who shouldn’t exist. And they’re here to kill her. Nugau, the heir to the Darkworld, claims to be delivering a sentence for Sascia’s betrayal in a battle she’s never heard of, in a war that hasn’t happened.

Sascia escapes with her life—barely. But tensions are brewing between her world and the Dark, and it’s not long before she discovers that she and Nugau are bound together by forces they don’t understand. As they grow closer, crossing worlds and timelines, they must find a way to fight for peace—and for each other.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading Happy (Upcoming) Pan Visibility Day 2026!

Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Young Adult Fiction: January-June 2026

I, in the Shadows by Tori Bovalino (January 13th)

Maybe this is possession; maybe this is truly what it is to be haunted.

There’s a ghost hanging out in Drew Larpin’s new room. He’s a fellow Pine Hollow high schooler named Liam, and technically, it’s his old room. Now he’s stuck haunting it―unsure of how he died or why he hasn’t moved on to the afterlife. Drew knows she has to help him. . . . She has to figure out how to resolve Liam’s earthly regrets. Otherwise, he’ll degrade―just like any ghost who hangs around the living for too long―until all that’s left is a hungry, mindless husk of who he used to be.

So, Drew interviews Liam about his life, getting the rundown on her new classmates in the process. She slowly falls into Liam’s old group of friends, experiencing their grief with the painful knowledge that Liam is watching it all play out from right beside her. Things get more complicated when Drew realizes she and Liam share a hopeless attraction to valedictorian-to-be, walking sunshine Hannah Sullivan. Liam was Hannah’s best friend in life, and at first, he doesn’t seem to mind being Drew’s wingman in death. But his unrequited feelings boil under the surface. The spectral energy cast off by his emotions is so powerful that it catches the attention of something truly sinister.

It’s lurking in the woods, watching Liam, attracted by the intensity of his grief and frustration. Whatever this “Watcher” has in store for him, it’s a fate far worse than death. Drew is determined to save him from it. But with Hannah slowly catching on that Liam might not be totally gone, the tangled mess of everyone’s emotions only draws the Watcher closer. It becomes a race against the clock to help Liam come to terms with his own death―even if it means shattering the fragile, painful normalcy his loved ones have built in his absence.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Young Adult Fiction: January-June 2026