Upper School Summer Reading 2024

Val is ready to give up on love. It's led to nothing but secrets and heartbreak, and she's pretty sure she's cursed--no one in her family, for generations, has ever had any luck with love. But then a chance encounter with a pair of cute lion dancers sparks something in Val. Is it real love? Could this be her chance to break the family curse? Or is she destined to live with a broken heart forever

After spending her early years in Wuhan, China, riding water buffalos and devouring stinky tofu, Laura immigrates to Texas, where her hometown is as foreign as Mars--at least until 2020, when COVID-19 makes Wuhan a household name.

In Messy Roots, Laura illustrates her coming-of-age as the girl who simply wants to make the basketball team, escape Chinese school, and figure out why girls make her heart flutter.

Insightful, original, and hilarious, toggling seamlessly between past and present, China and America, Gao's debut is a tour de force of graphic storytelling.

Everyone has secrets. Mags’s has teeth.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate from high school, but she feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine make-outs with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there’s her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. It is a secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out—like it did once before.

An epic new graphic novel fantasy—a queer, feminist reimagining of the Fox Maiden legend from Korean mythology.

Set in 16th century Korea and richly infused with Korean folklore, The Fox Maidens is a timeless and powerful story about fighting for your place in the world, even when it seems impossible.

In 1980s Troy, New York, nonbinary teenager Claire's stint in court-ordered rehab may be exactly what they need to unpack all the bad they have experienced--if they can stay sober in a world seemingly never made for them.

16-year-old Raquel lives in a small town in Portugal, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else's business. Her parents are divorced and she's just been suspended for cursing out a school aide asking about her father's new marriage. She has two best friends, Luísa and Fred, but wants something more. Then, from afar, she sees Pardalita, a senior and a gifted artist who's moving to Lisbon to study in the fall. The two girls get to know each other while working on a play. And Raquel falls in love.