by Lisa Moore Ramee, 407 pages, Grades 6 and up.

Shaya and her best buddies call themselves the United Nations because they all come from different backgrounds. She and her friends are good students and have been close friends throughout elementary, but middle school is proving to be a little different. Each of the girls is exploring different interests and Shayla is worried the Nations might be becoming less “United.” At home, her family has been devastated by the not-guilty verdict of a police officer who killed an unarmed Black man; Shayla’s sister and father decide to attend a Black Lives Matter protest, and Shayla decides to show her support by wearing a black arm-band to school. Turns out this action gets Shayla sent to the office and she finds herself in trouble at school for the first time ever. On top of the shock of an arm-band getting her in trouble, her buddies don’t really understand what she is going through either, luckily Shayla’s sister helps her navigate the rocky road of racism and the importance of A Good Kind of Trouble.

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If you like books about social justice, you might also like: All American Muslim Girl, by Nadine Jolie Courtney, Between the Lines, by Nikki Grimes, or Trell, by Dick Lehr.

And if you would prefer nonfiction on the subject, you might like: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and you, by Jason Reynolds, or Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson.

Tags: Black Lives Matter, coming of age, school stories, realistic fiction, families, identity