2024-2025 Meadowlark Golden Sowers

Ain't Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds

Attack of the Black Rectangles by A.S King

Dear Mothman by Robin Gow

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

Lasagna Means I Love You by Kate O'Shaughnessy

2024-2025 Golden Sowers Meadowlark

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1. Ain't Burned All the Bright

Jason Reynolds and his best bud, Jason Griffin, had a mind-meld. And they decided to tackle it, in one fell swoop, in about ten sentences, and 300 pages of art, this piece, this contemplation-manifesto-fierce-vulnerable-gorgeous-terrifying-WhatIsWrongWithHumans-hope-filled-hopeful-searing-Eye-Poppingly-Illustrated-tender-heartbreaking-how-The-HECK-did-They-Come-UP-with-This project about oxygen. And all of the symbolism attached to that word, especially NOW.And so for anyone who didn’t really know what it means to not be able to breathe, REALLY breathe, for generations, now you know. And those who already do, you’ll be nodding yep yep, that is exactly how it is.

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2. Attack of the Black Rectangles

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Mac's class is reading Jane Yolen's "The Devil's Arithmetic" in English class, but he's surprised when he opens his classroom copy one day to find some of the words blacked out. He thinks it must be a mistake, but when he and his classmates bring their concerns to their teacher and principal, they find themselves being ignored and dismissed. Someone doesn't want the kids to read the full story, so Mac and his friends band together to stand up against the censorship.

3. Dear Mothman

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After his best friend Lewis, the only other trans boy at school, dies in a car accident, sixth-grader Noah starts writing letters expressing his feelings to Lewis's favorite humanoid creature Mothman, and risks everything when he treks into the woods to prove Mothman's existence for his science fair project.

4. I Must Betray You

In 1989, Romanian teenager Cristian Florescu dreams of being a writer but lives within the confines of a tightly controlled communist regime. When he's blackmailed by security forces to become an informant spying on his mother's client, an American diplomat and their family, he wagers how to use his newfound position against those in authority and joins the ranks of political dissenters within the country to an uncertain future.

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5. Lasagna Means I Love You

Eleven-year-old Mo experiences upheaval in her life when she loses her caregiver grandmother and her uncle won't take her in. Left to be placed in foster care, Mo struggles to find a place she belongs. A chance discovery of a handmade cookbook with stories, leaves Mo to develop a passion for cooking and the ways it brings people together. She begins building a web site with recipes, as well as relationships with friends and adults around her that help her weather the difficulties that arise when her foster family encounters a setback.

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Lines of Courage by Jennifer Nielsen

Miss Quinces by Kat Fajardo

Nic Blake and the Remarkables by Angie Thomas

Two Degrees by Alan Gratz

What Happened to Rachel Riley by Claire Swinarski

2024-2025 Golden Sower NomineesMeadowlark

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1. Lines of Courage

The lives of five kids from different backgrounds intersect during World War I. Twelve-year-old Felix, from Austria-Hungary, sees Archduke Ferdinand killed and must flee with his mother. A German girl named Elsa helps them escape. British Kara works as an orderly on a Red Cross train, while French Juliette tries to find her family. Finally, Dimitri struggles at the Russian Front. As the war goes on, the teens' paths cross once again and they forge a friendship that helps them survive.

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2. Miss Quinces

Sue just wants to spend the summer reading and making comics at sleepaway camp with her friends, but instead she gets stuck going to Honduras to visit relatives with her parents and two sisters. They live way out in the country, which means no texting, no cable, and no Internet! The trip takes a turn for the worse when Sue's mother announces that they'll be having a surprise quinceañera for Sue, which is the last thing she wants. She can't imagine wearing a big, floofy, colorful dress! What is Sue going to do? And how will she survive all this "quality" time with her rambunctious family?

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3. Nic Blake and the Remarkables

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Twelve-year-old African American girl Nic Blake is a Remarkable with magic powers that she wants to learn to use so she can be a powerful Manifestor like her dad. But before she can develop her skills, she and two of her friends are thrust into a quest for a powerful magical object to save her father from being falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit.

4. Two Degrees

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When three children endure separate climate change disasters--a wildfire in the California woods, a close encounter with a hungry polar bear in Canada, and a massive hurricane in Florida--they emerge from their experiences committed to changing the world.

5. What Happened to Rachel Riley?

A new eighth grader at her Wisconsin middle school, Anna Hunt expects to be an outcast, and notices right away that another girl, Rachel Riley, too is ostracized. Anna, who wants to be an investigative journalist, is curious about Rachel and discovers that just last year, she was one of the most popular girls in the school. Naturally she wonders, what happened? When she's assigned an un-essay project by a teacher, she decides to create a podcast in which she delves into the question of Rachel's banishment. What begins as a research project on bullying and its effects, takes a darker turn when she discovers a secret competition among groups of boys at her school and a code of silence among her peers--both of which she must have the bravery to expose.

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