Welcome to your weekly dose of YA Literature suggestions! The Weekend Picks this week is brought to us again by Dr. Dan Stockwell who is recommending another novel by the amazing Ibi Zoboi.
Happy reading, all!
Happy reading, all!
 Dan Stockwell | To remind our readers who our contributor is this month, Dr. Dan Stockwell, a former high school English language arts (ELA) teacher, is an assistant professor of English Education at California State University, Bakersfield. Dan serves as a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Secondary Section Steering Committee. He has recent publications in NCTE’s English Journal and in the California Association of Teachers of English’s California English journal. His book, Teaching for CHANGE in the ELA Classroom, was published in March of 2025 by Routledge. Dan’s scholarship investigates how secondary ELA teachers can provide critical literacy pedagogy, even in restrictive contexts. |
(S)kin by Ibi Zoboi
| “Welcome to the magical, expansive, and, at times, creepy world of Caribbean folklore!” That’s how Ibi Zoboi begins her author’s note for (S)kin, a speculative fiction story told in verse. (S)kin is set in contemporary Brooklyn, but in this story, Zoboi provides a fresh perspective on folklore. The story is told from the perspectives of two teens, Marisol and Genevieve. As the chapters alternate from Marisol to Genevieve’s accounts, the reader learns about these two young women–both of whom hold secrets, secrets they’re not even fully aware of. Marisol is fifteen and the daughter of a soucouyant–a witch- and vampire-like figure from Caribbean folklore. Soucouyants shed their skins as they turn into fireballs that fly through the night’s sky searching for someone to drain of their life force. |  |
 Ibi Zoboi | As the daughter of a soucouyant, Marisol too sheds her skin, becomes a being of fire, and drains the life force of sleeping people, but Marisol struggles to understand how her island magic makes sense after she and her mother emigrated to Brooklyn. Marisol’s journey in (S)kin is a struggle to discover who she is–not the labels placed upon her (immigrant, monster, ugly)–and who she wants to be as an individual, separate from her mother’s identity. Genevieve is seventeen years old and is the biracial daughter of a White college processor of anthropology, but she does not know who her mother is. Her father has been married most of her life, but not to her mother. Genevieve only knows that he met her mother while studying in the Caribbean. Genevieve is a talented dancer who, at the beginning of the story, has a serious skin condition that causes her lots of pain and distress. When Marisol’s mother is hired to be a nanny to Gen’s half-siblings, Gen realizes her skin is even more complicated than she thought it was. Gen’s journey in this story is to discover who her mother is and how that shapes her identity. |
This exciting story is beautifully told as it explores themes related to complex family relationships, race and racism, consequences of actions, and identity.
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