Reddit mentions of Crystal

Interesting! If you want interesting, look at the urban books on my list! I am a teacher at a public, low-income high school, and if I want my students to read anything on Free Reading Fridays, I have to have high-interest books available to them. For thisi group of kids (let's just get it out there, they're mostly black and they're ghetto, most of them live in the hood), high-interest books usually means books about drugs, prison, drama, black teens, prostitution, basketballs, etc. Sounds racist to an outsider, but think about it: The white female protagonist literature I read as a teenager does not reflect their lives or where they came from. These books do.

An example would be authors like Sharon Flake, Sharon Draper, Water Dean Myers, Mike Lupica, etc. The Bluford series. The Drama High series. The Hazelwood High series.

Or Crystal by Walter Dean Myers.

a lot of my books on my Teacher wish list are requested directly from the mouths of my students. A ton of the books on my list are also a penny plus shipping, so you could get one for $4.00! (like Crystal, above.)

Or the stuff by Joy Deja King (the Bitch series) is in HIGH DEMAND, and my students always steal copies of them so their parents can read them. Not kidding!!!

Thanks for the contest, and much love. ♥