Nic Stone

I was like, "There's no way I'm gonna forget this." Forgets it.

Uh, oh, the book is called Breakout, and it's by, like, six different authors, including one of them is, uh, Nic Stone.

And it's basically, like, these rich k- Black kids who are trying to...

They're not solving the murder.

Character skin tones take the hue of the page, and this book is recommended for ages four to eight.

Next is Deja Forever by Nic Stone, with illustrations by Simone Douglas.

This hard-hitting spin-off of Stone's Dear Martin series, illustrated by Douglas, centers Black thirteen-year-old Deja Monet Riley, who's already struggling with tough family circumstances when she's diagnosed with cancer.

Present-day third-person prose chapters trace a pivotal July night as she undergoes induction chemotherapy at the hospital, during which thirteen-year-old fellow cancer patient Jimmy wanders into her room.