Children’s Corner

Winner of the National Book Award and the Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, this brilliant, unforgettable, and heart-wrenching novel from#1 New York Times bestselling author Sabaa Tahir is a sweeping story about family and forgiveness, and love and loss that crosses generations and continents. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, Salahudin and Noor understand each other in a way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding. Now, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah’s health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle’s liquor store while hiding the fact that she’s applying to college so she can escape him—and Juniper—forever. When Sal’s attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth—and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst.