In honor of my upcoming book, WICKET SEASON, which features Harrison Ambrose, a cricket mad Canadian kid of Jamaican descent, his Jamaican family and friends Oscar and Jordan, his Indo-Canadian almost girl-friend, the lethal spin bowler Deepa Singh and assorted other cricket crazy Canucks of color (or not), I’m signing up for the 2012 POC Reading Challenge. I’ve discovered that I’ve already read two books featuring protagonists of color this year, one in January and one in February, so I thought I’d make one per month my easy to achieve goal.
This coming month I think I’ll look for an author of color. I’m pretty drawn to LEGEND by Marie Lu, but I’d also like to catch up on some Walter Dean Myers. I also have ANGELFALL by Susan Ee on my Kobo (thanks Susan!). So I have a lot to chose from. I’m going to stick with YA or Middle Grade, so any suggestions are most welcome.
I’d love to see some fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary, romance, sci-fi, dystopian, you name it. Books by and about boys are particularly appealing. I’ll be keeping track monthly right here. So far:
1. January: FLYING FEET by James McCann, featuring a Korean Canadian protagonist
2. February: PERFECT by Ellen Hopkins. One of the four protagonists is African American.
angelhornpages.wordpress.com 
I reccomend The True Meaning of Smek Day by Adam Rex, a MG sci-fi. The MC is a young bi-racial girl. Also The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, a dystopian sci-fi that takes place on the Mexican border with a young Mexican male MC (everyone is Mexican). It includes cloning and zombie farm workers. I enjoyed both but really loved Scorpion.
I’ve read both those – loved them. Interestingly I probably would not have remembered that they have POC protagonists, though. Thanks for reminding me.
I second the first suggestion — read “The House of the Scorpion” by Nancy Farmer! 🙂 It’s scifi/dystopian. The main character (a boy), and almost all of the other characters are of Mexican origin.
“A Girl Named Disaster” and “The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm” are also by Nancy Farmer and are great reads as well. They’re set in Africa — the first in the past, the second in the future. Personally I liked “The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm” better, but “A Girl Named Disaster” is good too.
And then there’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, which I loved.
If you like fantasy, “So You Want to Be a Wizard” by Diane Duane and “City of the Beasts” by Isabel Allende are good. The first one features a girl of mixed Latina/Caucasian heritage and a Latino boy. The second one has main characters of Brazilian descent as well as other races.
“Shiva’s Fire” is a book that takes place in 20th-century India, about a girl who has to choose between love and her ambitions to become a dancer.
OK, long list. Sorry. Lol, that should keep you covered for a while… 🙂
Thanks Laura. I’ve read some of those. I especially loved ‘Part-time Indian”. I’m amassing quite a list here. Are you doing the challenge too?
Thanks for the heads up that the POC is on again this year–I’d checked in Jan, and assumed it had gone dormant.
If you are interested in finding more speculative fiction, I have a list at my place of all the POC middle grade and young adult sci fi/fantasy books I’ve reviewed–close to ninty of them — http://charlotteslibrary.blogspot.com/p/reviews-of-multicultural-fantasy-and.html
I love all those, and would especially third house of the scorpion
Wizard of Earthsea by Ursala Leguin.