ALA’s 2024 Rainbow Book List

4 of Our Titles Shine Bright on ALA’s 2024 Rainbow Book List for Teen Readers!

BEATING HEART BABY by Lio Min (in the top ten!)
Artistic and sensitive Santi and prickly, proud musical prodigy Suwa’s lives tangle and unravel as they create a present together, imagine a future with one another, and uncover a complicated past they didn’t know they shared. A love letter to internet friendships, anime, and indie rock, Beating Heart Baby is a queer musical odyssey filled to the brim with compassion and hope.

ANDER & SANTI WERE HERE by Jonny Garzo Villa (in the top ten!)
Ander Martinez has lived in the Santos Vista neighborhood of San Antonio, Texas for their entire life. Working at their family’s taqueria is a part of who they are, and they want to continue working there while taking a gap year before leaving for art school. With their family nervous that a gap year will cause Ander to get complacent, they “fire” them and seek new staff in the form of a beautiful boy named Santiago. Ander and Santi fall quick and hard, but their happiness is put into jeopardy when ICE agents come looking for Santi.

GOING BICOASTAL by Dahlia Adler
It’s time for Natalya to make some decisions in her life; does she want to spend the summer with her mother in California or stay with her dad in NYC? NYC is her comfort zone… and there is that mysterious girl she swears she’s going to talk to one of these days… On the other hand, California and maybe repairing the gaping hole in her relationship with her mother. Fortunately for us, we can live out both choices and follow Natalya in both possibilities! But which choice is the right one? Only you can decide!

INTO THE LIGHT by Mark Oshiro
In the year since Manny has been fending for himself after being run out by his adoptive parents, he has selected rules to live by to keep himself alive and relatively safe. But those rules fly out the window when he sees a news program talking about the body found at the secluded religious community, Reconciliation. While Manny fears going back to Reconciliation and the family that cast him out, he is more afraid that the body may be his sister, Elena.

The full 2024 Rainbow Book List can be found here.