Score

Yeah, there are a bunch of books on this list wrongly. Prison Baby and For Today I Am a Boy are both adult, not YA or MG.

Also the two MCs in Painting the Rainbow are white girls. The Japanese boy on the cover isn't the POV character. He's a secret from the past.

Christine wrote: "I read MIDNIGHT THIEF and must have missed something. The main character has brown hair but I don't recall it being mentioned that Kyra is a person of color. (I don't want to tell what she is becau..."

Kyra is described in MIDNIGHT THIEF as olive skinned and brown haired. She's mixed race, although that information doesn't come out until the second or third book, so I'm not quite sure if the people who made this list went by the olive skin or if they actually meant that this book was written by an author of color (which I am, I suppose).

Rainbowheart wrote: "Yeah, there are a bunch of books on this list wrongly. Prison Baby and For Today I Am a Boy are both adult, not YA or MG.

Really? I've seen For Today I Am A Boy touted as YA by multiple book bloggers/reviewers, and the most used tag for it on GoodReads is "young adult."

(I'm not familiar with Prison Baby or Painting the Rainbow [LOTS of books have been added to this list since I started it] but if I confirm that books listed don't have POC protags or aren't YA/MG I'll remove them from the list.) (If I can figure out how to.)

Livia wrote: "Christine wrote: "I read MIDNIGHT THIEF and must have missed something. The main character has brown hair but I don't recall it being mentioned that Kyra is a person of color. (I don't want to tell..."

I started the list, but 30+ books have been added to it since I did so, MIDNIGHT THIEF being one of them. While it definitely sounds to me like MIDNIGHT THIEF belongs on this list, I'll defer to your judgment as the author.

For Today I Am a Boy is definitely adult. Goodreads reviewers often shelve things wrongly, so you can't really go by that. I think the confusion is because Malinda Lo mentioned the book on her blog but in that post she did say that some of the books she was talking about were adult books.

If you're a librarian, you can remove wrong additions by clicking the "edit" button next to the list description.

Charlotte wrote: "Livia wrote: "Christine wrote: "I read MIDNIGHT THIEF and must have missed something. The main character has brown hair but I don't recall it being mentioned that Kyra is a person of color. (I don'..."

Charlotte, I'm cool with categorizing MT in whichever way you think best. I'm happy to chime in with the behind-the-scenes info that Kyra is a character of color, but we don't find out that specific info about her heritage until book 2 or 3 (I'd be more specific, but trying to avoid spoilers). In this book, she's ambiguously olive skinned, with a darker complexion than the people around her. So totally your call as to whether that qualifies MIDNIGHT THIEF for the list. Thanks for putting the list together!

Yes, thanks so much for putting this list together! Livia and I discussed it privately, and I agree that her series should be on this list. I only read the first (ARC) book, so did not catch that the MC is not European descent. (The setting seems to be medivial Europe, too.) The book is riveting and I can't wait to read the rest of the series!

This is a great list with a great variety of reads. I do hope we can find more urban fantasy/adventure/historical/fantasy/etc. books featuring PoC. Not everything has to be issue-oriented or depressing. We like to read about characters who save the world too, lol.

As far as the MT series, sounds interesting. Contrary to popular opinion, there were PoC in medieval Europe. The Moors for starters. It's sadly not too surprising that readers may not catch that the MC is PoC though. Our defaults, unless explicitly expressed (why covers are very important to me) tend to skew automatically towards Caucasian.

TheFountainPenDiva, what you are saying about assumptions and defaulting to the majority race/creed/culture/religion of that particular nation in the setting is a great point.

When you mentioned covers I thought of so many covers that have been controversial, such as LIAR LIAR, because the main character was POC, but the cover character was not. I was actually relieved that my cover of NO SURRENDER SOLDIER had a silhouette because I was concerned how an illustrator would draw a Chamorro male if that illustrator lived outside of the Marianas.

Again, thinking of covers, I tried to add HUSH PUPPY by Lisa Cresswell but it didn't come up on Goodreads. HP has the most stunning black girl in a close-up profile.

I'll also see if I can add Tim Tingle's HOUSE OF PURPLE CEDAR. I'm just a few chapters into it and already I am in love with this Choctow story.

btw, next week at the Texas Library Assoc. (TLA) convention I will be on a panel with many of these authors and more with PoC, multi-cultural books. Only we wiil be discussing religion in YA books.

Ahhh, so sorry! I see this list is 2014. HOUSE OF PURPLE CEDAR and HUSH PUPPY were published in 2013. If a Goodreads librarian is on here, my apologies and please take HOPC by Tim Tingle off the list.

great list!

Are Armenians considered people of color? There's one book with Armenian characters on this list already and I do know of other one, but not sure they are POC. Also, what about Iranians? Aren't they considered Caucasian? I did add two with Persian MCs, but not totally sure they belong.

Just to let everyone know, I created a list for 2015 YA and MG releases with POC leads....

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/8...

I didn't see one, and the new year will be upon us shortly!

Sorry, I had to look it up. If you want more people to read these books, you might want to translate POC.... Otherwise, you come across as clique-y. Be sure to use your tags feature, too, if you want people to find this list via search.