It’s time for summer reading. Have you downloaded your Summer Reading & Writing Bingo card yet?

To help you complete your Bingo cards, we’re inviting members of the literary community to choose a Bingo square and share their must-reads for that category.

Next up is Rachel Barenbaum, whose novel, A Bend in the Stars, was just released in paperback in May. Thanks, Rachel!

Rachel’s Bingo square

Rachel chose On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas for the square Read a Middle Grade or Young Adult Novel.

On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas

This is a book everyone in America should read. Bri is a Black girl bussed into a fancy white neighborhood to attend an elite public high school. Stereotypes have her fellow students thinking she's a hoodlum and when school security throws her down and cuffs her after a misunderstanding, rumors fly that she is a drug dealer. She's not. She sells candy. Every day she wonders if/when she will eat, if her mother will have the money to pay for electric or gas and if she can finally get a new pair of shoes since the soles of her current boots have peeled off from age. Timely, heart breaking, and brilliant, this book will lead to all the kinds of conversations we should be having today.