Teens in 5th–12th grades are invited to join our Hispanic Heritage Book Club! Celebrate Hispanic culture by reading and discussing books by and about Hispanic voices—plus enjoy snacks and earn community service hours by helping to care for the Teen Zone!
Registration is required. Read more about each book below:
- Capitana, by Cassandra James | Thursday, February 19, 2026 | 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Ximena Reale has spent most of her life training at La Academia to join the Cazadores, seafaring hunters who track down pirates. But her future is uncertain, thanks to her parents’ questionable reputation. They were traitorous pirates, and though they were executed when Ximena and her sister were young, they permanently damaged the Reale name in the eyes of the Luzan Empire.
Ability alone won’t make Ximena a Cazadoro–or earn her the coveted Cazadoro cloak. So, when the legendary pirate Gasparilla returns and captures the Empire’s queen, Ximena offers to bring back the queen and the notorious pirate in exchange for a cloak. But there’s a catch: Only one cloak is available, and Ximena’s competition is Dante, an infuriating yet handsome classmate with mysterious motives.
With their futures on the line, Ximena and Dante set out on a dangerous quest across the high seas. But no matter how far Ximena sails, her family’s legacy haunts her, and her exposure to a world outside of la academia leads her to question the very laws she’s always fought to uphold. Is it possible she’s been on the wrong side all along?
- Abuela, Don’t Forget Me, by Rex Ogle | Thursday, March 19, 2026 | 6:00 – 7:30 pm
In his award-winning memoir Free Lunch, Rex Ogle’s abuela features as a source of love and support. In this companion-in-verse, Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on–to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in. Throughout a coming of age marked by violence and dysfunction, Abuela’s red-brick house in Abilene, Texas, offered Rex the possibility of home, and Abuela herself the possibility for a better life.
Abuela, Don’t Forget Me is a lyrical portrait of the transformative and towering woman who believed in Rex even when he didn’t yet know how to believe in himself.
- I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, by Erika L. Sanchez | Thursday, April 16, 2026 | 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents’ house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed. But it’s not long before Julia discovers that Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out. Was Olga really what she seemed? Or was there more to her sister’s story? And either way, how can Julia even attempt to live up to a seemingly impossible ideal?
Teens' Hispanic Heritage Book Club