Nominated by: Adrienne Gillespie

Finalist blurb: What does it mean to flee your home, leaving half of your family behind? What does it mean to have a foot in two cultures, to live between two worlds? What does it mean to be Muslim and Arab in the United States in a world after 9-11? Jasmine Warga?s free verse novel explores these questions and so much more in her verse novel Other Words for Home. Jude and her pregnant mother flee Syria, leaving her father and brother behind, to live with relatives in Cincinnati. It?s a huge change for a young girl who is trying to make sense of her new world while dealing with homesickness, fear, inequality, prejudice, and middle school. Warga?s poems sing with emotion, sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful. The verse novel also includes an author?s note and glossary of Arabic terms. Written originally as prose, Other Words for Home shines as a novel in verse.