Welcome to the (now completed) October 2023 YA Books New Release Spotlight! The YA list has 30 books this month, narrowed down from an original list of 78 YA titles.
Two titles on the October 2023 YA books list also appear on the October 2023 Middle Grades Spotlight. Both are nonfiction books that work for both MG and YA. The two duplicated titles are: Plague-Busters and Shipwrecked.
WHAT’S WITH THIS NEW FORMAT???
If you haven’t visited the Spotlight in a little while, welcome back! You are going to notice some big changes!
The new format is a monthly grouping by interest/grade level, rather than a weekly grouping of all grade levels together. This means middle and high school librarians won’t see picture books in the YA Spotlight unless the picture books are relevant to secondary students.
A monthly grouping also means I can keep an eye on new books that don’t meet my Spotlight criteria in the official release week, but may meet it a week or two after release. This happens often, especially when it comes to the publication of professional reviews. The previous weekly format caused me to miss great titles that did not yet have two positive professional reviews.
With the monthly format, I can watch for books that meet my criteria after they are released. I added those books as “new” each week, even though they may have been released two weeks ago. It is therefore possible for a book released in late-October to be featured on the November Spotlight.
I’ll admit that these changes have been a little controversial, so I wanted to give some explanation of the why. I always appreciate your thoughts, even if you aren’t in love with it. Your feedback has helped (and will continue to help) me fine-tune this new format. You can respond to any email I send or email me directly at leigh[at]readerpants.net.
I devote a considerable amount of time to the Spotlight each week, and I truly want it to be as helpful for you as possible.
One popular feature that has NOT changed: I’ve still included all the same information as before, but it’s now sorted into separate monthly posts for YA, MG, and picture books. See the Google presentation linked below for genres, grade levels, protagonist descriptions, setting, themes, starred reviews, and my notes for each title.
NEW IN THE OCTOBER NEW RELEASE SPOTLIGHT
The New Release Spotlight for October 2023 YA Books works similar to the September 2023 YA Books Spotlight with a couple of small changes. These are both based on your feedback!
Change #1: For October, I will add the new books to the top of the Google presentation instead of at the end. This way, you don’t have to scroll through the entire presentation to get to the new books each week.
Change #2: I’ve added YA sequels! They appear in the last few slides as well at the bottom of this post.
HOW TO USE THE OCTOBER 2023 YA BOOKS SPOTLIGHT IN YOUR LIBRARY
The October Spotlight has five parts. I’ve linked the first three below for easy reference (they are Google links), but they are also linked in the body of this post.
- Part I – Google Slides presentation – click “use template” to make a copy – share with students and teachers!
- Part II – printable list of YA October 2023 Spotlight titles – sorted by genre; click “use template” to make a copy
- Part III – The Ginormous Book List – this month’s list starts with #3601
- Part IV – Amazon-linked book covers, sorted by genre and topic
- Part V – Sequels – These are also Amazon links. The book covers also appear in the Google Slides presentation (scroll to the end)
PART I: GOOGLE SLIDES PRESENTATION – OCTOBER 2023 YA BOOKS
The first part of the New Release Spotlight is the Google Slides presentation. This is downloadable, editable, and FREE!
The October 2023 YA books slideshow is now complete, so you can go ahead and download it without worrying I will add anything new.
A few reminders and items I have had questions about:
- The Google Slides presentation includes each book’s publisher’s summary, genre, setting, grade levels, themes, protagonist description, and any notes I might need to add. This is the special book information that was previously included in the Spotlight; it’s just in a sideways scroll now instead of a vertical one.
- You can download this presentation anytime, but keep in mind that I am adding new books to the presentation every week in October. If you download the presentation before October 31, 2023, you will need to re-download it to get the new books each week.
- The new books I add are not automatically added to any copies of the presentation you add to your Google Drive. You will have to redownload them to get the most recent update.
- By request, sequels now appear in the last few slides of the Google Slides presentation.
This presentation is great to play on a loop in the library! Students and teachers will inevitably ask you to order some of the books – a great way to develop a student-centered library collection.
Click here to download the presentation. Click “Use Template” in the
top-right corner to make an editable copy for your own Google Drive.
PART II – PRINTABLE LIST OF OCTOBER 2023 YA BOOKS BY GENRE AND TOPIC
You can download a two-page, printable list from this Google page. This list is also complete as of October 30, 2023. I will not add any new YA titles to the printable list.
The printable list is sorted by genre and topic. It includes book title and author’s last name. The list is fully-editable, so you can add or remove whatever you need to suit the needs of your library.
Books that fall into more than one genre are listed under each genre. This means several titles appear on the list more than once.
PART III – THE GINORMOUS BOOK LIST
Since October 2019, I have added the New Release Spotlight books to The Ginormous Booklist. This is a huge Google spreadsheet that currently has over 3600 titles for K-12.
I will continue to add information from the October Spotlight titles to The Ginormous as normal. Scroll to the bottom for the newest titles. The October 2023 Spotlight titles are #3601 – #3682 on The Ginormous Booklist.
PART IV – OCTOBER 2023 YA BOOK COVERS WITH AMAZON LINKS
The fourth part of the October 2023 YA Spotlight is a sorting area by genre and topic.
The cover images below are clickable Amazon Affiliate links. If you use them to make a purchase, I will get a small commission from your purchase.
I am including the cover images below to help make it easier for you to find the books. I know I sometimes have trouble finding them on Titlewave just by title or author.
The book cover links below will tell you the ISBN (scroll down to Amazon’s book details) and give you an overall list of books without having to scroll through the entire Google presentation.
This list is also now complete as of October 30, 2023. I will not add any new titles to this list.
Because some books fall into multiple genre or topic categories, you will find some books listed more than once below.
FANTASY
REALISTIC FICTION
NOVEL IN VERSE / EPISTOLARY / DIARIES AND JOURNALS
HISTORICAL FICTION
HORROR
GRAPHIC NOVELS (FICTION AND NONFICTION GENRES)
THRILLER
SUPERNATURAL
MYSTERY
ROMANCE
SPORTS FICTION
POETRY
NONFICTION
STEM / STEAM
MYTHOLOGY
SHORT STORIES / ANTHOLOGY
MEMOIR / BIOGRAPHY
ADVENTURE
HOLIDAYS / SEASONAL
PART V – SEQUELS
I did not start adding sequels this month until about 10 days into October. Apologies if I missed any!
MORE OCTOBER 2023 BOOK RELEASES
ABOUT THE SPOTLIGHT
The New Release Spotlight began in May 2016 as a way to help librarians keep up with the many new children’s and YA books that are released each week.
Each week, school librarian Leigh Collazo compiles the New Release Spotlight using a combination of Follett’s Titlewave, Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble. Recommended grade levels represent the range of grade levels recommended by professional book reviewers. See the full selection criteria here.
Each month, there are far more books that meet my criteria than can make it on the Spotlight. When I have to make the tough decisions on what to include, I just use my “librarian judgment.” Would I buy this book for my own library? Would my students want to read this book? Is the cover appealing? Does it fill a need?