There has been a lot of talk over the last year or so about the kinds of books students should and should not be reading in school, and what books kids should have access to in libraries. At the same time, there are more books being published that deal with issues of race, gender and sexual orientation. In this series, we talk to the authors of some of those books.  

This episode features Kyle Lukoff, a former elementary school librarian and the author of several books, including “Call Me Max” and “Too Bright to See.” We spoke with him about his book, “Different Kinds of Fruit” published in 2022. In it, sixth grader Annabelle Blake not only finds out she has a crush on her non-binary classmate, but also that her dad is a transgender man.

R. Eric Thomas writes for TV, the stage and has written two non-fiction books. But he’s now jumped into the young adult genre with a novel called "Kings of B’More." It tells the story of two Black, queer best friends, one of whom is moving away. Before that, though, they have a grand day out together.

More and more school districts are facing challenges from parents and other community members who want certain books out of classrooms or libraries. It was that kind of incident that led Amy Sarig King to write her latest novel, “Attack of the Black Rectangles.”