Parents' Guide to Brownstone

Parents need to know that Samuel Teer's Brownstone is the 2025 winner of the American Library Association's Michael L. Printz Award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. The story's a graphic novel about a young teen coming to terms with her mixed identity during a first summer with her father. When Almudena's White mother leaves to live out her dream for a summer, Almudena goes to stay with her Spanish-speaking Guatemalan father, whom she's meeting for the first time. As they work together to renovate a ‘Brownstone' townhome, they must learn to communicate all the things they've never had a chance to say. Along the way, Almudena learns about the struggles the people from her father's Latino neighborhood face, including discrimination and gentrification. A past violent incident not described in detail involves a secondary character jumped by gang members which "messed up his brain." Neighborhood boys make fun of Almudena for not speaking Spanish, her skin color, and her mixed heritage and another character is ostracized for their sexual identity and gender expression. There's some mild language, including "butts," "ass," "a--hole," a couple uses of "f--k, and, once, the Spanish slur for whore, "puta." A couple is shown kissing, a romantic relationship between neighbors is implied, and a teen character smokes cigarettes.