Book Lists and Previews Abound in This Month’s YA Book News Roundup

February went by in a flash, and at least here in the midwest, we got a little bit of everything. There were extremely cold days, some treacherous ice days, typical snowy days, and even a stretch of beautiful 50 and 60 degree days that were a reminder of that spring will be here soon. No matter how challenging the world may be, it is a fact that seasons shift and change–a constant and grounding truth.

There wasn’t a whole lot happening on the news front in YA last month, though it did bring plenty of title previews. But that doesn’t mean the news that did happen isn’t worthy of sharing. Consider this roundup an appetizer before you shut down your big or small screen and swap it for one of those books on your virtual or physical TBR.

• Candace Fleming, known for her array of nonfiction for young readers, had quite the day when she was named recipient of more than one major award at the American Library Association’s Youth Media Awards.
• Here are the finalists for the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards, including a stacked slate for YA.
• The United States Board on Books for Young People has announced their picks for outstanding international books, and there are a number of great YA titles included.
• If you love science fiction and fantasy, don’t miss this roundup of all the YA sci-fi and fantasy that hit shelves in February.
• Take a peek at the forthcoming young adult books from Canadian authors in Quill & Quire‘s preview.
• Want a preview of the children’s and YA books hitting shelves this spring from an even wider pool of titles? Publishers Weekly has you covered.
• Dive into the YA romance graphic novels hitting shelves this spring.
• And for readers who love comics, here’s your look at spring’s roster of YA and adult comics.
• Check out this year’s Walter Award Winners. You’ll need to scroll down about half-way, but you’ll see the winner and honoree for YA, as well as younger readers.
• The finalists in this year’s YA category for the Los Angeles Book Awards are great. The winner in this category, as well as 12 others, will be announced in April.
• The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. (BCALA) and School Library Journal have announced the winners of the 2026 Children & Youth Literary Awards.
• Netflix has renewed the adaptation of Finding Her Edge for a second season.
• There are now show runners attached to the forthcoming adaptation of Eragon. This is for a television series and is, err, anticipated to be better than the original film adaptation.
• Hayley Kiyoko’s song “Girls Like Girls” spawned her YA book of the same title. Now, it’s being adapted into a film, and the trailer is here. It looks SO good.
• The recently-release A Stage Set for Villains has been optioned for adaptation by Amazon MGM studios.
• Another bit of adaptation news: there’s a creative team attached to the development of The Education of Kia Greer.
• This one’s a little insider baseball-y, in so much as it’s publishing news more than book news, but Simon & Schuster is reviving their Simon Pulse imprint. More YA is on the way, and there’s a note here that we should expect to see a new Meg Cabot book, too.
• We’ll be getting a new novel from Tomi Adeyemi this fall, and it’s a work of dark academia.
• Not only is Jasmine Guillory publishing her first YA novel this year, it’s inspired by one of the best (young adult) films of all time: Dirty Dancing.
• Renée Watson has a YA book hitting shelves in October, and you can check out the cover here. The cover was done by Morgan Harper Nichols–a dream team of creatives!
• Andrew Joseph White’s next book is a YA book, and the cover and description sound great.
• Curious what YA books were selling loads of copies last year? Here’s a rundown, and while the top title isn’t surprising, some of the romantasy titles on here are ones I hadn’t heard much about. That doesn’t mean they haven’t been popular (obviously); it just means there’s a huge audience of fans who might not necessarily be tapped into more “traditional” YA media.
• Last month, I rounded up a bunch of the debut adult books being published by YA authors this year. There are two more to add to the list: Victoria Aveyard’s adult debut and Mackenzie Reed’s adult debut.
• Teenagers share what books and reading means to them with The New York Times.

Over in Literary Activism, I talked about the not-so-slow dismantling of YA sections in public libraries during our era of book censorship and how that relates to the decline of YA librarianship and services in an era of library budget cuts.

Catch up with some of the best in YA book talk from 2026 so far, including a look at the art of YA retellings with Ryan Douglass, this year’s adult debut novels from YA authors, and the winners and honorees for the American Library Association’s Youth Media Awards, presented at the end of January.