Nic Stone writes the books she says were missing. The Atlanta author and Spelman College graduate changed young adult literature with Dear Martin, her No. 1 New York Times bestselling debut, and its sequels Dear Justyce and Dear Manny. On October 6, she returned to the world of that series from a new direction with Dasia (Forever), a standalone middle-grade novel from Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Random House, written for readers ages 8 to 12 — and already carrying starred reviews from Kirkus and Horn Book.

Dasia Monae Riley is thirteen years old and nineteen days into induction chemotherapy when she discovers someone else in her hospital room: Jameson “Jimmy” Jeffs, another cancer patient who seems to be everything Dasia is not — rich, well cared for, a little childish. Over one life-changing night, the two girls find how much they share: older brothers who are gone, baby brothers who need them, friendships strained by illness. Dasia’s memories unfold through unsent letters — poems, really — written to her incarcerated older brother, in a story told in prose and letters-in-verse, with illustrations by Simone Douglas.

Stone handles the hardest material in children’s fiction — cancer, family fracture, grief — with the directness that has made her a fixture in classrooms, and early readers have responded in kind. “Absolutely incredible — I read it in one sitting and finished in tears,” wrote Newbery Honor author Andrea Beatriz Arango. “Dasia will stay with me forever.” The release carried a giving campaign, too: Random House Children’s Books pledged a $5 donation to Make-A-Wish Metro New York and Western New York for every preorder shared by publication day, up to $10,000.

Pictured here bringing Dasia to students on a school visit, Stone continues the work that runs through Clean Getaway, Fast Pitch and her Shuri novels for Marvel: putting Black kids at the center of stories about courage. Dasia’s fight is to stay alive — and to let herself hope again. It is a middle-grade novel with a grown heart.

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