“Kids haven’t changed.” I hear it all the time. Yesterday’s spitballs are today’s fidget spinners. My grandpa’s whoopie cushion is my nephew’s Atomic Fart app. In so many ways, kids are still kids.

But they have changed. You see it too, don’t you? My tribe of young adult readers I spend time with every day is unmistakably sadder. It’s a lonely time to be an adolescent. A loneliness epidemic, in fact, looms ahead according to a recent article by Jean M. Twinge in The Atlantic.

In my own angsty tween years I had the ear of Judy Blume and others who didn’t sugar coat my real life problems. Putting books in the hands of young adults should mean feeding them truth. But how? How do you form words from those powerfully raw feelings? This list is a tribute to the brave and talented authors whose words truly do scrape the…