Good Different
Originally known as Selah’s Guide to Normal
2024 ALA Schneider Family Book Award Honor
2024 ALSC Notable Children’s Books List
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
School Library Journal - Best Middle Grade Books of 2023
Chicago Public Library - Best Fiction for Older Readers of 2023
2024 NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Books List
Good Morning America 13 Books to Spring into Reading this March
A Common Sense Media Common Sense Selection
2024 IN Read Aloud Award – Reading List
2023 Nerd Book Award Nerdies: Poetry and Novels in Verse
Oklahoma Library Association’s 2025 Intermediate Sequoyah Masterlist
Georgia Children's Book Awards Finalist 2025
Project LIT 2024 Book Selection
2024 Notable Book for a Global Society
2024-25 Panda Book Award Nominee
12 of the Best New Children's Books Out April 2023 - Book Riot
These 18 Audiobooks in Verse Bring Poetry to Life for Tweens and Teens - School Library Journal
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An extraordinary novel-in-verse for fans of Starfish and A Kind of Spark about a neurodivergent girl who comes to understand and celebrate her difference.
Selah knows her rules for being normal.
She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask the second she gets home from school, and listen to her favorite pop song on repeat, trying to recharge. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it.
Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student.
Selah's friends pull away from her, her school threatens expulsion, and her comfortable, familiar world starts to crumble.
But as Selah starts to figure out more about who she is, she comes to understand that different doesn't mean damaged. Can she get her school to understand that, too, before it's too late?
This is a moving and unputdownable story about learning to celebrate the things that make us different. Good Different is the perfect next read for fans of Counting by 7s or Jasmine Warga.
Praise for Good Different
“★ Kuyatt, who is autistic, uses candid lines to present Selah’s story, conveying her mother’s well-intentioned denial of Selah’s needs, and Selah’s own experiences, self-knowledge, and eventual self-advocacy.”
“★ [A] beautifully written novel-in-verse...Ultimately, readers will empathize with Selah and rejoice with her as she learns to accept herself as she is.”
“This is like the next “Wonder.””
“This neurodivergent trio of author, narrator, and protagonist should resonate with their shared experience and those not on the spectrum.”
“Short free-verse vignettes beautifully evoke despair, loneliness—and determination.”
“Meg Eden Kuyatt portrays the experience of being an autistic girl with authenticity and heart. Her beautiful verse paints a vivid picture of the challenges and the joys of being autistic. Selah is a hero that readers will root for and remember.”
-Sarah Kapit, author of Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen!
“A powerful addition to literature about the autism experience. Selah is funny, insightful, and poetic in her quest to balance fitting in and staying true to herself.”
-Laura Shovan, co-author of Sydney Taylor Notable novel A Place at the Table
“Relatable, profound and beautifully heartfelt. I loved it.”
-Elle McNicoll, author of the Schneider Family Book Award Honor-winning A Kind of Spark
"Throughout GOOD DIFFERENT, Selah learns it's okay to stand up and it's okay to stand out. Meg Eden Kuyatt's powerful debut finds Selah answering the age-old question: why be normal when you can soar like a dragon?"
-Eric Bell, author of Alan Cole is Not a Coward
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ORDER at Ivy Bookstore, Politics and Prose, Bookshop.com, Amazon
Read the first page of SELAH from the Pitch Wars 2020 Showcase!
Hear more about SELAH and the announcement here