Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams

WINNER OF THE 2025 GEOFFREY BILSON AWARD FOR HISTORICAL FICTION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE From award-winning verse novelist Shari Green comes an unforgettable story of friendship, first love, and an impossible choice between integrity and duty, family and friends, all while fighting for a dream. "Emotionally resonant and masterfully crafted." -- Kirkus Reviews Starred Review "This verse novel has thematic and stylistic similarities to works by Kip Wilson and will be of interest to those seeking read-alikes, as well as lovers of classical music." -- School Library Journal "Green conveys Helena's anxieties and hopes in equal measure in lyrical free-verse passages that flow together like a musical composition." -- Horn Book "Characters, places, and themes are introduced with superb fluidity in the book's verses ... this [is a] hopeful novel that does a beautiful job of illuminating a dark period of history." -- Foreword Reviews "Poems carry the narrative, giving the book a very personal, introspective feel, impressing upon the reader the paranoia that many East Germans lived with after WWII." -- Booklist Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams is a historical YA novel in verse that centers around a young pianist in East Germany trying to make sense of love, duty, and the pursuit of dreams during the unsettled months of protest that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s. Written in stunning lyrical verse, Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams is a story of hope, courage, romance, and the power of music not only to change lives, but to save them.