Under the Fading Sky

By: Cynthia Kadohata

Published by Simon and Schuster, 2026-04-28

A teen boy thinks his vaping habit is harmless until it becomes a crippling addiction of nightmarish dimensions in this “vivid” (School Library Journal) young adult novel from Newbery and National Book Award winner Cynthia Kadohata. So, stuff has, like, a beginning and an end. And you don’t really realize that until the end, or right before. Before that, you’re just thinking that you and your homies are chillin’ and getting high, and it’s all gonna work out. You know? Truth is, the way life works is that you were born in the eye of a hurricane, and you think that’s just the way life is, calm-like. Until…it isn’t. So, yeah, Elijah is only sixteen, and already he would change a lot of stuff if he could go back in time. But you can’t ever do that. And when you can’t, that’s when you find out who you really are.