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So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post from Victoria Stapleton

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We’re changing it up a little bit this week and have invited someone from the other side of the book world to share her picks for our “So You Want to Read YA?” series. 

Victoria Stapleton gets to be Director, School & Library Marketing at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which she modestly thinks may be the very job in all of publishing anywhere, in all times. She likes 2:25 AM, Hendricks Gin, and fat novels. She prefers not to think about puppies (unless it’s corgi’s), vampires (still doesn’t get it, don’t try to explain it to her), and suede (impossible to keep nice). She asked Kelly to pick out a lovely shoe to represent her — does it get better than flamed-out, sparkly Louboutins?

So You Wanna Read YA Do Ya?

I came to YA through my job. When I was a chronological teen we had few books: Flowers in the Attic (gack), Sidney Sheldon (urp), Scruples (BRILLIANT!!!!!). Hah! None of these are YA books, though the combined maturity level of all the characters in all these books does not exceed that of a four-year-old, much less an actual teen. The point is, there was not a lot out there. Also I was a strange child with unhealthy fixations on Nixon, Canadian Mounties, and acquiring the power to achieve total clothes closet security.

So I understand, you’re interested, but you don’t have a history with YA. Also you might feel a bit shy of being seen with a dreaded “teen book.” But YA is one of the most interesting places to explore psychology, morality, sexuality, spirituality. A good YA novel, whatever its window dressing, really gets at those moments when individuals begin to become fully realized autonomous beings. Since this is truly a ginomongous topic, there are so many paths to explore. A good YA novel does this bravely, passionately, and truthfully. Here are a few and, believe me, I had a very, VERY hard time narrowing it down. That’s how rich this field is now.

Diana Wynne Jones. Holy Toast with Marmelade this woman, such an amazing writer, over so many titles. There might be a few “less good” ones, but I defy you to find a bad one. Not gonna happen. One of my favorites is Conrad’s Fate. Is Conrad a person or a tool? Does he have a choice or a program?

Sara Zarr. I was finally able to write this post by thinking about Zarr, who is one of the keenest observers and explorers of teen morality and psychology. I’m going to suggest Sweethearts because it goes straight to the heart of the teen need to hide and be noticed at the same time by the same people. Personal expression or camouflage?

Nancy Farmer. One of the single most fascinating women on the planet. A dinner at a Portuguese restaurant in Toronto lives in my memory. Also she uses the word “cathouse” in casual conversation. Try The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. Holy Canoli.

For my final pick, Darren Shan. Yes, Darren Shan. If you think his books are only about grossing you out, you are not paying attention. Loyalty, Revenge, Family, The State, Sacrifice, Forgiveness, Faith, Honor, Courage, Cowardice. This is what Darren Shan is writing about. Teens reading his books are thinking about these issues while someone’s head gets lopped off, but they’re thinking about them nonetheless. If you don’t want to commit to one of his series, I strongly encourage you to read The Thin Executioner. I hated Huckleberry Finn in high school, so tiresome, but I loved The Thin Executioner, which is a mediation on Twain.

I could go on and on and on and few on’s after that. Sherman Alexie, Paolo Bacigalupi, Libba Bray, Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, David McGinnis Gill, M.T. Anderson (author of the single best book of existentialism ever), Laurie Halse Anderson, A.S. King (truly a boss lady), Barry Lyga, Holly Black (oh my GOD, so good), Laini Taylor, Michael Lawrence, Catherine Fisher, Walter Dean Myers (bow down to the man).

You get the idea. I am almost metaphysically certain I will never read Johnathan Franzen and I have no regrets for I have these voices, these stories, to flat out smack me in the gob.

Dammit! I forgot the Antipodeans: Garth Nix, Karen Healey, Margo Lanagan, Marcus Zusak…

So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post from Lee Wind

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Today’s guest for our “So You Want to Read YA?” series is Lee Wind. 

Photo by Rita Crayon Huang
Lee Wind is a Blogger, Author and Speaker.  He has a masters degree in Education and Media from Harvard and is widely seen as an expert in GLBTQ Teen Literature.  His award-winning blog “I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell do I Read?” gets over 200,000 page loads a year, and he’s the official blogger for the Society of Children’s Books Writers And Illustrators.  His articles and interviews with luminaries in the world of Children’s Literature have been published on-line and in print, including the 2011 and 2012 editions of “Children’s Writer’s And Illustrator’s Market.”  He speaks to thousands of students and educators a year, conducting Smashing Stereotypes workshops and presenting Safe Space: Ending Anti-Gay Bullying in our Culture… and at YOUR School programs.  You can find out more about Lee at www.leewind.org.
 
I often joke that for writers of kid lit, we have these ages of arrested development – these times in our childhood when colors seemed fiercer, tastes exploded in our mouths, and our memories seem so real that we can go back there in an instant.  And those are the times we go back to when we’re writing a six year old in a picture book.  An eleven year old in a middle grade work.  Or a fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen year old in a Young Adult novel.  We can write all those ages because we’ve been all those ages, and art and craft and inspiration fill in the rest.
For adult readers, there’s something truly exciting about being able to go back inside ourselves to those same ages through reading, and nourish (and sometimes heal) our inner child.  Our inner teen.
When I was growing up, I knew I was attracted to other guys, but I didn’t even know the word for it. When I learned the word (and a bunch of other not-so-nice versions of it) there wasn’t even a single book that showed me a positive, happy gay teen character.  The only “gay” characters were adult pedophiles and predators (like Baron Harkonnen in Frank Herbert’s otherwise brilliant “Dune”) and that wasn’t helping me claim my authentic identity.  So I read between the lines.  Voraciously.  I even figured out a loophole in the mating ritual of the dragons and dragonriders of Pern, and felt maybe there was a place for gay me in the fantasies of Anne McCaffrey.  But it was never stated on the page.
Which left me feeling that if there wasn’t a place for me in the world of fantasy and fiction, how could there be a place for me – as a gay guy – in our real world?
It was a cold lesson. And it kept me closeted for years.
But as I grew to be an adult and came out as a proud gay man, that lack of representation in teen fiction made me determined to become a writer myself, and write the damn stories I had yearned to read.
In time, the world and children’s publishing started to change, and in the last decade, there’s been an explosion of books for teens with gay characters.  Lesbian characters, too.  There are even a handful of bisexual and transgender titles. There are books with gay parents and uncles and caretakers, and even picture books with two dad and two mom families.  
“Annie On My Mind” by Nancy Garden – the first teen lesbian love story with a happy ending – made me cry when I read it in my 40s, because even though they were so different from me, at their core, the humanity of Liza and Annie spoke to me so deeply.  “Boy Meets Boy” by David Levithan and “Freak Show” by James St. James and “The God Box” by Alex Sanchez and “Absolutely Positively Not” by David LaRochelle rocked my world with great gay teen characters and hopeful and even happy endings.  There were so many GLBTQ teen titles that I started a blog to list them all and let teens and other readers review them in a safe space.  (“I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell do I Read?” at www.leewind.org)
Every GLBTQ Teen book I read – most recently “Zombies Vs. Unicorns” – an anthology that included three stories with queer main characters, rocks my world.  And I think, wow, just one of these books would have changed my life.  If I could have seen a gay “me” in fiction when I was a teen, I would have known that there IS a place for gay me in reality – and that’s a lesson I hope EVERY teen, no matter who they are, understands today.
And for us adults, we can time travel back to our inner fifteen year old, and say, I have something you have to read.  And it’s gonna rock your world.  And in nourishing and healing our inner teen, we nourish and heal our adult selves as well. 
So read YA for your inner teen – and let it rock your world!
***
Where to find great GLBTQ Teen Books:
Every year since 2008 the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table and the Social Responsibilities Round Table puts out the “Rainbow List” of the best books for kids and teens with GLBTQ characters and themes published.  Check out their lists here: http://glbtrt.ala.org/rainbowbooks/rainbow-books-lists
Daisy Porter has excellent reviews of Queer YA on her blog, http://daisyporter.org/queerya/
And of course, my blog lists of over 450 books in these categories: 
Gay Teen characters/Themes, 
Lesbian Teen characters/Themes, 
Bisexual Teen Characters/Themes, 
Transgender Teen Characters/Themes, 
Questioning Teen Characters/Themes, 
Books with Queer (Gender Non-Conforming) Teen Characters/Themes, 
Books with an ensemble that includes GLBTQ Teen Characters, 
Books with a GLBTQ Parent/Caretaker, 
Books on Friends and Family of GLBTQ Characters, 
Books with Homophobia as a Theme, 
GLBTQ YA Graphic Novels and Comics, 
Easy Reader/Chapter books with GLBTQ (and Gender Non Conforming) Content, 
Picturebooks I wish had been read to me when I was a little kid, 
Books with surprise gay (GLBTQ) content, 
Cross Over Adults Books of GLBTQ Teen interest, 
The GLBTQ Middle Grade Bookshelf, 
The Gay Fantasy Bookshelf, 
The GLBTQ Teen Short Story Bookshelf, 
GLBTQ Teen nonfiction, and 
GLBTQ Biography and Memoir.  
You can check them all out at www.leewind.org.

So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post by CK Kelly Martin

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This week’s guest post for our “So You Want to Read YA?” series comes from one of my favorite authors, CK Kelly Martin. 

C. K. Kelly Martin began writing her first novel in a flat in Dublin and finished it in a Toronto suburb. By then she was thoroughly hooked on young adult fiction and her fifth YA novel, Yesterday, will hit shelves on September 25th, while her first ‘new adult’ novel, Come See About Me, will be available as an ebook in late June. Her online home is www.ckkellymartin.com.  She’s also on Twitter @CKKellyMartin.

When I started reading young adult books again, around 1999/2000, it’d been a long, long while since I’d digested any books for teenagers. Discovering the breadth of fantastic YA books on library and bookstore shelves felt sort of like finding buried treasure because, although the novels were not in fact buried and were widely available, it seemed very few folks outside of the teen demographic (unless they were YA writers or future YA writers) were seeking them out. Happily, that’s changed over the last decade or so and more and more adults are showing an interest in reading books about teen characters. My favourite YA reading material tends to lean towards weighty true-to-life contemporary offerings but I’ve tried to recommend a cross-section of books here, all stories that I believe will endure the test of time.

Life is Funny (E.R. Frank, 2000). If I had to recommend a single YA book it would be this one – the intersecting stories of eleven New York City high schools students of different genders, race and class. Writer E. R. Frank is also a social worker and her experience shows in spades. Each of the eleven characters has a completely distinct voice and Life is Funny is the most nakedly honest, perceptive book I’ve ever read about teenagers. 

 
Finnikin of the Rock (Melina Marchetta, 2008). Generally I’m not a huge fan of fantasy (I know, I know, it just doesn’t happen to be my thing) but I’d enjoyed Melina Marchetta’s contemporary books so much that I felt compelled to try this one out too. Several years earlier the royal family of Lumatere were murdered and their throne seized. Now young Finnikin must help a young novice named Evanjalin and others, in the hopes that a Lumatere heir might one day be restored to the throne and the land’s many exiles be returned to their home. Full of magic, bloody battles and tinged with romance too, Finnikin of the Rock is as smart as it is riveting. If you pick this book up you won’t want to put it down.
Broken Soup (Jenny Valentine, 2008). A warm, original, intelligent novel about loss, friendship, family, and memory. Main character Rowan has suffered the death of her older brother and her remaining family is falling apart in the aftermath, but there’s also a mystery to be solved. Who is the boy who hands her a negative in a shop one day and what will the developed photograph reveal? This contemporary story is conveyed with a timeless feel and features three dimensional characters that you’ll admire and be sorry to say goodbye to.

Stolen: A Letter to My Captor (Lucy Christopher, 2009). When sixteen-year-old Gemma is snatched from an airport and smuggled to a remote part of Australia where she’s held captive by attractive, familiar looking Ty, the story doesn’t play out like you’d expect. It’s mesmerizing, often beautiful and extremely unsettling, a real journey of the mind. Like Gemma, I felt off-balance, fascinated and fearful throughout the whole ordeal. I also felt as though I’d never, ever read anything like this. 

 
Saints of Augustine (P. E. Ryan, 2007). Best friends Sam and Charlie are no longer on speaking terms but need each other now more than ever. After the death of Charlie’s mom, his father is in free-fall – drinking too much and generally dropping out of life. Charlie himself has developed a drug problem and owes his dealer money. Meanwhile Sam (who is not yet out) is falling for a boy named Justin while having to endure homophobic remarks from his mother’s tool of a boyfriend. It’s a shame that we still don’t get to read nearly as much about boys’ friendships as we do about girls’ ones, but this is some excellent writing on the subject. The story is told from both boys’ points of views and is pointedly truthful and organic in feel rather than the melodrama it easily could’ve been reduced to in someone else’s hands. 
 
The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Carrie Ryan, 2009). I adored each of the books in Carrie Ryan’s zombie series but this first one perhaps the most. The Sisterhood. The Guardians. The Unconsecrated. And the creepy medieval-like village where the action begins. I get the shivers just thinking about it all. Our world feels so long gone in The Forest of Hands and Teeth that it’s almost like glimpsing a parallel world’s past – if that world had been overrun with zombies, that is. Would it be weird of me to call a bunch of zombie books delightful? Because that’s how I felt about Carrie Ryan’s series.

48 Shades of Brown (Nick Earls, 2004). There’s a scene involving an irate goose that made me laugh out loud while reading 48 Shades of Brown, a slice-of-life, funny but realistic novel about Aussie teenager Dan going to stay with his young aunt and her cute roommate while his parents spend the year in Geneva. Pure charming! I enjoyed this book so much that I’ve actually bought it twice now. 

 
Tyrell and Bronxwood (Coe Booth, 2007 and 2011). Back in 08 I wrote a review of Tyrell on Amazon under the heading “Tyrell’s one of the best YA novels I’ve ever read.” The review simply says, “I was utterly convinced by Tyrell’s character and situation” and I felt exactly the same way after reading the sequel, Bronxwood. When we first meet Tyrell he’s awash in problems that many people with more years and life skills under their belts wouldn’t be able to handle. His dad’s in jail, his mom’s on drugs and he’s living in a homeless shelter with the little brother he tries to look out for. But Tyrell never gives up. Instead he fights like hell to stay afloat and whatever he does, however brave or screwed up he is at the time, and wherever his relationships with various girls takes him, it all feels on hundred percent genuine. 
 
Jumpstart the World (Catherine Ryan Hyde, 2010). Sixteen-year-old Elle’s unhappy family life has resulted in her living in her own New York apartment, down the hall from a couple named Molly and Frank. As a group of diverse kids from school befriend Elle, she’s also drawn into a close friendship with her next door neighbours. The thing is, she feels more than friendship for Frank and when Elle learns Frank’s transgender she’s shaken to the core. Catherine Ryan Hyde seems to specialize in writing caring but confused and wounded three-dimensional characters. She has such talent for finding genuine (not forced) hope in tough situations that I’ll gladly read anything she writes.

 

Tomorrow When the War Began (John Marsden, 1993). Last year I finished off the entire seven-book Tomorrow series and although this first book was released almost twenty years ago, it feels both completely fresh and like an instant classic. The Tomorrow novels centre on a group of teenagers who are camping away from home in the bush when Australia is invaded by a foreign army. Main character Ellie and her friends are left to survive and battle the invaders on their own. The story’s not told in a way that glorifies war, nor does it portray the young characters as action heroes, but they are fighters – courageous, intelligent and yet far from invincible. The emotional veracity of each of the books makes it clear that even if there’s a victory at the end of book seven and the invaders are forced to abandon Australia, this band of young people will never be the same – and some of them won’t survive at all. 
 
Target (Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson, 2003) Six-foot-three sixteen-year-old Grady West starts eleventh grade at a new school after being raped by two strangers. This is the unflinching story of the heavy emotional toll the attack takes on Grady and his slow steps towards healing. I greatly admire Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson’s sensitive but truthful handling of this material (a story you rarely see told). 
 
Let’s Get Lost (Sarah Manning, 2006). Manning’s books have such a nice vibe but this is my favourite so far. Mean girl Isabelle isn’t as she appears. There are hurtful secrets she’s covering over with her bad behaviour – some involving her mother’s death. Smith, a college student she picks up in a club and lies to about her age, seems to guess there’s more going on beneath the surface. All the lies and pain are bound to come to a head but, for me, each step of the journey was so compelling that I was in no hurry to reach the destination. Well, except that naturally I wanted to see what happened between Isabelle and the charismatic Smith!

**
CK Kelly Martin is the acclaimed author of I Know It’s Over (2008), One Lonely Degree (2009), The Lighter Side of Life and Death (2010), My Beating Teenage Heart (2011), and the forthcoming Yesterday (September 2012). She’s also taking a stab this summer at e-publishing her novel aimed at the “new adult”/20-somethings market, titled Come See About Me.

So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post from Susan Adrian

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This week’s guest post for our “So You Want to Read YA?” series comes from writer Susan Adrian. 

Susan Adrian is an author of young adult books of all shapes and sizes. In the past she worked in the fields of exotic pet-sitting, clothes-schlepping, and bookstore management, and has settled in, mostly, as a scientific editor. She currently lives in the wilds of Montana with her family, and keeps busy by learning Russian, eating chocolate, and writing more books. You can visit her website at http://susanadrian.blogspot.com or follow her on Twitter @susan_adrian. Susan is represented by Kate Schafer Testerman of kt literary. 

So you’re an adult—even a thirty- or forty-something credit card-carrying adult—and you’ve heard about this Hunger Games thing. Maybe you even tried those books, and you thought they were pretty (darn) impressive. More real, vivid, and intense than the books you’ve been reading. Different. You wander into the crowded young adult section, ready to sample something else.

And then you hide your face and walk quickly the other way, because (a) there are so many choices, and so many of them have vampires or headless teens or dead girls in dresses, and (b) there are actual teens there, and that’s just all kinds of scary. Yikes.

Relax. It may seem overwhelming at first, but that’s only because there is so much awesome to be had in the YA section. Once you get started, you’ll see goodness on every shelf—and you may even be able to strike up a conversation with those teens. Or (gasp) your own kids.

I’ve chosen a few sock-knockers, of different genres within YA, to get your feet wet. Awesomeness on these titles is guaranteed.

Classics:

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Like The Hunger Games, Uglies takes place in a future society quite different from our own, but Westerfeld has taken a different direction. In this world, everyone has a compulsory operation on their sixteenth birthday to make them ideally beautiful. Fifteen-year-old Tally, currently an Ugly, is biding her time until she can be a Pretty too. But her best friend refuses her surgery and runs away, and Tally’s decision is suddenly not so clear. The language, worldbuilding, and characterization are top-notch, and this is a book I think all ages can relate to.

Looking for Alaska by John Green

John Green has gotten some good “adult” press lately (Time Magazine!) for his recent book The Fault in our Stars. Looking for Alaska, his first novel, is equally deserving of a crossover audience. Told from the point of view of Miles Halter, a junior in his first year at a southern boarding school, it is literary, but also accessible. This book won the Printz as well as all sorts of other awards, deservingly. The writing and characterization are phenomenal.

Paranormal (ish):

White Cat by Holly Black

No vampires here—just an incredibly creative, well-imagined world of magic and compelling, complex characters. I’d never read Holly Black before this, and I absolutely devoured this book whole. (And its sequel, Red Glove. I’m anxiously waiting for Black Heart to come out in April.) I won’t even spoil the plot for you, but there are con artists, assassins, and crime bosses, all twisted together with magic.

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Everyone loves ghosts, right? How about a teenage ghost-killer, who never allows himself to connect to the living, running up against the one ghost he can’t get rid of? Add forbidden love and lots of delicious nastiness. This book has a mystery vibe, and anybody who loves mysteries or dark ghost stories should snap it up.

Dystopian:

I admit, I’ve gotten a little tired of the dystopian genre lately—but these two knock it out of the park, with original and richly imagined societies. I actually have recommended both to fellow grown-ups within the past couple weeks.

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

Ana is born into a world where everyone else has been reincarnated, over and over, with their memories intact, for thousands of years—except her. Someone has died so she could be born, a “new soul,” and the rest of this society can’t forgive her and has no idea how to treat her. Enter secrets, sylphs, and dragons. I was fascinated with the world and with Ana’s unique voice. Incarnate also has one of the best romances I’ve seen in a long time.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

When Divergent came out last year, it was hyped as the next Hunger Games—and I think it’s the only one to live up to that hype. The world has devolved into five factions: Candor (honesty), Abnegation (selflessness), Dauntless (bravery), Amity (kindness), and Erudite (intelligence)…and sixteen year-olds must choose where they belong. Beatrice, the main character, goes through a dramatic transformation in this story, and I believed every step of it. Like many others, I’m ready and waiting for the sequel (Insurgent), which comes out in May.

These should be enough to get you all tangled up in the emotional honesty and power of YA books.

See, once you’ve been in the YA section for a while, you won’t be able to get away…

Er. I mean, welcome.

So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post from Janssen Bradshaw

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This week’s “So You Want to Read YA?” guest post comes from the person who inspired me to want to start blogging three years ago. I met Janssen in library school, and we’ve talked YA books ever since. 

Janssen is a former elementary school librarian and now stays at home reading pictures books to her daughter and as many YA books as she can squeeze in during naps. She blogs at Everyday Reading and loves Twitter more than she ought to. You can follow her @EverydayReading.

As a reader, sometimes I want a recommendation for a really good book. And sometimes I want a recommendation for an author with a great backlist that I can spend months working my way through.

And so, if you are the same kind of reader and you want to dip your toes into the YA world, here are seven books I’d recommend, if you’d like a single reading experience, and seven authors whose works I return to again and again.

Seven Authors: 

  • Melina Marchetta: She is one versatile writer. Her realistic fiction is amazing (Jellicoe Road being my favorite), but her ventures into fantasy, with Finnikin of the Rock, won me over even though I don’t really love fantasy. 

  • Sarah Dessen: She is one of my favorite authors; her books are realistic and rich. This is a woman who remembers what it’s like to be a teenage girl.Her books tend to be similar, but not in a bad way. 

 

  • Shannon Hale: The Goose Girl was one of my first forays into the world of reading YA as an adult and her books have remained my favorites. I don’t tend to really go for fantasy or fairy-tale type stories, but her books are so fantastic, I’m happy to make an exception. Not only does she write great stories, but the writing itself is just beautiful. My husband has listened to the audio versions of nearly all her books and also loved them. 

 

  • Jordan Sonnenblick: This man can write. You’ll be hard pressed at the end of his books to know if you laughed or cried more. I would give his books to absolutely anyone. His male leads are funny, self-deprecating, and so nice you wish they were your brother or your son or your boyfriend. Sonnenblick takes the real tragedies of life (ailing grandparents, childhood cancer, etc) and addresses them in a way that never feels trite or preachy. 

 

  • E. Lockhart: Not only has she written one of my favorite books of all time, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, her Ruby Oliver series delighted me to no end. She writes smart and likeable heroines who are either dealing with very normal situations or deal with bizarre ones in ways that seem entirely realistic. 

 

  • Ellen Emerson White: She is likely the very dark horse on this list. Her books are fairly old (from the eighties) and many of them are out of print, although one of her series (The President’s Daughter) has just been recently republished. Her books are a little edgy, smart, and just a pleasure to read. If you can find her stuff, it’s worth a read. 

 

  • Louise Rennison: These are books for when you just want to laugh your little head off and also fly through  book in about ninety minutes. Her diary-style books about a British teenager obsessed with boys are both silly and full of memorable quotes. 

 

  • Sara Zarr: I’m impressed when I read a book that I can’t predict how things will work out and yet I’m struck at the end by how right and real it seems. Doing this in multiple books? That’s a real trick. And Sara Zarr is a master at it. 

    Seven Books:

    • The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt:  This is my favorite book of all-time. Set during the Vietnam War, this is historical fiction the way it should be written. If I could choose any book to have written, this is the one I would choose.

    • Split by Swati Avasthi: I read this book over a year ago and I still think about it frequently. This is a hard read, focusing on a teen boy running away from his abusive father to find his older brother who ran off years earlier, but it’s so amazingly written, it’d be foolish to miss it.

    •  If I Stay by Gayle Forman: I am not a crier, usually, and this one had me sobbing in the airport (and that was the second time I read it). About a girl who is in a terrible carcrash with her entire family, this book explores the decision of a teenager girl whether to go on with her life after tragedy or let herself go. 

    • Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs: Sports and poetry might be an unlikely combination, but it works here even better than you can imagine. Kevin is working through the death of his mother and his girlfriend issues through poetry (at the suggestion of his writer-dad). This is one where the form is as important (and works as well) as the story itself. A perfect blend.

    • Little Brother by Cory Doctorow: I am not a tech-y, so I knew this book was good when I found myself riveted by the descriptions of computer technology. It is just deeply satisfying to watch a bunch of San Francisco teenagers take on a Big Brother-ish government after a terrorist attack. And do it not only effectively but with such pizazz.

    • Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson: I grew up on Little House on the Prarie, but I’d thought I’d outgrown settler/pioneer stories until I read this one. The pacing is just right on this book about a teenage girl who goes to Montana by herself in an attempt to “prove-up” a homestead.

    • Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin: Amnesia is one of those plotlines that pretty much guarantees I’ll read a book. And this one, about a high school senior who forgets everything since her freshman year, is clever and thought-provoking.

    • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: This one’s already been mentioned and for good reason. It is magnificently written historical fiction about a foster family hiding a Jew during WWII. Narrated by Death, it’s inventive, funny, clever, and heartbreaking.