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books

Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang

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Gene Luen Yang is a big name in the graphic novel scene, and deservedly so. I really liked his Printz-winning book American Born Chinese, but Boxers & Saints – a new duology about the Boxer Rebellion told from two perspectives – tops it.

Boxers tells the story of the Boxer Rebellion from the point of view of a Chinese boy named Little Bao. Since he was a little boy, he’s seen the Westerners invade his town and his country with their strange language and their strange religion. The book opens with a Christian priest smashing a statue of one of the revered Chinese gods, declaring it a false idol. The foreigners humiliate his father, run roughshod over Chinese culture, and there are whispers that the foreign leaders plan to carve up China like they have so much of the rest of the world.

Anti-Western sentiment is high, and it’s no surprise that Little Bao – now not so little – chooses to follow his kung fu teacher in fighting against Western influence. When his teacher is executed for an act of (justified, to Little Bao) aggression against Westerners, his resolve only strengthens. Over time, he and his village friends recruit an army of men who intend to march to Peking and rid China of the foreign and Christian influence. It’s fairly simple for them to dispose of the foreigners; it’s less easy when it comes to the “secondary devils,” the Chinese people who have converted to Christianity. Bao’s story is harrowing in its violence and heartbreak. He commits terrible acts of violence, but such is the power of Yang’s story that it’s difficult to condemn him completely.

Saints is less successful, but only marginally so. Four-Girl is so insignificant to her family that they didn’t even give her a proper name, instead choosing to call her by her place in the birth order. She goes her whole childhood feeling unwanted, and eventually decides to embrace her “devil” side. If she can’t be good, she’ll be exactly the opposite. She finds her way to Christianity in this vein, but she eventually embraces it as her own faith when she chooses a name, Vibiana, therefore making her one of the “secondary devils” Bao despises so much.

I know the Chinese converts had myriad reasons for their conversion, and some were probably not motivated completely by religious fervor, but I never really bought into Vibiana’s complete capitulation to her new religion. It seemed a bit too abrupt to me. There wasn’t quite enough transition from her joining the religion to spite her family to her actual belief in it, and as a consequence, I never really felt that her religious conviction was so strong that she would die for it (highlight to read the spoiler).

Despite this complaint, her story is still heart-wrenching, made even more so by the fact that I knew about her through Bao’s eyes going into it. The format of the duology works exceptionally well – the two stories complement each other, clearly communicating different, valid perspectives while also endorsing neither completely. This could have been a quite didactic way to tell the story (remember kids, you have to look at everything from both sides!), but it never felt that way. It’s a story about two people caught up in something bigger than themselves and what they choose to do about it.

As is normal for Yang, there’s a bit of magic in each story, though it’s never quite clear if the magic is real or inside the people’s heads (as is also normal for Yang). Bao and his comrades transform into Chinese gods when they fight, making them almost invincible (at least in their minds), and Vibiana sees visions of Joan of Arc. Each of these elements provide a longer historical context for the story, beyond just the years of the Boxer Rebellion. They also provide a bit more cultural context, essential in a book for English-speakers who probably don’t know much about China.

This is perhaps the best example I know of what the graphic novel format can do. It’s written in English, but when the Westerners speak, their language is portrayed in an incomprehensible scrawl that slightly resembles Chinese characters, with the translation below. The art is fantastic, with colors by Lark Pien, who chose to utilize all colors of the rainbow for Boxers and went with mostly muted grays and browns for Saints. Just as the text is the story, so too is the art. They work together to create something a prose novel never could.

Authorial intent is often discussed with books like these. Yang is even-handed, and if he has a bias, it’s not detectable. What really comes across is the immense sense of tragedy. These books are heartbreaking, not only because of what happens to the
people, but because of what the people do to each other. Yang first
makes the reader care about Little Bao, to sympathize with him, to see
exactly where he’s coming from, and then he has Little Bao do terrible
things because of it. It’s hard to read. It’s made even more difficult after reaching the end of Boxers and picking up Saints, knowing how Bao’s and Vibiana’s stories intersect and how they end. Either book would be a solid read on its own, but together they are more than the sum of their parts.

If you read only one graphic novel this year, make it this one. And then tell me what you think of it.

Advance copies provided by the publisher. Boxers and Saints will be available September 10.

OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu

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Bea has OCD.

Bea doesn’t identify as someone with OCD. She doesn’t exhibit a lot of the trademark signs of the mental illness — she doesn’t really have compulsions or obsessions. Or at least, she tells herself she doesn’t, and by extension, she convinces us as readers she doesn’t have them. But slowly, as OCD Love Story unravels, Bea comes around to the idea that the things she does which other people don’t do are precisely what mark her illness.

It’s a school dance, and Bea’s at the local all-boys academy. When the power dies, she finds herself sitting beside a boy with whom she strikes up an immediate conversation and kinship. She can’t see Beck, but she knows she likes him right away. Even though he’s tentative about her seeing him, she pushes. She wants to know who this boy is. But when the lights come back on, she’s lost him and she knows nothing of him except his name. Maybe she’ll see him again. Maybe not.

When Bea shows up for her next therapy appointment, it’s all routine: she gets there early enough to grab the seat nearest Dr. Pat’s office, where she can listen to the session before hers. It’s a couple — Austin and Sylvia — and they’re having issues. Bea takes copious notes about them, including what they’re saying to one another, what their challenges might be, what she imagines their life at home must feel like. As Dr. Pat calls her into the office that day, she drops not only the bomb that she’s suspecting Bea’s challenges are due to OCD (and specifically the compulsions) and worse, Bea’s going to start going to group therapy. Such therapy would be good because it would allow for meeting other people who are suffering with similar problems and more importantly, it would provide her an opportunity for exposure therapy.

And it’s at the first group therapy session when Bea reunites with Beck. How many local boys have that name? She recognizes his voice. She recognizes him as him.

Beck has OCD. The things he told her about the night at the dance make sense. And more than that, Bea becomes aware of how his OCD manifests quite quickly. Their first “date” happens when Beck asks her to take him to the gym after therapy. Because he told his mother his sessions lasted three hours, when really, they were more like an hour. Those additional two hours were for his working out.

Even though she sees it immediately in him, Bea is blind to how her own OCD manifests. We as readers are blind to this for a long time, too. She is an expert at hiding it and revealing it to herself — and us by extension — slowly. Rather than tell us, rather than even showing us, she experiences it, and as readers, we experience it right along with her. We are there as she drives to Austin and Sylvia’s house over and over. We are there as she pinches her thigh hard to stop herself from acting upon something. We are there as she panics when she starts to drive and when she has to pull over. We are there when she tells us about the scrapbook from the boy who did something violent. As Bea has her ah ha moments thinking about her past, particularly when she tells us why it is she ended up in Dr. Pat’s office for therapy, we see more of the backstory. We see more of the forward progress in these moments, as well.

Bea is very sick, but she doesn’t show it off in the ways people would expect of someone with OCD. She fixates on people and on their lives. She stalks people she becomes fascinated with, even at the expense of those relationships in her life which are good and strong. Bea has a solid family unit, and she has a great best friend. But those are things she can’t wrap her mind around. She sees other people’s lives as so much more interesting and so much better than her own, even when it’s clear they are not. But she fears tremendously that things could change in an instant. She worries about sharp objects, about violence, about glass and knives and the pain they could potentially inflict upon anyone she loves and cares about.

She does have a huge moment later in the story recognizing this — and it’s one of the most painful moments of exposure therapy that she could have never planned. When she comes to understand that the image in her head of Austin and Sylvia’s rock star life isn’t what she’d imagined, Bea has her understanding of just how ill she is and yet at the same time, just how okay she is.

OCD Love Story has a bit of a misleading cover. This isn’t a light-hearted romance. There is indeed a budding romance here, and there’s sex and talk about sex (Bea’s not really ashamed of being sexually active), but I wouldn’t call what Bea and Beck experience traditional in any way. Those looking for a romance won’t really find it here — there isn’t hand holding, there aren’t first kisses, there aren’t moments that are really swoon-worthy. In many ways, I’d argue that almost makes the romance more authentic, but that’s to the real world, rather than the fictional world.


OCD Love Story does not have a misleading title, though: this is a love story through and through. It’s a love story to Bea coming to understand herself and coming to love herself, despite the very serious issues she’s tackling with internally. It’s Bea wrestling with loving those who are around her and support her because of and in spite of these things. Lish, her best friend, is an excellent friend. Haydu took serious time to craft a fully-fleshed cast of supporting characters in Bea’s life, and even though her lens is skewed throughout, we as readers recognize this skewed perception. She allows us this, telling us in one breath than Lish is doing something really nice for her and then immediately questioning whether Lish is sick of her or is just being nice because she feels obligated to do so.

Haydu’s writing is strong. Bea’s got a great voice, and she’s convincing in how she presents herself both to herself and to us as readers. She doesn’t seem sick. But slowly, she breaks. And as she breaks, it’s not because she’s presenting readers a show. It’s because she’s realizing she herself isn’t strong enough to keep up the charade, and she knows she doesn’t need to be (I think we can attribute part of that to her relationship with Beck — he’s never there to save her, but she’s there beside him as he struggles with his problems and she realizes it’s okay to be weak and allow people in when she needs it). This book will get under your skin as you watch someone who appears so strong crumble a little bit. Then crumble a bit more. Then break completely. And yet, as you watch this happen, you can’t help but feel like it’s going to be okay for her. There will be a bottom to the fall, but there’s a nice net there to catch Bea. The craft here is solid.

Pass OCD Love Story to those readers who want a straight on, unashamed look at mental illness. This is the kind of book that will realign their thoughts on what OCD is — it’s not just one of those challenges that can be the butt of a joke. You don’t have OCD if you check your alarm’s settings three times before bed every night. It’s not something that is easily recognized by those suffering, and Haydu does immense service to that with Bea. In many ways, this book is scary. It’s scary to experience the suffering right along with a character in a way that feels like it’s happening to you, too. In many ways it’s voyeuristic, but it’s through this lens that the book is so successful and powerful. An excellent, worthwhile debut novel. I’m eager to see where Haydu will go next.

I liked this book so much I called it my July favorite over at Book Riot’s monthly roundup.

OCD Love Story is available now. Review copy received from the publisher or picked up at BEA or something. 

The Theory of Everything by Kari Luna

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Fourteen-year-old Sophie Sophia and her mother just moved from San Francisco to the small town of Havencrest, Illinois (roughly 50 miles north of Chicago) after spending the bulk of their lives in Brooklyn, New York. Sophie is obsessed with eighties music, with dressing however the heck she feels like, and with figuring out what happened to her father.

Sophie’s super-smart, passionate, and strange physicist dad disappeared just a few years ago, and that’s what set her and her mother off on this series of cross-country moves. It was less about getting away and more about finding. Finding themselves. Finding a way through the grief. Finding a way to build something new.

It doesn’t take long before Sophie’s made herself a new friend in her physics class named Finny. But it also doesn’t take long before she starts being visited by her shaman Panda named Walt. Is Sophie crazy or can these trips to a parallel world full of spiritually-guiding pandas be the way to find and connect with her long-long father?

The Theory of Everything is an enjoyable read, but it won’t be one of my favorites. I certainly see how it’s been compared to books like Going Bovine or even The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I think it falls short of being a strong read alike to either of those titles. In many ways, Luna’s debut novel fails to fully form Sophie as a memorable character in and of herself, which both Bray’s novel and Chbosky’s do. Much of what makes Sophie a character are the things surrounding her, rather than who she is in and of herself. More than that, she’s hard to buy as a 14-year-old with the sort of knowledge and wisdom she has in consideration of the larger story, and secondary characters throughout the novel don’t blossom beyond certain tropes.

The bulk of Luna’s novel is realistic — it’s about Sophie learning to cope with big changes in her life. She’s recently moved, and now she has to learn to fit into a small town where she is, of course, under the belief she’ll be the only eccentric girl there who loves 80s music and funky clothes because no one in a small town has any culture to them. While I buy that belief wholeheartedly, especially given that Sophie is from Brooklyn and spent time in San Francisco, I took issue with her obsession with 80s music. I know I’ve blogged before, but in many ways, the trend of having characters who love anything 80s or setting a book in the 80s for the music/pop culture rings false to me. It reads more like authorial nostalgia than it does character development or authenticity. Do teens today like 80s music? Maybe some do. But as someone who was born in the mid-80s myself and who tries to stay moderately up-to-date in pop culture, a lot of the references or significance of this stuff is completely lost on me. I think we aren’t quite yet removed enough from this era to see it or appreciate it for what it is in that historical context. I think in the case of Sophie, it wasn’t so much about her character being a fan of the music. It felt more like a way for her character to be unique, which I didn’t like. She had plenty of other qualities inherent to her character to do that for her.

Almost immediately in the story, Sophie befriends Finny in her physics class. Both geek out about string theory and the notion of parallel worlds, among other things. They’re best pals quickly, and Sophie opens up to him about the real things going on in her life, including why she’s living in Havencrest. Finny, on the other hand, gives almost nothing to Sophie — maybe because Sophie is a little self-absorbed she misses it, but I think that in many respects, Finny just isn’t a full character. What we know about him is that he’s gay and he’s easily convinced to skip school and hop a train with Sophie for a whirlwind adventure in Brooklyn to look for her father. We learn later on he’s the type of person who can establish relationships quickly, period, as he does just that with the new woman in Sophie’s father’s life. I wish he’d been a lot more developed because he was interesting. I wondered about his own life in small town Illinois, about what it was like for him to be gay in that situation, and I wondered, too, if he had any friends besides Sophie. In many ways, Finny felt like simply the gay sidekick in the story.

The Theory of Everything isn’t entirely realistic though — at least, it might not be. What makes Sophie truly unique is that she often falls into a parallel world, where she’s greeted by a shaman panda named Walt. He is friendly with her and he assures her many times that things are going to be okay.

The thing about these episodes Sophie experiences, though, is that they’re the same episodes her own father used to experience. They’re the same kinds of episodes that would happen and cause him to disappear for days at a time and to raise worries with her mother and his other loved ones. These moments of disconnecting with the real world and falling deeply into this made up one were the real reason he disappeared and never came back, as well as why Sophie and her mother left Brooklyn.

What makes Luna’s book go the magical realism direction, though, is that it’s possible these episodes aren’t a method of coping nor a mental illness. They could all be explained by physics in some capacity. Are there parallel worlds we can fall into? If so, how can we do that? If parallel worlds exist, are Sophie and her father both capable of entering and exiting them in as much a physical way as they are able to enter them in a mental way. Sophie can bring objects back with her from her episodes, only making these questions tougher to answer.

There is a lot of suspension of disbelief necessary for the story beyond the episodes. Sophie and Finny run off to Brooklyn together without either of their parents becoming too concerned — and remember, they’re 14. There’s also a really underdeveloped and somewhat random romantic interest given to Sophie mere days after her move, and the guy stays patient and understanding with her, despite the fact she flakes out on him more than once. So there is a “love story” here in terms of a romance, but it’s shallow and secondary; the real “love story” might instead be to family.

The ending is a bit unsatisfying, as I’m not sure it draws any conclusions or further considerations for Sophie beyond giving her closure in the understanding that sometimes, there simply is not closure (which is a fair takeaway for her and for the reader, even if I don’t necessarily like it).

Writing-wise, there’s nothing particularly memorable here. It suits the story, and it doesn’t get bogged down. My only qualm might be that it felt like there was too much trying to be crammed in in an attempt to give Sophie a quirkiness that she didn’t need to have because it already existed within her — starting with her name.

Despite the fact this wasn’t one of my favorite reads in recent memory, those looking for something different and fun, despite the heavier themes of grief and mental illness, will likely appreciate The Theory of Everything. I can see readers who like Natalie Standiford’s brand of quirk in How to Say Goodbye in Robot or Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters finding this a satisfying read, as would those readers who want their stories with a little bit of science-fantasy. Likewise, readers who like A. S. King’s magical realism, particularly Everybody Sees the Ants, will likely find this a great read alike. There’s probably a lot to be discussed among the two when it comes to mental illness and coping mechanisms.

Review copy received from the author. The Theory of Everything is available now. 

Starglass by Phoebe North

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Terra is about to come of age on the Asherah, a generation ship that’s been in space for five hundred years. It’s approaching its destination, the planet they call Zehava, and hers will be the last generation to grow to adulthood on the ship. Despite this very exciting fact, Terra can’t muster much happiness. She’s been assigned to work a job that she hates, and her father is a drunk and consumed by his grief for her mother, who died some time ago. The boy she likes seems to only be interested in her prettier friend.
And then, naturally, things get worse. Terra witnesses a terrible act of violence by a soldier on the ship, someone who is supposed to protect them. She’s forced to keep it a secret, knowing if she revealed it, her life would be forfeit. She begins to realize that the ruling class of the ship may not have everyone’s best interests at heart, that they’ve overstepped their bounds and may be intending to extend their control of the people of the Asherah beyond the ship, to the planet below. Unsurprisingly for a story like this, Terra finds herself involved in an underground rebellion. Soon, she’s asked to do something terrible, but – so they say – necessary, too.
There’s a lot of creativity at work in Starglass. In particular, the ship’s culture, which is very overtly Jewish, stands out. It’s a nice change from the “casually Christian” cultures of so many other SF stories, as North describes on her website. And it fits nicely into the frame story, which adds an interesting and unexpected layer.
The ending, too, is unexpected, but believable as well. In a way, it subverts the expectations many seasoned SF readers will have. I can’t begin to count the number of SF books I’ve read that have telegraphed their endings. It was nice to be surprised. (I’m being cryptic, but I don’t want to spoil anything.)
That’s not to say all aspects of the story are difficult to guess. Even casual readers will know how Terra’s two “romances” (and I use that word loosely here) will play out. But the writing is solid and the story is well-rounded, with a main plot that drives steadily forward while being buoyed by interesting, purposeful subplots. Starglass is not a thrill ride. In many ways it’s a cultural study of the Asherah’s people, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl.
I’ve decided I have an affection for stories about generation ships. The possibilities are so huge (read: aliens and new planets) that it’s hard not to get excited about what the author will do. At the same time, it’s hard not to be disappointed if and when the author only scratches the surface of what’s possible. In Starglass, Terra does not leave the ship. Luckily for us, there’s a sequel in the works, and the ending to Starglass leaves no doubt that these possibilities that interest me so will be explored there. It reminds me a lot of the anticipation I felt after finishing Beth Revis’ A Million Suns, where the characters were poised to explore the new planet – and North has given us some hints of what her characters will find on Zehava.
This is a natural readalike for Revis’ trilogy, though readers should expect a more leisurely story than Revis provides. I’m sure it will be classified as a dystopia by many, but this is just good old-fashioned science fiction, and it should please readers looking for just that.
If this review has piqued your interest, check back tomorrow – we’ve got a twitterview with the author, plus a giveaway of a finished copy of Starglass.
Review copy via Edelweiss

What are actual teens reading this summer?

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This year’s summer reading club at my library is almost over — it ends in exactly one week. One of the best parts of this program is that the set up here is such that I can actually see exactly what my teens are reading and enjoying. We ask teens to read a book, write down the title and author, and whether or not they would recommend it to other readers. 

What’s most interesting to me in the teen reading habits is that we’re able to see what they enjoy for fun outside of school, and we’re able to see that teens aren’t just reading the newest and shiniest books. They certainly are, but they’re also reading a healthy amount of back list titles, and there are teens who are discovering authors and reading that author’s entire catalog of available titles. They’re reading a range of fiction and non-fiction as well. 
Seeing what teens are reading has certainly given me a lot of ideas for future book displays, and it’s given me a great idea of what areas of interest and genres can use more books in our collection. Worth noting is that a good number of the books below were titles I’d put on display this summer. I did four displays: one of time travel/parallel world stories, one of zombies, one of mysteries/thrillers/spy stories, and one that was a mix of mermaid and water related stories and covers. If you don’t think doing book displays gets stuff moving, I’d like to argue otherwise! I doubt some of the books that got read would have if I didn’t pull them out from the stacks. 
Obviously, this isn’t everything that teens are reading, since that would be seven or eight posts long. But this should give a flavor for what it is they’re finding and enjoying. All of these are recommended reads from my kids. Maybe what excites me most is that of the hundreds of books they’ve read this summer so far, maybe 2 or 3 were not recommended. 

Rather than make this just a list of book titles, I’m including WorldCat descriptions as well. I’ve noted where I had a title in a display, too. 

Also worth noting — my kids are reading many books featuring diversity in some capacity, both fiction and non-fiction. 

Cascade by Lisa T. Bergren: When Gabi and Lia return to medieval Italy with their mother, they find a heroes’ welcome from the people of Siena and enemies that wish them dead. (Time travel)

Waterfall by Lisa T. Bergren: Maybe most American teens would love a Mediterranean vacation, but the Bentarrini sisters are stuck in Italy every summer with their archaeologist parents! Young Gabi is bored out of her mind . . . until she’s swept into the 14th century and a whole new world filled with knights, horses, armor, swords, and great-looking Italian guys! (Time travel)

Ironskin by Tina Connolly: Jane Eliot wears an iron mask. It’s the only way to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek. The Great War is five years gone, but its scattered victims remain–the ironskin. When a carefully worded listing appears for a governess to assist with a “delicate situation”–a child born during the Great War–Jane is certain the child is fey-cursed, and that she can help. Teaching the unruly Dorie to suppress her curse is hard enough; she certainly didn’t expect to fall for the girl’s father, the enigmatic artist Edward Rochart. But her blossoming crush is stifled by her scars and by his parade of women. Ugly women, who enter his closed studio…and come out as beautiful as the fey. Jane knows Rochart cannot love her, just as she knows that she must wear iron for the rest of her life. But what if neither of these things are true? Step by step Jane unlocks the secrets of a new life–and discovers just how far she will go to become whole again.

Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara: When Mariatu set out for a neighborhood village in Sierra Leone, she was kidnapped and tortured, and both of her hands cut off. She turned to begging to survive. This heart-rending memoir is a testament to her courage and resilience. Today she is a UNICEF Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat: “When a war ends it does not go away,” my mother says. “It hides inside us . . . Just forget!” But I do not want to do what Mother says . . . I want to remember. In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family; the harshness of life as a Palestinian refugee; her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. This is the beginning of her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home. Transcending the particulars of politics, this illuminating and timely book provides a telling glimpse into a little-known culture that has become an increasingly important part of the puzzle of world peace.

The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky by Farah Ahmedi: Ahmedi was born just as the war between the mujahideen and the Soviets reaches its peak in Afghanistan. The sounds of gunfire and fighter planes were as normal to her as the sounds of traffic or children playing are to a schoolgirl in America. When she stepped on a land mine on her way to school, she began to learn–slowly–that ordinary people, often strangers, have immense power to save lives and restore hope. She was taken from a childhood in Afghanistan, where the classrooms are naked chambers with only chalkboards on the walls and are filled with more students than seats (and no books), to a Chicago adolescence, where teenagers struggle to decide whether to try out for school plays, whom to take to the homecoming dance, and where to go to college.

 24 Girls in 7 Days by Alex Bradley: Jack Grammar, average American senior, has no date to the prom. Or so he thinks. Percy and Natalie, Jack’s so-called best friends, post an ad in the classified section of the online version of the school newspaper. They figure it couldn’t hurt. After all, there’s not much in this world sadder than Jack’s love life. Soon Percy and Natalie have assembled a list of girls eager to go to the prom with Jack, including one mysterious girl known only as FancyPants. He has just seven days to meet and date them before he will ask one special girl to the prom. 

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler: It’s 1996, and less than half of all American high school students have ever used the Internet. Emma just got her first computer and Josh is her best friend. They power up and log on–and discover themselves on Facebook, fifteen years in the future. Everybody wonders what their Destiny will be. Josh and Emma are about to find out. (Time travel)

Willow by Julia Hoban: Sixteen-year-old Willow, who was driving the car that killed both of her parents, copes with the pain and guilt by cutting herself, until she meets a smart and sensitive boy who is determined to help her stop.

Forgotten by Cat Patrick: Sixteen-year-old London Lane forgets everything each night and must use notes to struggle through the day, even to recall her wonderful boyfriend, but she “remembers” future events and as her “flashforwards” become more disturbing she realizes she must learn more about the past lest it destroy her future. (Time travel)

How I Spent My Last Night on Earth by Todd Strasser: When a rumor appears on the Internet that a giant asteroid is about to destroy Earth, Legs Hanover scrambles to meet the boy of her dreams, elusive Andros Bliss.

Life, After by Sarah Darer Littman: When poverty forces her family to leave their home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dani has a hard time adjusting to life in New York City, where everything is different except her father’s anger, but an unlikely bond she forms with a wealthy, spoiled girl at school helps heal both of their families.

The Book of Broken Hearts by Sarah Ockler: Jude has learned a lot from her older sisters, but the most important thing is this: The Vargas brothers are notorious heartbreakers. But as Jude begins to fall for Emilio Vargas, she begins to wonder if her sisters were wrong.

Just Another Hero by Sharon Draper: As Kofi, Arielle, Dana, November, and Jericho face personal challenges during their last year of high school, a misunderstood student brings a gun to class and demands to be taken seriously.

Wildthorn by Jane Eagland: Seventeen-year-old Louisa Cosgrove is locked away in the Wildthorn Hall mental institution, where she is stripped of her identity and left to wonder who has tried to destroy her life.

Guinness World Records 2013: You probably don’t need a description here.

The Big Book of Beiber: You also probably don’t need a description here.

True Crime: Illinois: I’m going to go ahead and skip the description on this one, as well. 

(Though can I say I love letting kids read stuff like this and counting it toward their summer reading? Because the thing is, it’s reading. And it’s reading exactly what it is that interests and fascinates them).

Notes from the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick: After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.

Violet by Design by Melissa Walker: Despite her intentions to give up runway modeling, eighteen-year-old Violet is lured back by the promise of travel to Brazil, possibly Spain and France, and, after seeing her best friends off to college, embarks on an, often exciting, often painful, international adventure.

Zombie Blondes by Brian James: Each time fifteen-year-old Hannah and her out-of-work father move she has some fears about making friends, but a classmate warns her that in Maplecrest, Vermont, the cheerleaders really are monsters. (zombies — and multiple mentions by different readers!)

Authors and Series Reads


A number of authors and series appeared over and over so far. I’m going to tease out the authors and just show one of the books from popular series being read. 

Ellen Hopkins: I think every single one of her books was read this summer so far. Some of them had been read multiple times by different teens.

Ally Carter: My teens are rabid about her books, and not only are they rabid, they’re very opinionated about which of the series is better.

Nicholas Sparks: He may not write books for teens, but teens love reading his books anyway.

Cinda Williams Chima: High fantasy fans abound.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series still has a ton of readers at my library.

Amanda Hocking: I can’t keep up with how many series she has going, but my teens continue to read them like crazy.

All of Alyson Noel’s books have been circulating with the teens this summer, as have the Summer Boys books by Hailey Abbott.

But maybe my favorite thing all summer so far is that I had a pile of rave recommendations (with actual notes — “I LOVE this series” — which I don’t require in my club) for Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley. When we had our first program this summer, one girl told me repeatedly she didn’t want to sign up for the club because she doesn’t read. She began to pore over a movie guide to The Hunger Games and I pointed out that what she was doing counted as reading. “No way,” she said, “This doesn’t count.” I assured her it did. She ended up signing up for the program, after winning the entire Scott Pilgrim series as a door prize.

Turns out, she not only is a reader, but she pretty much loves reading, too.

And because I am having fun looking through these books, here are a handful of other titles that popped up so far this summer:

  • When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
  • Unearthly by Cynthia Hand
  • Witch and Wizard and Daniel X by James Patterson
  • The Babysitter’s Club series by Ann M. Martin (When I saw this pop up more than once in my box, it warmed my heart — they’re still being read!)
  • Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers
  • Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
  • Harry Potter series
  • The Mysterious Benedict Society 
  • Nerve by Jeanne Ryan 
  • Lemonade Mouth
  • Elixir by Hilary Duff
  • The Goddess Inheritance by Aimee Carter