In the latest issue of Publishers Weekly’s Global Rights newsletter, I was thrilled to see that Traci Chee will have a new novel out next year, and that it’s historical fiction about Japenese-American teens in internment camps during World War II. According to PW and the publisher, it is a “novel-in-stories” told from the perspective of fourteen Nisei, or second-generation Japanese-American citizens. Not only is this topic in desperate need of further exploration, particularly in such times as these, I’m also fascinated by the whole idea of a novel-in-stories, which basically means the book is made up short stories that connect to each other in some way, working separately but telling a bigger story when taken as a whole. I read another book like this earlier in the year: Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton, which I loved in equal parts for its fascinating sci fi storylines as well as the novel made up of short stories conceit. It was so fun to pick out how each story connected to the others, sort of like searching for easter eggs in a book.
This literary technique is also often called “linked short stories,” and there are a bunch in adult fiction that get lots of critical love and have become modern classics – think There There by Tommy Orange, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. In my search for books for teens that do this, I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty good number across a pretty wide range of topics and genres. Some of them would be considered “old” by teens reading today (originally published in the 90s), but most are still in print and have been reprinted with fresher covers. The more recent ones, such as those by Sedgwick, include books I had heard of (award winners!) but hadn’t realized they were novels-in-stories. Are you a fan of this technique? I think it’s my new favorite.
One Death, Nine Stories edited by Marc Aronson and Charles R. Smith, Jr.
Nicholas, Kevin. Age 19. Died at York Hospital, July 19, 2012. Kev’s the first kid their age to die. And now, even though he’s dead, he’s not really gone. Even now his choices are touching the people he left behind. Rita Williams-Garcia follows one aimless teen as he finds a new life in his new job-at the mortuary. Ellen Hopkins reveals what two altar boys (and one altar girl) might get up to at the cemetery at night. Will Weaver turns a lens on Kevin’s sister as she collects his surprising effects-and makes good use of them. Here, in nine stories, we meet people who didn’t know Kevin, friends from his childhood, his ex-girlfriend, his best friend, all dealing with the fallout of his death. Being a teenager is a time for all kinds of firsts-first jobs, first loves, first good-byes, firsts that break your heart and awaken your soul. It’s an initiation of sorts, and it can be brutal. But on the other side of it is the rest of your life.
With stories by Chris Barton, Nora Raleigh Baskin, Marina Budhos, Ellen Hopkins, A.S. King, Torrey Maldonado, Charles R. Smith Jr., Will Weaver, and Rita Williams-Garcia.
Pick-Up Game: A Full Day of Full Court edited by Marc Aronson and Charles R. Smith, Jr.
It’s one steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in NYC, otherwise known as The Cage. Hotshot ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird new guy named Waco, a Spike Lee wannabe has video rolling, and virgin Irene is sizing up six-foot-eightand-a-half-inch Chester. Nine of YA literature’s top writers, including Walter Dean Myers, Rita Williams-Garcia, Adam Rapp, Joseph Bruchac, and Sharon Flake reveal how it all goes down in a searing collection of short stories, in which each one picks up where the previous one ends. Characters weave in and out of narratives, perspectives change, and emotions play out for a fluid and fast-paced ode to the game. Crackling with humor, grit, and streetball philosophy, and featuring poems and photographs by Charles R. Smith Jr., this anthology is a slam dunk.
What Hearts by Bruce Brooks
This searing collection of four interrelated stories offers a deft portrait of a young boy whose sharp intellect and uncanny ability for forgiveness help him survive when his mother’s emotional instability continually lets him down.
We Are Not Free by Traci Chee (forthcoming June 2020)
From New York Times best-selling and acclaimed author Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free, the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.
Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco. Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted. Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps. In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.
Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton
Set in our world, spanning the near to distant futures, Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful is a novel made up of six interconnected stories that ask how far we will go to remake ourselves into the perfect human specimens, and how hard that will push the definition of “human.”
This extraordinary work explores the amazing possibilities of genetic manipulation and life extension, as well as the ethical quandaries that will arise with these advances. The results range from the heavenly to the monstrous. Deeply thoughtful, poignant, horrifying, and action-packed, Arwen Elys Dayton’s Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful is groundbreaking in both form and substance.
Life is Funny by E. R. Frank
From the outside, they’re simply a group of urban teenagers. But from the inside, they’re some of the most complex people you’ll ever meet. There’s Eric, fiercely protective of his brother Mickey-but he has a secret that holds together his past and future. Sonia, struggling to live the life of a good Muslim girl in a foreign America. Gingerbread and Keisha, who fall in love despite themselves. Life Is Funny strips away the defenses of one group of teenagers living today, right now-and shows their unbearably real lives.
Whitechurch by Chris Lynch
In the sleepy town of Whitechurch, three friends reach a crossroads that will change their lives–and their relationships–forever. There’s Pauly, the troublemaker everyone is scared of–everyone including himself. Then there’s Lilly, Whitechurch’s sweetheart. Pauly’s her boyfriend, but Pauly’s best friend Oakley is the one she talks to . . . and what she really needs is someone who truly understands her. And finally there’s Oakley, the reliable one, the one who’s always there to pick up the pieces. Because he knows that if he ever stopped putting things back together, he might lose the two people he loves best. When one friend starts to go off-balance, how long can the ones who love him stay with him?
Set against the backdrop of the small town America nobody likes to talk about, Chris Lynch’s Whitechurch is a tautly written collection of stories about what happens when an intense triangular friendship begins to break apart.
145th Street by Walter Dean Myers
A salty, wrenchingly honest collection of stories set on one block of 145th Street. We get to know the oldest resident; the cop on the beat; fine Peaches and her girl, Squeezie; Monkeyman; and Benny, a fighter on the way to a knockout. We meet Angela, who starts having prophetic dreams after her father is killed; Kitty, whose love for Mack pulls him back from the brink; and Big Joe, who wants a bang-up funeral while he’s still around to enjoy it. Some of these stories are private, and some are the ones behind the headlines. In each one, characters jump off the page and pull readers right into the mix on 1-4-5.
A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck
Each summer Joey and his sister, Mary Alice—two city slickers from Chicago—visit Grandma Dowdel’s seemingly sleepy Illinois town. Soon enough, they find that it’s far from sleepy…and Grandma is far from your typical grandmother. From seeing their first corpse (and he isn’t resting easy) to helping Grandma trespass, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry—all in one day—Joey and Mary Alice have nine summers they’ll never forget!
Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb
“If she dies, I’ll die,” are the words 15-year-old Mia Perlman writes in her journal the night her mother is diagnosed with cancer. Twelve days later, Mia’s mother is dead, and Mia, her older sister, and their father must find a way to live on in the face of sudden, unfathomable loss.
For Mia, this means getting through a funeral led by a rabbi who belongs in Las Vegas; dealing with a social worker who appears to have been educated at the local beauty academy; sharing “healthy heart” meals with her father, who seems to be seeing her for the first time; trying to relate to her sister, whose idea of fun is solving quadtratic equations; and developing a crush on Cancer Guy, who is actually kind of cute. But mostly it means carrying the image of her mother with her everywhere, because some kinds of love never die. Still, even in grief there is the chance for new beginnings.
Blue Skin of the Sea by Graham Salisbury
Eleven interlinked stories tell the tale of a boy coming of age in Kailua-Kona, a Hawaiian fishing village. Sonny Mendoza is a little different from the rest of the men in his family. Salisbury explores characters like Aunty Pearl, a full-blooded Hawaiian as regal as the queens of old; cool Jack, from L.A., who starts a gang and dares Sonny to be brave enough, cruel enough, to join; mysterious Melanie, who steals his heart; and Deeps, the shark hunter.
But the most memorable character is the sea itself: inviting, unpredictable, deadly. Mendoza men are brave men, but Sonny’s courage is of a different kind. Why can’t he love and trust the water as the men of his family are meant to do?
The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick
A bold, genre-bending epic that chronicles madness, obsession, and creation, from the Paleolithic era through the Witch Hunts and into the space-bound future.
Four linked stories boldly chronicle madness, obsession, and creation through the ages. Beginning with the cave-drawings of a young girl on the brink of creating the earliest form of writing, Sedgwick traverses history, plunging into the seventeenth century witch hunts and a 1920s insane asylum where a mad poet’s obsession with spirals seems to be about to unhinge the world of the doctor trying to save him. Sedgwick moves beyond the boundaries of historical fiction and into the future in the book’s final section, set upon a spaceship voyaging to settle another world for the first time. Merging Sedgwick’s gift for suspense with science- and historical-fiction, Ghosts of Heaven is a tale is worthy of intense obsession.
Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick
Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar, even though you’ve never been there before, or felt that you know someone well, even though you are meeting them for the first time? It happens.
In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon – the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter’s moon, the blood moon – this is the story of Eric and Merle whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting.
What’s in a Name by Ellen Wittlinger
As if the students of Scrub Harbor High don’t have enough to worry about: Christine is quickly losing her friend Georgie to Ricardo; Nelson can’t connect with Shaquanda; Adam’s role as the new kid is tougher than he thought; and O’Neill’s controversial poem has electrified the school while making life unbearable for his football-star brother, Quincy. But now a group of Scrub Harbor citizens are trying to change the town’s name to the “classier” Folly Bay, and their crusade has filtered down to their kids. Suddenly, the school is divided into the rich-kid “Follys” and the poorer “Scrubs,” with everyone else caught in the middle. How can you answer the question “Who am I?” when your town can’t even make tip its mind? Will anyone emerge from the battle intact?
In ten interlocking stories, Ellen Wittlinger addresses the rarely discussed issues of class and identity that inform so much of teenage life. “What’s in a Name” is a bold report from the cutting edge ofteenage concerns.