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Why Talking About Girl Reading Matters

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Last week, I tweeted about something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

I pulled those tweets together and posted them over on tumblr while it was fresh on my mind. The conversation itself came out of reading yet another series of reviews of various YA books where a critique of the story was that the main character/s — female — was/were “unlikable.” I won’t go into a discussion of likability because I’ve talked about that before and because a couple of posts I’ve got coming later this month will be tackling this head on. But what I will say is that likability is not only a complex topic — what does it mean, exactly, and how can you point to a character as being definitively likable or not? — but that it’s not a lens through which you can fairly critique a story. It’s a preference you have as a reader.

Just as you’d prefer reading a YA novel to, say, an adult western, whether you enjoy a story with a likable character or not is also a preference. A critique of the character’s likability is worthwhile when it can be laid against the plot, against the character’s arc, or against any of the other means of the story progressing from point A to point B. Likability matters through the context of the story’s success.

But to the bigger point.

After reading through the reblogs of my tumblr post, many of the reasons I initially tweeted about why valuable it’d be if we talked more about girls and girls reading were reconfirmed. Notes stated by suggesting we talk about girls and girl reading habits, I’m saying that there’s no need to talk about boys or boy reading. That it’s being entitled to suggest as much. That because boys are often behind in reading or find reading for fun an activity they choose to partake in less frequently than girls, we should be focused entirely on them because the girls will just do it anyway.

That’s actually the point, but it misses the point.

Laurel Snyder wrote an excellent post a couple of weeks ago: boys will be boys and girls will accommodate. She talks a lot about the problems of labeling books “boy books” and other books “girl books” and how from the age we begin teaching and encouraging reading, we pay special attention to make sure we get books that boys will like and in doing so, we expect girls to read them too. We don’t look for books that will have special interest for girls because the assumption is girls are readers and thus will just read anything (of course, there’s a bigger issue at play here, but take it at that level).

I’m an advocate of getting boys to read. I’m an advocate of making sure that books with special appeal to boys — those books with action, adventure, twists, turns, depths, non-fiction titles — get in the hands of boys. I’ve talked at length here before about how there is research showing boys read less frequently than girls and that boys do tend to lag behind in terms of their reading skills in school. I think what people like Michael Sullivan are doing in educating librarians and teachers about how to best reach boys is excellent and insightful and the kind of professional development that’s not only necessary, but it’s expansive. This is work that you build upon, rather than pay attention to during a professional development day and move on from.

But it’s also expansive because it’s the kind of work that should make you think about the other side of the equation.

What about the girls?

Girls are better readers. Girls are going to read whatever you give them. Girls have so much more catering to their interests than boys do, especially in YA. These are all statements rampant throughout the reading world, but they’re not substantiated in the same way the statements about boys and boy reading are. Just look at a lineup of panel sessions at major book- education- and library- related professional development opportunities: there are sessions for reaching boys, but there are rarely, if ever, sessions for reaching girls.

Part of why this is a passionate area for me is because I see reviews that call out likability as a factor for dinging a book. It’s always a girl who is unlikable, rarely if ever a boy — and if it is a boy, it’s generally qualified. He’s unlikable but he’s also mentally ill. He’s unlikable but he’s also got  a tough home life. He’s unlikable but he’s just a bad boy.

Girls, on the other hand, are unlikable. They have girl problems. They have girl drama (drama, always drama). They are girls in crisis, rather than girls living through the challenges they have to confront in order to be their best selves. In so many of the books that tackle these challenges, girl is a qualifier.

I wonder if we talked more about girls and how they’re represented in books, if we’d use the qualifier less.

I wonder if we talked more about girls and how they’re represented in books, if we’d allow girls to see that their problems are real, legitimate issues and that having them and working through them is not simply part of being a girl, but part of being a person.

Girls are as complex as boys, but so often, we let girls be placed into one of two categories, based entirely on our preferences: likable or unlikable. These aren’t critiques of story nor are they critiques of character. They are preferences. There’s nothing wrong with preferring a likable or unlikable character, but there is something wrong when that becomes the means through which we critique a story and thus the way that we then present those stories to readers — especially to girl readers who may identify as unlikable or as likable vis a vis those books.

When we critique books and discuss books through that un/likable dynamic, we deny complexity to not just the girls on the page, but we deny girls reading those books complexity, too. We make a judgment on the actions both in the fictional world and in the real world.

I want girls to read books and know that the decisions those characters make are dependent entirely upon the characters and the opportunities presented to them in the story. I want girls to know that the decisions they have to make are dependent entirely upon themselves and the opportunities presented to them in their lives and worlds. That being likable and being nice aren’t the reasons to be making choices, but rather, that being likable and being nice are choices that they get to make as they work through what it is they need to work through.

We don’t tell girls enough that their lives are theirs and the decisions they get to make are theirs to make. We expect them to accommodate in every situation — if they’re not accommodating boys, they’re doing worse by accommodating other girls. Or rather, they’re accommodating our preconceived notion of what a boy is and what a girl is. They’re accommodating ideals impossible to accommodate, ideals that deny everyone, regardless of gender and the idea of gender in and of itself, complexity.

We don’t tell girls that they can want things and they can not only want things, but they can go after them. That their lives are theirs to shape into the fashion they want to. That their pain and ache and being denied opportunities or chances matters and is something they should care about. That those are things they’re allowed to experience and have and do something with. We don’t encourage them enough to follow up, follow through, ask questions, to be hard or unrelenting.

I wonder if we talked more about girls and how they’re represented in books, if we’d see more memory in regards to the women who helped shape literature itself. More specifically, would we see more of the contributions of women in the YA world? Would more ladies who laid the tracks down to make YA what it is today be see as foundational? As important? As creators of a category of fiction that’s become not just popular, but really damn good?

It was a woman who is credited for creating YA as a category. It’s women who continue to shape YA and continue to present stories of complex, challenging girls — those who fall all along the range of likable and unlikable — and it’s women who continue to challenge what YA is all together. Who continue to write to and for girls who have never seen themselves in the pages but who would not only benefit from it, but who would better see that they are allowed to be who it is they are. That they are so much greater than likable or unlikable. That making mistakes, falling down, and getting hurt are part of the process of becoming.

By wanting more for girls, by hoping that we can talk about girls and the representation of girls more, that’s not a call to take away from boys. It’s not a statement that boys don’t matter. It’s certainly not entitlement.

Rather, it’s a call to continue a conversation and take it deeper. To look at what’s out there and how we can make the reading world — and thus the greater world — a place where “girl” isn’t an adjective or an adverb, but a noun full-stop.

Recent YA Reads

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I’m in the midst of a reading slump. It’s not surprising me or frustrating me much, though, because I know it’s related to having finished a year of non-stop reading, and I know it’s also related to what happens when I find myself wanting to blog and write a lot more. Sometimes, my energy can only go so far, and when I’ve put in hours of writing, reading isn’t always the most appealing to me after.

That said, I have gotten a few reads in recently, and I’ve been rearranging my to-read pile so I can get excited again when the time comes. Here’s a look at two books I read recently that didn’t wow me but I also didn’t dislike entirely, which I guess makes this post two “eh, they’re okay” reviews. 

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith — available now

I didn’t love this book. In fact, I’m not sure I enjoyed the reading experience at all. But I kept reading it and finished it because it’s kind of like abstract art: you look at it to appreciate how it comes together but that doesn’t mean you have to appreciate it beyond the way it was constructed. There’s a story about bisexuality here, and it’s woven into a story about the end of the world, about world history, about local history, and about family history. There are also giant grasshoppers and there is non-stop talk from Austin about how horny he is and how everything turns him on.

Is it well-written? Yes. Is it weird and different? Yes.

The thing is, beyond the fact this story tackles so much — and it does tackle some hugely important issues — I didn’t necessarily think it was all that risky or interesting. Austin being a boy allowed him to do and say and act upon a lot of things that, were Austin a female character, would have never happened and would have been a lot more risky and interesting to me as a reader. That’s not to undermine the really powerful story of sexuality here. But I couldn’t help thinking about the fact no female character could have Austin’s story, either. A girl who would dare talk about her physical needs this much wouldn’t be embraced in the same way Austin is. Perhaps this was an unfair thought to keep having, but I also don’t think it’s a thought unmerited by the story itself. A lot of what Austin does and says and observes about the females in this book made me uncomfortable. They were true to his voice, but the fact there is not one girl in the story who isn’t either a middle age woman on drugs to make her happy OR an object of sexual fascination to him left me feeling a little cold and tired. Not to mention she had no agency herself. I know it’s Austin’s perspective and how skewed that is, but I really wanted more of Shann than I got. 

There were also times when author voice insert became too obvious for me. Austin was smart and funny, but I had a hard time buying Austin would so remove himself from his situation to make observations that certain names were “very Iowa.” That was author humor over character humor and those moments pulled me out of the story a bit.


The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu — available June 3

This review contains spoilers, and I know that reviewing this early out isn’t always the most helpful thing in the world. But again, reading slump, and I picked this one up because it was a shorter read. Feel free to skip this and come back since it’ll spoil much of the book.

This is a book about how Alice was branded a slut because a few nasty people in small town Healy, Texas decided to spread rumors to save themselves and their own reputation. It’s all done without giving Alice a voice, which is effective in being a he said-she said story. But it’s all telling with little showing. Yes, you see cruelty (like when Kelsie, Alice’s former best friend, chooses to sharpie the walls of a bathroom stall calling Alice a variety of names), but you are also told repeatedly things that would be better serviced by stronger writing, more development of characters, and deeper investment in the story in and of itself. Because in every chapter, rather than seeing how Healy was a small town, we were reminded that Healy was a small town. You could walk from x place to y place. Healy was a small town. This person knew this person. While fine and great, actually reading it on the page, with some detail, would have actually shown the reader this sufficiently enough not to need to be reminded. And I think part of the dependence upon that was because there wasn’t a whole lot of story here to be told. 

Is this effective in showing how awful people are? Absolutely. It does to the reader pretty much what happened to Alice. She has no voice and no control, and we as readers see no voice and have no control over what happens. 

But why do I CARE about Alice? I do because other people are awful and that’s it. Because Kurt, the nerdy boy who wants to get close to Alice because of a long-time crush, is the only okay character in the story. But because his interest in her is romantic, and unabashedly so, I’m still not keen on his motivations or his own character. In the end, when the revelation is that Alice kept seeing him for tutoring and forgave him for keeping a secret from her emerges, we’re supposed to buy that this is meant to be a new, fresh friendship for her. But I don’t buy it: Kurt was in it from the start because of romantic feelings. So as much as it looks like it’s FRIENDSHIP in the end, Alice’s lack of voice throughout and Kurt’s lack of voice following her one opportunity to talk, I still see it as a boy saving a girl in a way that’s cast as romantic. It’s a trope that appears again and again, and it’s not fresh here.

Also, the abortion storyline with Alice’s former best friend didn’t work for me. It actually painted Alice in a poor light, since she is the reason Kelsie tells us she decided to sleep with that boy one time and wound up pregnant in that one sexual encounter. But again — Alice’s lack of voice lets this happen. There was also a weird message there with the pregnancy/abortion storyline and how it butts up against Kelsie’s mother’s devotion to faith.

There are better bullying books. There are better books about girls shamed for their sexuality. There are better books about small towns and rumors. At times the writing feels a little too adult-trying-to-write-teens and at times when the writing is just…Kurt uses the phrase “rear end” to describe a part of Alice’s body which even for someone as nerdy and intelligent as he tells us he is, I have a hard time thinking a 16 or 17 year old boy with a raging crush on her would say.

Had Alice had a voice in this book, it would have been more compelling, with more depth, and probably could have gone from an okay read to a great one. But in many ways, as much as it’s often smart to have the reader’s experience mirror Alice’s, it also feels a little manipulative and co-opts her story here. 

Review copies received from the publisher. 

Fantasy Without Magic

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I spend a lot of my time thinking about the way we classify things (which may be one reason I became a librarian). This is probably most apparent in my Twitter feed, where I can often be found ruminating on the different kinds of genre fiction and their endless subgenres and overlaps and combinations. A listserv discussion about how to classify Marie Rutkoski’s excellent The Winner’s Curse (more on this title later) has me thinking a lot about fantasy novels without any magic, and about what is really required for a book to be fantasy.

I think a lot of readers are under the impression that fantasy requires magic as a matter of course. If it doesn’t have magic, then it must at least have beings that don’t exist in our own world, like dragons. This is an easy, though incorrect, assumption to make. Most fantasy novels do have magic. But not all.

Fantasy is, in my opinion, the genre with the most creative potential. Writers can quite literally do anything in a fantasy novel. It doesn’t matter if it could never happen in our own world – that’s the whole point. That’s what makes it exciting. You should be reading about things that could never possibly exist or happen. And you don’t need magic to achieve that.

Most of these magic-free books are what is usually called high fantasy, which is defined by a setting in an entirely imaginary world. It makes sense that not every imaginary world dreamt of by writers would involve magic or dragons. Nevertheless, if the world isn’t our own, it’s fantasy.

So why does this matter? From a librarian’s standpoint, it’s vital for readers’ advisory. It would be foolish to recommend a magic-heavy book to someone looking for readalikes to the Winner’s Curse, which has no magic at all. Most likely, people looking for more of the same want thoughtful worldbuilding, intense romance, and a minimal amount of strange words and concepts. So, why not just give them a bunch of historical fiction? Yes, these things could be achieved with historical fiction, but historical fiction doesn’t also provide a reading experience that sparks the imagination in quite the same way. Historical fiction is still limited by history. (It also has a harder time not spoiling the ending.)

Magic-free fantasy is a good entry point for readers who are just beginning to dip their toes into the genre. But beyond that, it’s important to recognize that yes, these stories are fantasy, because fantasy is awesome, in all meanings of the word. It’s hugely variable, has immense depth, and tells readers that you can literally find anything you can possibly imagine within the pages of a book. Including a completely new world without magic. (Denying that certain things are fantasy is also often done – however unintentionally – as a way to denigrate the genre as a whole. Think of someone saying, “Oh, I don’t read fantasy,” followed by the reply, “Well, it’s not really fantasy since there’s no magic.” The implications are there.)

Below are a few middle grade and YA fantasy titles without magic. They take place in imaginary worlds, fully-formed with complex cultures that you won’t find on Earth. Descriptions are from Worldcat. My own comments are in bracketed italics. Please comment with other titles you know of – even adult titles. I’m curious to see what others are out there.

The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski
An aristocratic girl who is a member of a warmongering and enslaving
empire purchases a slave, an act that sets in motion a rebellion that
might overthrow her world as well as her heart. [I read somewhere this is going to be a trilogy, but now I can’t remember where I found that piece of information.]

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

In the country of Carthya, a devious nobleman engages four orphans in
a brutal competition to be selected to impersonate the king’s
long-missing son in an effort to avoid a civil war. [Book two: The Runaway King; Book three: The Shadow Throne.]

Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt
When hard times among the People revive the old stories of the hero
Jackaroo, an innkeeper’s daughter follows her own quest to unlock the
secret reality behind the legend. [Voigt wrote three other books set in the same world, loosely connected to one another but set many years apart. Together, they’re called the Kingdom series. They include, in order, Jackaroo, On Fortune’s Wheel, The Wings of a Falcon, and Elske. I highly recommend them all, though my favorite is On Fortune’s Wheel.]

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
Gen flaunts his ingenuity as a thief and relishes the adventure which
takes him to a remote temple of the gods where he will attempt to steal a
precious stone. [This is the first in the Queen’s Thief series, which includes The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings. It’s been many years since I’ve read these, but to the best of my memory, they contain no magic.]

Westmark by Lloyd Alexander
A boy fleeing from criminal charges falls in with a charlatan, his dwarf
attendant, and an urchin girl, travels with them about the kingdom of
Westmark, and ultimately arrives at the palace where the king is
grieving over the loss of his daughter. [These books are even more of a distant memory, but the Internet agrees with my recollection that they’re magic-free.]

Enders by Lissa Price

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You may recall that I really enjoyed Lissa Price’s debut Starters. It’s a fast-paced, well-plotted, and exciting futuristic story that takes a lot of liberties with science, but is fun nonetheless. I looked forward to reading its sequel (it’s a duology, so this book is the final in the series), Enders, for quite some time.

Alas, Enders is a mess. While it thankfully addresses the fact that all people over 60 in this world where people live to be 200+ are not, in fact, called enders (some of them are called middles), that’s about the only satisfying aspect I found.

The plot involves Callie trying to rescue a number of other teens who were at the body bank and have chips implanted in their heads. The Old Man has found a way to control these teens (called Metals) via the chips – he can actually speak to Callie in her mind by using her chip as well as control her body movements at times. Callie isn’t sure what the Old Man’s end game is, but she’s found an ally in his son, Hyden (no, not Hayden. Hyden, and yes, he does seem to just appear out of nowhere), plus her friend Michael.

The main issue is that Enders just doesn’t seem to know what exactly it should be doing. Where Starters was tightly-plotted, Enders just meanders. Action isn’t driven by character or plot. The characters themselves seem to just sort of wander around too, until they finally all come together in a skeezy climax that is only mildly interesting. It also involves two major pieces of wish-fulfillment that are difficult to believe.

Readers of Starters will recall that the Old Man was a creepy, deliciously villainous bad guy. Without spoiling anything, I can say that the way his character is developed in Enders feels like a giant cheat – like Price was trying to have her cake and eat it too. As a result, there is a huge disconnect between his character in the first book and his character in the second book. They may as well be different people. It feels a bit like a retcon of the first book, actually.

Furthermore, I was never quite sure what Callie and her group of Metals
intended to do once they all got together, and I don’t think Callie knew
either. Motivations are so murky, the character of Hyden is so forced (and contradictory),
and other ancillary characters are so underdeveloped as to be forgotten. (What was Michael doing the duration of the story? I couldn’t even recall most of the time whether he was with Callie or away babysitting Tyler.) The difference between Starters and Enders is like night and day.

Diehard fans of the first book will want to pick this up, but otherwise, you can give it a miss.

(I don’t often disagree this strongly with major review publications. I suppose you may like to know that both Booklist and Kirkus gave this book fairly positive reviews. This mainly just makes me think “Huh.” To each their own.)

Review copy provided by the publisher. Enders is available now.

YA Adaptations of Adult Novels

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I’m not a huge YA non-fiction reader, despite really enjoying adult non-fiction. I’m not sure why that is, but after this last year on committee reading and talking about non-fiction, I’ve been thinking a lot more about YA non-fiction. During one of our meetings, I brought up the topic of YA adaptations of adult non-fiction titles, and a number of people didn’t know that it was a thing that happened. In light of that, I thought it would be worthwhile to put together a list of non-fiction titles that began as adult books but then were rewritten and adapted for YA audiences.

Not every adult non-fiction title gets a YA adaptation, and in fact, I don’t think it’s a particularly big phenomenon. The books that seem to be adapted tend to be ones with high YA interest, gauged either through them being read or assigned in school, through them featuring primarily teen or younger main characters, or they’re books teens have been picking up and talking about all their own. Part of me wonders if sometimes adaptations happen when the title isn’t working for adults and there’s a decision to repackage and remarket for younger readers instead. Sometimes, the books that adapted for younger readers are surprising choices and other times, they’re natural fits. The sports adaptations to me are pretty obvious choices, especially for popular athletes, and the historical or cultural adaptations seem natural, too. 

It’s interesting, too, to think about the adult non-fiction teens love that was never reworked as a YA non-fiction (say, for example, Dave Pelzner books, Alexandra Robbins books, or titles like Ophelia Speaks or Queen Bees and Wanna Bes, which have good appeal and readership to teens) against those which have. 

YA adaptations of adult non-fiction are interesting. Sometimes, they present the material in a way that’s stronger and more engaging than the adult version of the novels. Other times, they’re weaker because of how the adaptation was presented — too much information was cut or the writing itself is taken to a level that doesn’t engage the reader. It is entirely dependent upon the writer and his or her ability to write for the YA audience or work with someone who is comfortable in doing so themselves, as not all adaptations are written by the original author. 

One example standing out to me is I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. The book came out at the end of last year, written by Malala and Christina Lamb. Malala’s voice really comes through in the book, but it’s also clear she’s not a writer herself. The story told was important, but the book never fully engaged me because it wasn’t consistent nor fluid in execution. The narrative thread was weak, and that’s one of the most important elements of non-fiction: it was much more of a straight sharing of events that happened, rather than a working through of events that happened tied either to a bigger point or event (think about the best memoirs you’ve read — they aren’t timelines of events but a story around a grander theme or idea). 

Coming this summer is a YA adaptation of the story. It’s written by Malala, but in the young reader edition, Patricia McCormick will be co-authoring. Knowing McCormick has written fiction tackling many of the things that have been a part of Malala’s life in her country, it seems not only a natural choice but suggests that perhaps the adaptation will be a stronger, more compelling read (at least to me!). Thinking about McCormick’s Sold especially, I suspect she’ll be a really smart and solid writer able to help Malala’s writing come across stronger, but it’ll make her voice ring even louder. 

Here’s a look at a pile of other YA adaptations of adult non-fiction books. All descriptions are from WorldCat. As always, this is not comprehensive, so if there are other titles I should know about, I’d love to hear in the comments so they can be added. 

Chew On This by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson: A behind-the-scenes look at the fast food industry. Adapted from Fast Food Nation. 

Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario: When Enrique was five, his mother, too poor to feed her children, left Honduras to work in the United States. The move allowed her to send money back home so Enrique could eat better and go to school past the third grade. She promised she would return quickly, but she struggled in America. Without her, he became lonely and troubled. After eleven years, he decided he would go find her. He set off alone, with little more than a slip of paper bearing his mother’s North Carolina telephone number. Without money, he made the dangerous trek up the length of Mexico, clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. He and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. To evade bandits and authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call the Train of Death. It is an epic journey, one thousands of children make each year to find their mothers in the United States. Adapted from Enrique’s Journey. 

Outcasts United by Warren St. John: American-educated Jordanian Luma Mufleh founds a youth soccer team comprised of children from Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkan states, and elsewhere in the refugee settlement town of Clarkston, Georgia, bringing the children together to discover their common bonds as they adjust to life in a new homeland. Adapted from Outcasts United. 

Bloody Times by James Swanson: On the morning of April 2, 1865, Jefferson Davis received a telegram from General Robert E. Lee. There is no more time–the Yankees are coming, it warned. That night Davis fled Richmond, setting off an intense manhunt for the Confederate president. Two weeks later, President Lincoln was assassinated, and the nation was convinced that Davis was involved in the conspiracy that led to the crime. Lincoln’s murder, autopsy, and White House funeral transfixed the nation. His final journey began when soldiers placed his corpse aboard a special train that would carry him home to Springfield, Illinois. It was the most magnificent funeral pageant in American history. Adapted from Bloody Crimes. 

Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson: Recounts the escape of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, and follows the intensive twelve-day search for him and his accomplices. Adapted from Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. 

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder: Traces the efforts of Dr. Paul Farmer to transform healthcare on a global scale, documenting his visits to some of the world’s most impoverished regions and the unconventional methods that enabled him to improve and save lives. Adapted from Mountains Beyond Mountains. 

Lincoln’s Last Days by Bill O’Reilly with Dwight John Zimmerman: Describes the events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the hunt to track down John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices. Adapted from Killing Lincoln. 

What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio: A photographic collection exploring what the world eats featuring portraits of twenty-five families from twenty-one countries surrounded by a week’s worth of food. Adapted from Hungry Planet. 

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan: What’s for dinner?’ seemed like a simple question -until journalist and supermarket detective Michael Pollan delved behind the scenes. From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young readers’ adaptation of Pollan’s famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices. Adapted from The Omnivore’s Dilemma. 

Discovering Wes Moore by Wes Moore: The author, a Rhodes scholar and combat veteran, analyzes factors that influenced him as well as another man of the same name and from the same neighborhood who was drawn into a life of drugs and crime and ended up serving life in prison, focusing on the influence of relatives, mentors, and social expectations that could have led either of them on different paths. Adapted from The Other Wes Moore: Two Names, One Fate. 

The Mayflower and the Pilgrims’ New World by Nathaniel Philbrick: After a journey across the Atlantic, the Mayflower’s passengers were saved from destruction with the help of the natives of the Plymouth region. For fifty years, peace was maintained as Pilgrims and Natives worked together. But that trust was broken with the next generation of leaders, and conflict erupted that nearly wiped out English and natives alike. Adapted from Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. 

The Warrior’s Heart by Eric Greitens: Shares the author’s adventures as a young man that led him to a life of service as both a humanitarian and a Navy SEAL. Adapted from The Heart and the Fist. 

Believe by Eric LeGrand: In this uplifting memoir, now adapted for young readers, Eric LeGrand tells the amazing story of how he rebuilds his life, continues his college education, and pursues a career in sports broadcasting following the injury that paralyzed him from the neck down. His belief in a grand plan and his hope for the future make him a model for anyone who has experienced tragedy or faced obstacles. Adapted from Believe: My Faith and the Tackle That Changed My Life. 

Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley with Ron Powers and Michael French: A true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America. Adapted from Flags of Our Fathers. 

Hope Solo: My Story by Hope Solo: Hope Solo, Olympic gold medalist and goalie for the US women’s national soccer team, tells the exciting insider details of her life on and off the field, in her own words. Adapted from Solo: A Memoir of Hope.