Teen Tuesday

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King (Little, Brown Teen hardcover, 23 October 2012).

When Astrid Jones was nine, her family bought the house her grandmother grew up in.  In a small town called Unity Valley, it was originally intended as a vacation home for the family, but a year later, they left New York City, which Astrid and her sister Ellis thought of as home, and moved there.

Ellis seemed to adapt to her new life, but Astrid just couldn't.  Even seven years later as a high school senior, Astrid feels like an outsider.  Sure, she's editor of the school lit magazine, but she has no social life.  Her best friend Kristina is a "townie", and a shoo-in for homecoming queen, with her boyfriend Justin a lock for king.  Astrid had a boyfriend for a short while in her junior year, but it didn't last very long.  Her favorite pastime is lying on top of the picnic table in the back yard and watching the planes go overhead.

Astrid works for a small catering business prepping food.  Her co-worker Dee makes no secret of the fact that she's attracted to Astrid, but Astrid doesn't know what to make of it.  Sure she's flattered that Dee thinks she's gorgeous, but she's not gay.  Is she?  Does it matter?

This is an amazing, touching, heart-wrenching story about a young woman struggling to establish an identity and be true to herself in a society that cares more about appearances than truth. 

Teens should read this book to help them realize that it's okay not to have all the answers. 

If I could, I'd give this book to all parents of teens, in the hopes that they might understand what it means when they tell their kids to be honest with them.  (If I could, I'd go back in time and give it to my own parents...)



FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

Teen Tuesday

Classic Books For Teens

Young adult literature has exploded over the past decade or so.  There certainly are a lot of very good books being published, but one shouldn't forget the classics, the predecessors to The Hunger Games and The Princess Diaries. Here are a few of my favorites for readers aged 12 and up.


Squashed by Joan Bauer (1982*, Speak trade paperback, 208 p.)

Sixteen-year-old Ellie Morgan's life would be almost perfect if she could just get her potentially prize-winning pumpkin, Max, to put on about two hundred more pounds, and if she could lose twenty herself.

With the extra weight, Max would be the shoo-in champion at the Rock River Pumpkin Weigh-In. Ellie could then become a famous pumpkin-growing personality and squash the obnoxious Cyril Pool once and for all.



Forever... by Judy Blume (1965; Simon Pulse trade paperback, 208 p.)

Katherine and Michael can't get enough of each other. Their relationship is unique: sincere, intense, and fun all at the same time. Although they haven't been together all that long, they know it's serious.

But it's senior year of high school, and there are big changes ahead. Michael and Katherine are destined for another big "first": a decision. Is this the love of a lifetime, or the very beginning of a lifetime of love?




Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden (1982, Farrar Strauss and Giroux trade paperback, 272 p.)

Liza and Annie meet at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Annie's from a rough neighborhood, while Liza is very sheltered. 

They fall in love and intend to be honest and true to their feelings, despite the pressure from their parents and schools.




The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (1967, Speak trade paperback, 224 p.)

According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine.

A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc.



 Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas (1996, Simon Pulse trade paperback, 208 p.)

For Steve York, life was good. He had a 4.0 GPA, friends he could trust, and a girl he loved. Now he spends his days smoked out, not so much living as simply existing.

But his herbal endeavors -- and personal demons -- have lead to a severe lack of motivation. Steve's flunking out, but if he writes a one-hundred-page paper, he can graduate.

Steve realizes he must write what he knows. And through telling the story of how he got to where he is, he discovers exactly where he wants to be....











*Original publication dates.

Teen Tuesday

Gifts for teens who love to read


Book Jewelry

You can find a lot of cool stuff at Etsy and Artfire.  Enter "book jewelry" or for graphic novel lovers, "comic book jewelry" in the search box.

Eve's Addiction has sterling silver jewelry for movies based on books, like The Hunger Games, Twilight and Alice in Wonderland.



Author/Series-specific gifts

Jane Austen:  The Jane Austen Centre Gift Shop (These ship from the UK, so allow plenty of time!)
                       The Pemberley Shop

Neil Gaiman:  Neverwear

Edward Gorey:  The Gorey House Store
                           Gorey Details 

Harry Potter:  The Pottermore Shop



Bookends

Barnes and Noble
Hayneedle.com  - mostly for younger kids, but a few for teens
Judith Edwards -  sports-themed bookends!
PB Teen



Next week, books to give as gifts.

Teen Tuesday

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry (Harlequin Teen hardcover, 31 July 2012).

Echo Emerson doesn't want to be noticed.  Though she's been going to Eastwick High for years, and was once part of the popular group, something happened.  There's a lot of gossip about what kept her away for several months, but few people know for sure. 

Noah Hutchins is a "bad boy".  He smokes pot, drinks, breaks girl's hearts, and doesn't seem to care about schoolwork at all. 

Echo and Noah meet outside Mrs. Collins' office, waiting to see her for the first time.  She's the new Clinical Social Worker at the school, and both are required by Child Protective Services to see her regularly.  All they know about each other is what "everyone" knows, and they dislike each other almost immediately.

Echo always wears long sleeves, no matter how warm it is, in an effort to hide the scars on her arms.  Her father and step-mother sometimes come to the first session with her, and it's immediately obvious that Echo does not get along with her father's wife.

We learn that that what Noah wants most of all is to gain custody of his two little brothers, who were separated from him when their parents died.  In a failed attempt to protect the child of the foster family he was living with, Noah punched the father.  He was labelled as "unstable", and not allowed to see his (much younger) brothers anymore.

 When Mrs. Collins suggests that Echo tutor Noah, neither teen is thrilled.  But she makes the unappealing idea beneficial to both of them, and as they get to know each other, they realize that they may have more in common than they'd first assumed.

Chapters are told alternately from the point of view of Echo and Noah, so the information we receive is colored by the narrator.  Often, the same incident will be recounted by one and then the other, which allows the reader some objectivity.  McGarry creates a believable high school atmosphere, with supporting character that are multi-dimensional, even the adults.

This is a very powerful story, and it may be necessary to read it slowly in order to digest the complex emotions and problems experienced by the characters.

A preview of Dare You To (due in 2013), from the point of view of Noah's foster sister Beth, is included at the end of the volume. 


FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me an advance copy of the book for review purposes.

Silence is golden?

Speechless by Hannah Harrington (Harlequin Teen trade paperback, 28 August 2012).

 Chelsea Knot's best friend Kristen is probably the most popular girl in their high school, so Chelsea feels  honored to be Kristen's "chosen".  She's achieved the position at the expense of other girls who have held it previously, so she knows that she has to work hard to keep it.  Still, she's sure that Kristen would never treat her as badly as she now treats those others.

She believes that the best way to stay at the top of Kristen's friend list is to make sure she knows all the "best" gossip and shares it at the most opportune times.

Until Kristen's New Year's Eve party, which Chelsea attends by lying to her parents.  Though she's not usually much of a drinker, she finds herself overdoing it on Jell-o shots.  She feels ill, and because all the bathrooms are in use, she runs up to the guest bedroom, where she sees something truly gossip-worthy.

No longer feeling ill, she goes back to the party and blurts out what she's seen to everyone in the room.  Immediately she feels badly, but she feels even worse the next day when she finds out that a boy is in the hospital after having been badly beaten.

Her way of dealing with this is a bit extreme:  taking a cue from a National Geographic article about Buddhist monks, she decides that the best way to deal with her big mouth is to stop talking.  Completely.

Not unexpectedly, her decision is received with skepticism and resistance.  One of her teachers even goes so far as to give Chelsea a detention each time she refuses to answer a question in class.  Some of her fellow students are much less subtle.  But others applaud her and allow her to work things out in her own time.



Of course, Chelsea learns a great deal, not just about herself, but about how true friends behave.

This is an extremely powerful book.  Harrington makes both of Chelsea's personas  understandable.  The dramatic change in her priorities happens over a relatively short period of time, but still feels believable. 

The anti-bullying movement Love is Louder is encouraging teens to read and share Speechless in order to combat bullying.  In fact, I believe all parents of school-aged kids shoud read this important book. 


FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me a galley for review purposes.

This week's arrivals

Miss Me When I'm Gone by Emily Arsenault (HarperCollins trade paperback, 31 July 2012).

Author Gretchen Waters made a name for herself with her bestseller Tammyland—a memoir about her divorce and her admiration for country music icons Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton that was praised as a "honky-tonk Eat, Pray, Love." But her writing career is cut abruptly short when she dies from a fall down a set of stone library steps. It is a tragic accident and no one suspects foul play, certainly not Gretchen's best friend from college, Jamie, who's been named the late author's literary executor.
But there's an unfinished manuscript Gretchen left behind that is much darker than Tammyland: a book ostensibly about male country musicians yet centered on a murder in Gretchen's family that haunted her childhood. In its pages, Gretchen seems to be speaking to Jamie from beyond the grave—suggesting her death was no accident . . . and that Jamie must piece together the story someone would kill to keep untold.


Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard (HarperTeen hardcover, 24 July 2012).

Eleanor Fitt has a lot to worry about.
Her brother has gone missing, her family has fallen on hard times, and her mother is determined to marry her off to any rich young man who walks by. But this is nothing compared to what she's just read in the newspaper:
The Dead are rising in Philadelphia.
And then, in a frightening attack, a zombie delivers a letter to Eleanor . . . from her brother.
Whoever is controlling the Dead army has taken her brother as well. If Eleanor is going to find him, she'll have to venture into the lab of the notorious Spirit-Hunters, who protect the city from supernatural forces. But as Eleanor spends more time with the Spirit-Hunters, including the maddeningly stubborn yet handsome Daniel, the situation becomes dire. And now, not only is her reputation on the line, but her very life may hang in the balance.


Slugfest (Dirty Business #4) by Rosemary Harris  by Rosemary Harris (Chestnut Hill trade paperback, 22 May 2012).

Welcome to The Big Apple Flower Show where more than just the plants are dying. Paula Holliday reluctantly agrees to staff the exhibit booth for a reclusive garden sculptor at a legendary northeast flower show and she expects a quiet weekend sharing garden tips. She doesn't expect to be knee-deep in jealousy, rivalry, horticultural sabotage, beheaded gnomes and something the loose communityof gardeners has started referring to as the Javits Curse!
The mishaps start out small but the uneasiness intensifies when an overeager attendee is found floating in the river and Paula realizes she accidentally holds the clue to his identity and the reason for his murder. And so does the killer. That's when the garden gloves come off and this flower show turns into a real Slugfest!


Target: Tinos (Inspector Kaldis #4) by Jeffrey Siger (Poisoned Pen Press trade paperback, 5 June 2012).

In an isolated olive grove on the idyllic Aegean island of Tinos, revered by pilgrims around the world as the Lourdes of Greece, the remains of two bodies charred beyond recognition are discovered chained together amid bits and pieces of an incinerated Greek flag.  An enraged press screams out for justice for the unknown victims, until the dead are identified as gypsies and the story simply falls off the face of the earth.
Is it a gypsy clan war, a hate crime, or something else?  With no one seeming to care, the government has no interest in resurrecting unwanted media attention by a search for answers to such ethnically charged questions and orders the investigation closed.
But Andreas Kaldis, feared head of Greece’s special crimes division, has other plans.  He presses on in his inimitable, impolitic style to unravel a mystery that yields more dead, a modern secret society rooted in two-hundred-year-old ways, and a nagging suspicion that his answers lay in the sudden influx of non-Greeks and gypsies to Tinos.


Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy #2) by Deborah Harkness (Viking hardcover, 10 July 2012).

In A Discovery of Witches, Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and the handsome geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont; together they found themselves at the center of a supernatural battle over an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782.
Now the two are plunged into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.

Teen Tuesday

I'm really looking forward to these books:


Dead Reckoning by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill (Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers hardcover, 5 June 2012).

Jett is a girl disguised as a boy, living as a gambler in the old West as she searches for her long-lost brother. Honoria Gibbons is a smart, self-sufficient young woman who also happens to be a fabulous inventor. Both young women travel the prairie alone --- until they are brought together by a zombie invasion! As Jett and Honoria investigate, they soon learn that these zombies aren’t rising from the dead of their own accord...but who would want an undead army? And why?

A Girl Named Digit by Annabel Monaghan (Houghton Mifflin hardcover, 5 June 2012).

Farrah "Digit" Higgins may be going to MIT in the fall, but this L.A. high school genius has left her geek self behind in another school district so she can blend in with the popular crowd at Santa Monica High and actually enjoy her senior year. But when Farrah, the daughter of a UCLA math professor, unknowingly cracks a terrorist group's number sequence, her laid-back senior year gets a lot more interesting. Soon she is personally investigating the case, on the run from terrorists, and faking her own kidnapping-- all while trying to convince a young, hot FBI agent to take her seriously. So much for blending in . . .


A Midsummer Tights Dream (Tallulah Casey #2) by Louise Rennison ( Harper Teen hardcover, 26 June 2012).

Tallulah Casey is back and ready to Irish-comedy-dance her way through another term at Dother Hall, but now that she's been officially admitted to the performing arts program, that won't cut it anymore. Especially if she's going to help raise enough money to keep the school from closing at the end of the year.
There are also some . . . distractions to worry about: The boys of Woolfe Academy are lingering about. And they are still boys, so they are still confusing.


Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer  (Harper Teen hardcover, 26 June 2012).

Gigi, Bea, and Neerja are best friends and total overachievers. Even if they aren't the most popular girls in school, they aren't too worried. They know their real lives will begin once they get to their Ivy League colleges. There will be ivy, and there will be cute guys in the libraries (hopefully with English accents)! But when an unexpected event shows them they're missing out on the full high school experience, it's time to come out of the honors lounge and into the spotlight. They make a pact: They will each take on their greatest challenge—and they will totally rock it.

It's Teen Tuesday!!

Out of Sight, Out of Time (Gallagher Girls #5) by Ally Carter.

Founded in 1865, The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is the premier private school in the United States for those seeking to dedicate their unique skills and talents to an education like none other.

When last we saw our heroine Cammie "The Chameleon" Morgan, she was sneaking away from leaving the Academy to track down the ancient terrorist organization known as the Circle of Cavan, which has been hunting her for over a year.

This book opens with "the operative' waking up in a convent with no memory of how she got there.  She barely remembers who she is, and all she wants is to go home.

When she finally does get back to the Academy, her memories of what happened during the months she was gone are still patchy.  But she's still the same Cammie inside, wanting to know the truth, and doing everything she can to discover it.

Many of our favourite Gallaghter Academy characters (including her mother/Academy headmistriess Rachel Morgan and her best friends/roommates Liz, Bex and Macey) are present to help Cammie fill in the blank spots in mer memory.

Cannie is the present-day version of Trixie and Nancy,  with access to the latest in über-cool spy technology and a group of friends and teachers who "have her back".  Since this is a Disney-Hyperion publication, does that mean a movie or television series is pending?
 

Teen Tuesday

Many of you know that I used to be a young adult librarian before I switched to working part-time.  I love YA books, and still review for VOYA.   Thus, I've decided Tuesdays on Stuff and Nonsense will be devoted to Young Adult literature.
I just moderated a panel on children's and young adult mysteries at Left Coast Crime in Sacramento the last weekend of March.  In preparation, I read books by the four authors on the panel:  Bonnie Hearn Hill, Sophie Littlefield, Linda Joy Singleton and Penny Warner. 

Bonnie Hearn Hill writes a series called Starcrossed, with protagonist Logan McRae, who is a high school sophomore in the fictional town of Terra Bella Beach, California.  In the first book, Aries Rising, the aspiring writer has been working hard to convince her teachers to recommend her for a summer writing camp.  When she stumbles across a book called Fearless Astrology, she learns how to create and read astrological charts, a skill she uses on her classmates, family and teachers to try to understand them.  This is a quick, enjoyable read for grades 6 and up.

The prolific Sophie Littlefield's young adult series consists of two books, entitled Banished and Unforsaken, about sixteen-year-old Hailey Tarbell, who can't wait for the day she'll leave Gypsum, Missouri, far behind, taking only her four-year-old foster brother Chub. But when a freak accident in gym class leaves a girl in critical condition, Hailey feels drawn to lay her hands on the injured girl and an astonishing healing takes place. Before Hailey can understand her new powers, a beautiful stranger shows up and saves her and Chub from a group who will stop at nothing to harness her gifts to create an undefeatable army of the undead. Hailey and a small but determined family of healers are forced to face this company and stop them.

Linda Joy Singleton has been writing for young people for years.  Her most recent book is Buried, the first of The Goth Girl mysteries, spun-off from the six-book Seer series.  The first book in The Seer is Don't Die Dragonfly, which introduces us to Sabine Rose, who, after being kicked out of school and sent to live with her grandmother, is determined to become a "normal" teenage girl. She hides her psychic powers from everyone, even from her grandmother Nona, who also has "the gift." Having a job at the school newspaper and friends like Penny-Love, a popular cheerleader, have helped Sabine fit in at her new school. Yet, Sabine can't seem to get the bossy voice of Opal, her spirit guide, out of her head . . . or the disturbing images of a girl with a dragonfly tattoo. Suspected of a crime she didn't commit, Sabine must find the strength to defend herself and, later, save a friend from certain danger.

 Another prolific author who writes for both adults and young people is Penny Warner, whose most recent series is called The Code Busters Club.  The first book, The Skeleton Key, tells the story of four middle school kids.  Cody Jones, Quinn Kee, M.E. Esperanto and Luke LaVeau are four middle-school kids who, though very different from each other, have in common the love of codes and ciphers.  They even have a clubhouse, for which the entry password changes daily.  When Cody notices what appears to be a code scratched in a window of the house across the street, the conclude that the strange old man who lives there is in trouble and set out to learn what it is and what they can do to help.

It was a fantastic panel. There was a good-sized crowd, and I didn't say anything too stupid.  If, for some reason, you'd like a recording of the panel, you can order one here.

Just finished reading...

Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington.

Alice Bliss has a complicated relationship with her mother, as do many girls of fifteen. Alice and her father, Matt, are very close. They both love to garden, and she enjoys helping him build things.

So Alice is understandably devastated when her father's National Guard unit is deployed to Iraq. Of course it's stressful for her mother, Angie and her eight-year-old sister Ellie, but it can't possibly be as hard for either of them as for Alice. Yes, Alice is self-centered, as many teens are.

Although the book is written in the third-person, and much of it is from Alice's point of view, we do occasionally get a glimpse of Angie's feelings, and Ellie's and even those of Alice's best friend Henry. Henry's devotion to Alice is simple and absolute, and is described by Harrington in words akin to poetry.

But mostly we live and breathe through Alice. We empathize with her as she wears one of her father's shirt to a rag, discovers the release of running and yearns to remember Matt's voice and image.

Although Alice Bliss is being marketed to adults, it's also appropriate for
teens. The numbers may be decreasing as American soldiers return home, but there are still many who have relatives or friends deployed overseas. Of course in many cases, a soldier is a soldier, regardless of which flag she or he fights under.

Looking back at this review, the words summarizing and describing Alice Bliss seem inadequate. This amazing novel may become a classic in the vein of To Kill a Mockingbird or Catcher in the Rye.

*FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me a copy of the book for review purposes.