Summer camp for the gifted turns out to be more fun than academic. Katrina, Isaac, Battle and Nic comprise your above average teenage group just trying to get a foothold in society’s wall. All are friends, but soon crushes develop. We can only hope who we’re crushin’ on is crushin’ on us also. It takes most of the book to find out but the story is very well woven and worth the perseverance.
High school senior Holland Jaeger has the typical teenage life. She has siblings, a Mom and Dad who love her, top percentile grades, a posse of friends, a bright future and a loving boyfriend. Holland believes with all of her heart she has her whole life flawlessly plotted out. She probably does…until she meets Cece. Out and proud transfer student Cece Goddard breezes into Holland’s life and that flawlessly plotted plan changes just a weensy bit.
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J. Adams Oaks’ Why I Fight is a teen novel, but it’s one that adults will find moving, too. It’s one of those stories about a young person where the difference between what the narrator understands and what the reader knows is a gaping chasm. Adult readers will find themselves on the right side of the gulf to recognize fully the story’s ironies and heartbreaks.
Wyatt Reaves starts the novel as a twelve year old, a big husky kid who is always mistaken for older. His Uncle Spade busts him out of a social worker’s office while his parents are screaming in the hallway, and they hit the road.
Life in the car and at his uncle’s various girlfriends’ houses seems pretty good to Wyatt, once his stomach settles down. And it all seems even better once Uncle Spade discovers something that Wyatt is really good at—bare knuckle fighting.
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When Katniss Everdeen volunteers to be a tribute for the Hunger Games in place of her sister, it is an honor only in the eyes of the Capitol. The Hunger Games are an annual game of survival for children living in the Districts surrounding the Capitol as punishment for an uprising almost 75 years ago. Every year, a raffle for children ages 12-18 is conducted to see who fights to the death on national television for the entertainment of all citizens.
But the poor have a higher chance of their names being drawn - because if you put your name in more than the single entry required by law (which increases every year), you can earn extra food for your starving family. Even though some Districts produce food, people are still starving due to strict theft laws.
So when Katniss volunteers, she does so with the full knowledge that she will probably not survive, but at least she has saved her sister for another year. But the knowledge that her government continues to condone the killing of children for entertainment leads to a new twist on the game...
Suzanne Collins, author of the popular Gregor the Overlander series, has outdone herself with this stunning portrayal of true survival of the fittest. The Hunger Games is a fast-paced thriller set in an oddly familiar world, where killing your neighbor may be your only chance to survive.
The Teen historical novel Newes from the Dead (2008) by Mary Hooper is absolutely fascinating. It carries the flavor of life in 1650 England, retelling the true story of Ann Greene, a young woman who was hung as a murderess for killing her newborn (actually stillborn).
The story starts with Ann gradually waking in her coffin, which is sitting in a medical dissection laboratory. She is unable to move and feels neither terror nor joy. She does not realize where she is, at first believing herself to be in bed and then, remembering her execution, believing herself to be in purgatory. Ann muses on her past, observes "angels", and hears distant voices.
Hooper interweaves Ann's past with her present in a fascinating can't-put-it-down read. The compassion of the doctors and the heartless cruelty of prison are both brought to life through Ann's story. Contemporary pamphlets were printed telling about Ann's "miracle", one of which is reprinted in the back of the book.
Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is the story of a young man who makes a bad decision that has a snowball affect on the rest of his life.
As a fan of Anderson's more well-known work Speak, I picked up Twisted with high expectations and I was not let down. The story opens with Tyler, who is completing his community service, under direction of a probation officer. He was painting grafiti on the side of the school to be noticed - and noticed he was.
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In 2002 the great Neil Gaiman wrote a children's novel, Coraline. Darkly spooky, scary and suspenseful, the book brings to mind a fairy tale, with a resourceful heroine facing daunting odds to save the day. It also brings to mind Alice in Wonderland, where Alice is confused but still seems to know whom to trust and where to find help -- and the way out.
Recently published is the graphic novel, Coraline, adapted and illustrated by the award winning P. Craig Russell. At first I was worried: how could I accept this new version of Coraline, a pre-teen in t-shirt and jeans? How could the atmosphere of the spooky old house and its inhabitants, so well developed in Gaiman's words, possibly be communicated in pictures?
I needn't have worried. Russell brings it all to vivid life, a little bit scarier than the novel was, with pictures lifted straight out of the imagination. This is the everyday brought to nightmare level, with buttons for eyes and confederate cats and souls trapped inside mirrors.
Come along with Coraline...stay...we want you to...
After a classmate's recent suicide, Clay Jensen comes home to find a package on his porch, with no return address. It contains cassette tapes with Hannah Baker's voice on them, explaining why she killed herself. Each of the thirteen stories on the cassettes belongs to a person who played a crucial role in Hannah's suicide.
The kicker is that everyone who receives the tapes is one of the reasons she killed herself. So what did Clay Jenkins, who loved Hannah, do to be on the receiving end of all that guilt?
Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, brings together this tale of grief, love, and surviving high school, in a story of both compassion and blameful vengeance.
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In this fish out of water tale, two ballerina sisters are moved from their New York City apartment and dance lessons at the premiere ballet school in the country to a small town in rural upstate New York. The Year My Sister Got Lucky, by Aimee Friedman, follows the lives of Katya and her perfect older sister Michaela as they adjust - or avoid adjusting - to their new surroundings.
Now, I've never had a sister, so their relationship was unfamiliar to me. But the relationship between these two girls is well researched, as I discovered when I read the author's bio - she has a sister whom with she attended dance classes (check out Friedman's MySpace page). While Katya's trials and tribulations are at times humorous and other times emotional, her relationship with her big sister is the connecting theme throughout the novel.
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I recently finished reading Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters series and liked it so much that I looked to see what else he had written (check out Westerfeld's blog here). I found Uglies, which stars Tally Youngblood, who can't wait to turn sixteen.
But instead of Tally getting a driver's license on her sixteenth birthday, in this world turning sixteen means going under the knife and getting a life of parties and prettiness. Shortly before her much-anticipated surgery, Tally befriends a girl named Shay, who shocks Tally by not wanting to be made "pretty." The consequence of not going through with the surgery is being Ugly. For life.
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Anyone who grew up – as I did – devouring any and all horse-related books, from Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague and Bonnie Bryant’s The Saddle Club to Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion series and Mary O’Hara’s My Friend Flicka, will recognize themselves in the opening passage of Susan Juby's Another Kind of Cowboy: In the beginning…
There was Del Magnifico le Noir. If you didn’t know better, you might have mistaken him for a dark-blue Norco bike, but to six-year-old Alex Ford, Magnifico was a three-year-old Thoroughbred, reminiscent of the Black Stallion. Like the Black Stallion, Magnifico was given to bursts of thrilling speed, which is why Alex kept a red dog leash tied to his handlebars.
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Life is hard for when your dad is running for President. You have to leave your overseas boarding school to go on the campaign trail with your parents and on top of that your father’s PR guru renames you with what she deems an Americanized nickname and then has a thirty-something year old man ghostwrite a vacuous blog for you. What is an adopted South Asian teen to do?
The On The Same Page 2008 title selection for Teens - as chosen by a group of eleven very cool teen readers - is Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes. Named a Coretta Scott King Award Winner in 2003, Ms. Grimes’ novel portrays a high school English class as they discover ways to express themselves through 'Open Mic' poetry. For the next several weeks, branch libraries will hold Open Mic sessions for teens; some will be led by the dynamic performance poet Benjamin Hughes.
Participating in this year's program are classes from Northwest High School, LaSalle, St. Teresa in Covedale, Mt. Notre Dame, Aiken HS, and Ursuline Academy, to name a few. Leading in to National Poetry Month in April, teachers can continue to request book collections for use in their classrooms.
Anyone who has a creative streak would have to admire author Nikki Grimes, as she expresses herself via many art forms: writing, fiber arts, music, and jewelry-making. Fans of all ages can meet her at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in the Rookwood Pavilion on Wednesday March 26 from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.
