Teens

I wish Kurt Vonnegut were alive to read this masterful literary homage. I'm not the only one who sees the connection. Margaret Wappler writes in the October 23, 2015 issue of the New York Times Book Review: "King’s devotion to a passionately experimental style, in a genre often beholden to formula, is inspiring. Kurt Vonnegut might have written a book like this, if he had ever been cyber-bullied on Facebook." 

I'm telling you: get your hands on this book. RIGHT NOW. Make yourself a drink and some snacks, grab your favorite blanket, and get ready for a sensational, surreal ride in which you

Alternating chapters tell the intertwined stories of Laia and Elias, who find their paths converging through Keris Veturius, Commandant of the Martial Empire's elite military academy.  The Commandant loathes Elias, her accidental son whom she tried to abandon as a newborn, only to see him rescued by others and become the top student of her current graduating class.  Elias wants nothing more than to escape his future as an enforcer of tyranny, but to cross the Commandant and the Empire is sure death.  Laia's parents found that fate by leading the resistance movement of her conquered Scholar

Alix's exclusive school is targeted by an anonymous group of vandals who turn out to be radical activists out to get her father, putting her and her family in danger. The group claims that Alix's powerful father helps corporations that knowingly allow innocent victims to die in order to make enormous profits from unsafe products cover up their wrongdoings, and they want her to help blow the whistle on his misdeeds.

This is an exciting, high-tech mystery-thriller in which orphaned activists go after the corporations that have contributed to the deaths of their families.

This is a character

The older I get, the more I think maybe I belong in jail.

Gerald has anger control issues. He's had them for as long as he can remember. Anger has always been his defining emotion. His retreat, his solace, his catalyst for action. His self-image.

No matter how much anger management coaching I've had, I know that if I had a gun, I'd shoot Nichols in the back as he walks away with his beer. I know that's murder and I know what that means. It means I'd go to jail. And the older I get, the more I think maybe I belong in jail. There are plenty of angry guys like me in jail. It's like anger

Reality Boy is a work of fiction that shows the awful truth about Reality TV. But don’t let the word “awful” turn you off. This is an amazingly well written book. The author, A.S. King, does something magical: Just as you begin to lose faith in the human race, she shows us how it's all going to be OK. For Gerald. And for us.

Gerald's a seventeen-year-old who starred on a reality TV show when he was five. I don't know about you, but I get embarrassed when my mom shares goofy pictures of me as a kid on Facebook. Can you imagine what it's like to have your whole life broadcast before the entire

Young Rachelle was trained to protect her people from the dark creatures that surround them, which she has always been determined to do. But she hasn't wanted to simply defend, she wants to boldly attack them. She learned the hard way that, unfortunately, sometimes the only effective way to attack the darkness is to embrace it. Now she clings desperately to her soul as one of those creatures, trying to hold off the darkness within herself while still protecting the people. And her work has moved her from a woodland village to the court of the king.

Hodge has meshed a nice array of elements

The year is 2054 and India has a ratio of 5 boys to 1 girl. Girls have now become valuable assets. To combat the selling of daughters to the highest bidder, a group of women have founded a closed country they named Koyanagar. In Koyanagar, young men are chosen to compete for a chance to marry a girl. It is now Sudasa's turn to witness the testing of five young men and then choose one to become her future husband. Sudasa does not want a husband, she does not want to marry and bear children. She wants the opportunity to decide her own future, but that's not an option for her at this time. 

The weather clock said, "Knife o'clock." So I chained Dad up in the shed." So begins The Motherless Oven.

On its surface this is an intentionally opaque story, with a world so drastically different than ours that it's impossible to not feel unmoored as you read it. In this world it rains knives and the gales blow laughter, parents are mechanistic beings created by their children, devices and gadgets are talking, singing "gods," school subjects include circular history, mythmatics, shrine mechanics, and god science, and so much more that is utterly alien, all presented as normal and matter of

I know that the World is a terrible place, filled with wild animals and evil men and wicked women.

So begins Jacob's narration. Like any seventeen-year-old, Jacob trusts what his parents and respected authorities have always taught him about the world and his place in it. Like any seventeen-year-old, he questions what he has always been taught and yearns to discover the world for himself so he can fully take ownership of his identity, to decide for himself who he will be. As is common, religion plays a role in his searching; but it plays an uncommonly large role for Jacob: he lives in a small

Full disclosure: I'm a middle-aged, married mom who's a teeny, tiny bit obsessed with teen fiction. Not that I'm a creeper or anything. But my teenage angst phase is more like a personality trait. I relate to people who feel uncomfortable and awkward. People who lack confidence and discipline. People who float through life like they haven't got a clue. More often than not, that's not adults. Something about growing up in our society makes people cocky. It changes people. It makes them think they're some kind of authority figure or expert on life. Not me. That's why I like teen fiction.

 

The

What a sad, sick, powerful story. Three runaways desperately attempt to flee from the ugliness they've always known. These kids are both awful and sympathetic. Custis, a homeless boy, narrates most of the story. When strangers ask how old he is, his reply is always just, "old enough". Custis never mentions his parents or any permanent caregivers. He has recently fled a pedophile who, in exchange for “owning” Custis, had been letting him sleep on the floor in a room that smells like dog. During his escape, Custis befriends two other runaways—Boobie, a 17-year-old who has just murdered his

This is the memoir of Aaron Hartzler, a writer and actor currently living in Los Angeles. The story covers his growing up years right here in the Kansas City metro.

Aaron was raised in an extremely conservative Christian home as the son of a preacher. As a child, he was thrilled by the idea of the Rapture, a highly anticipated event in which Jesus will return to Earth to gather his believers and take them directly into heaven. Aaron would jump as high as he could into the air while singing, hoping that he could catapult himself directly into heaven. But as he entered his teen years, Aaron

There are monsters in the desert. They came from the sea and fought with man, but now they wait, picking off their victims one at a time until they see fit to rage against the world of man once more. 

As Lo-Melkhiin rides the storm into Her (there are no names in the book except for Lo-Melkhiin) village, She knows that he is coming to claim a new bride and her beautiful sister will most likely be his pick. Lo-Melkhiin has had three hundred brides already, and each one has met a swift death.

Without a second thought, She makes it so there is no other choice but to pick Her as his bride. She

“I think maybe it’s the things we don’t want to talk about that are the things people most want to hear.” 

Willowdean Dickson is many things. She’s a girl for one. She’s from South Texas. She works in a fast food joint called Harpy’s with an absolute dreamboat of a boy. She and her best friend Ellen are probably the biggest teenage fans of Miss Dolly Parton. She’s absolutely wise beyond her years, and she’s fat. As Willow says, “it’s not a cuss word. It’s not an insult. At least not when I say it.”

Willow starts her summer off just as she planned. She’s going to go to the pool with Ellen

In The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves readers were introduced to four wealthy boys of Aglionby Academy: Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah. And to Blue Sargent, an eccentric teen raised by a family of psychics who have predicted that Blue's true love will die if she ever finds and kisses him. Despite the differences in their socioeconomic backgrounds the five become comrades in the search for the elusive sleeping King of Wales, Owen Glendower, around the ley lines of their small town, Henrietta, Virginia. So far we have seen them tackle ghosts, dream manifestations that become real, and confront

I was lucky enough to hear AS King speak when she visited our Library in August 2015. Eventually, after much fascinating talk, one of the moderators got around to asking her about her newest book, I Crawl Through It. "What's it about?" We all laughed, as we had earlier established how difficult it can be to neatly summarize a King novel. But then King's expression turned serious and she said, "It's about the way teens have to deal, daily, with both intruder drills and standardized tests - and how messed up that is." I had already been planning on reading King's new book, but now I knew, I had to read it now.

Not knowing how her family has landed in witness protection is driving seventeen year old "Meg" crazy. But she knows the two rules of being in witness protection... be invisible and don't make friends.  Easier said than done, and after six placements in the last year she is bound and determined to make this placement stick as the constant moving and stress of learning new identities and back stories is tearing her family apart. Meg is determined to figure out what landed her family in this situation and she'll do whatever she can to fix it so they can just go home and everything can go back to

The two narrators alternate chapters telling the story of the splinters of their individual families melding into a new one. Eighth-grader Stewart and Ninth-grader Ashley are on their way to becoming step-siblings, with Stewart and his widower dad moving in with Ashley and her divorced mom--though Ashley's recently out-of-the-closet dad is still living in their backyard laneway house. They are a complete contrast of personalities and styles. As Stewart describes:

Our house--I mean, the house where I lived until today--was old. It was built in the 1940s, and it was a bungalow, and the rooms

The America that we know is gone - destroyed by war and a biological disaster.  The country is split in two. The dangerous East is full of human survivors riddled by mutation. Lane has always lived in the West, behind a giant wall meant to keep her safe from the feral, mutated creatures of the East. She soon learns that her father is a fetch -- hired to travel into the Feral Zone and retrieve valuable art. When he doesn't return she is forced to go into the feral zone to save him and also finish his mission -- retrieve something of value for a high-ranking official. If she fails, her father

The dedication:

For Steve, who sees.

And for Anne, who believes.

At its core, this is a book about perception. About seeing who a person really is at his or her core and believing in them. Most of the time when we look at others, we see a blurry picture of a person based on surface appearances and casual observations, then bring them into focus with our own assumptions and prejudices, largely defining them based on who we are, not who they are. It's a rare and valuable thing to look and really see, to let a person fully define him or herself to us without our faulty interpretations.

Tish is writing journal entries as an assignment for her English teacher, Mrs. Dunphrey. She has promised not to read any entries marked "Don't read this" and that is exactly what Tish writes before almost every entry. As Tish struggles with her abusive father and neglectful mother, she writes about those struggles in the journal. Dunphrey comments positively about how much she is writing, asks her to write some entries she can actually read, and also scolds her for not turning her journal in on time and for not completing other homework assignments.

The contrast between Mrs. Dunphrey's

John Darnielle’s second book is about the space between two separate worlds – the one we live in and the one we think we live in. It’s a place where aspirations are born, where imagination develops . . . also where great loneliness lives.

We follow Sean Philips, who has been in an accident, a bad one, and he’s tracing his way backwards to his younger self to make sense out of it. Sean also follows himself forward from the accident, describing how he designs a game he titles Trace Italian for which players mail him their move and he replies with the next turn. Trace Italian advances

Part Fatal Attraction part Great Expectations, this a new mystery/thriller for teens filled with plot twists and intrigue.

Vivian Foster was raised for one purpose…to destroy men. Specifically Ben. Years ago, Ben’s father broke up with Vivian’s mother, leaving her heart-broken and alone. She swore to get revenge, and Vivian is the sword she has forged to claim her pound of flesh.

She is sent to Madigan, the boarding school on the moors of Ireland where her mother and Ben’s father fell in love, and ultimately fell out of love. Her mission is to seduce Ben, get him to fall in love with her and

It’s a shame that Me and Earl and the Dying Girl gets lumped in with John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. Even though both are excellent novels involving a person dying of cancer, both are about vastly different things. Both have a vastly different tone, too - instead of Green’s warmth and earnestness, here life is more confused and bitter and darkly funny and deeply personal, which is more like how I remember high school. An unmotivated senior, Greg Gaines tries to stay under the radar and just survive the day unscathed. His goal is to drift through the year and deliberately keeps himself

In a world inspired by ancient Rome, Laia is a Scholar, a member of a conquered people who were once the greatest minds on earth. Laia ekes out a living making jams with her grandmother, while her brother and grandfather provide health care to the needy. Until one night when her brother is accused of spying on the Martial Empire for a rebel group. Laia’s grandparents are murdered in front of her face and her brother is thrown in prison. Laia only escapes this fate buy running away. Ashamed of how she has behaved she tries to barter with the rebel group for her brother’s freedom. But they ask

Tiny Cooper is a character in David Levithan's book Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He is flamboyant and emotional, and he spends that novel writing and then performing a musical of his life. Hold Me Closer is that musical, written in theater script format.

David Levithan is one of my favorite authors (Every Day is AMAZING!) I thoroughly enjoyed Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I liked Tiny Cooper in that story - a lot. I enjoyed his flamboyancy and his emotional honesty - "Here I am, love me please!!!" But I struggled with this book, perhaps because I am not a musical person. I could picture some of

While it certainly contains the titular activities, this book isn't nearly as sensationalistic as its title might imply. More than anything, Sex & Violence is a fantastically-voiced, layered character study. The description "layered" applies to narrator-protagonist Evan, the other characters in the book, and their relationships; and it applies to the meanings of, manifestations of, and connections between sex and violence that Evan gradually comes to grasp in unstated, embodied ways. This is a depiction of real people and life, complex and complicated and lived.



Evan moves through life

Such great world building. Such excellent character development. Such a detailed, compelling story. Such a refreshing pleasure every moment I spent with it.



While the first Seraphina book largely focused on Seraphina's efforts to keep her half-dragon identity hidden, Shadow Scale is all about finding and revealing her world's half-dragons. Seraphina and those close to her believe the half-dragons share a mental/psychic bond that may be a useful military defense in the war that is headed their way--and she longs for the kinship she hopes to feel upon meeting them after a lifetime of

The promotional tour Andrew Smith undertook with the release of this book was dubbed "Keep YA Weird," with an accompanying online campaign and fun images. And on the general continuum of stories books tell, The Alex Crow does indeed tilt toward the stranger side--

Consider, for instance:

• The subplot about Leonard Fountain, the physically deteriorating "melting man," who might just be the most insane man on the planet, as he wanders the countryside in an old U-Haul with a radioactive bomb he's built, bullied (and constantly urged to homicide) by the voice of Joseph Stalin in his head--along

Signy Valborn  was only seven when she climbed the New World Tree and Odin declared she would be one of his Valkyrie. Since then, the Child Valkyrie has grown to be a disappointment. She has failed to solve the riddle given to her by Odin, and thus has been isolated from the other Valkyrie for three years now. Then, Signy meets the mysterious and somewhat alluring Ned Unferth, a troll hunter who claims he has the answer to her riddle. Signy then embarks on a journey to seek out her destiny, even if it's not the one she anticipated.

Signy is a kick-butt, take-names heroine that is