teens

Told from the point-of-view of 10-year-old Kenny, it's really his big brother Byron who's the hero of this funny, emotional sucker-punch of a novel. Byron, thirteen, is a juvenile delinquent--a black sheep--according to Kenny, and pretty much everyone else in the so-called "Weird Watsons" family. But in the end it's Kenny who helps Byron overcome his depression over witnessing tragic events during a trip to visit their grandmother in Birmingham, Alabama during the height of the struggle for Civil Rights. 

I came *this* close to giving up on the book after reading chapter five, which is way

I don’t normally recommend books about elementary school kids to teens, but this is an exception. Especially a book about a hot topic in the news: transgender rights. See Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s recent speech here. From the speech, here's a quote that gets me in the feels:

“Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades. Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead. But no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama

At 18, Andi Alpers has lost her will to live. Her brother Truman has died, her father has deserted the family and is putting her mother in a mental hospital. In Paris, where her father is working on a project on King Louis-Charles, Andi vows to make their three-week visit a misery. But when she finds a journal that might hold the missing key to Louis-Charles history, she completely forgets about everything, including her senior thesis, and focuses instead on solving the mystery of his death.

Rewind to the 18th century, where King Louis-Charles is imprisoned after his father and mother - Louis

Everyone (literally) in the small town (pop. 3,000) of Healey, Texas, knows the truth about Alice Franklin. Well, they know what's been determined by the collective consciousness of the town's population as the truth, which is virtually the same thing. Everyone believes it, so it must be so. Everyone treats Alice as if it's true, so the end result is the same.

So what is it that everyone knows? Four narrators take turns gradually revealing that, at the final party of summer before their junior year of high school, Alice, who already had a bit of a reputation, had sex with two guys at the same

Calvin was born on the day the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was published. His parents claim that they didn’t name him after it, that’s it’s just a fluke. They don’t understand what’s the big deal about his grandfather putting a stuffed tiger named Hobbes into baby Calvin’s crib, either. Calvin understands the significance. He is special: eternally bound to Bill Watterson, the creator of the beloved comic strip.

Then his mom accidentally washes Hobbes to death and everything changes.

When I was nine or so, Mom washed Hobbes to death. She threw him into the washing machine with a few

It’s just a simple game of dice between Love and Death. Love is personified as a man and Death is personified by a woman. They each pick a player and roll the dice, the players have to choose each other over everything else or Death will take her player. Death has always won the game, since the beginning.

The Players: Henry, who is white, is an orphan who lives with a rich family, attends a private school on a scholarship, and plans to go to college when he graduates. Flora, an African American, is also an orphan who lives with her grandmother, sings at a nightclub, and dreams of becoming a

Ana is the perfect daughter, student and big sister. Over the course of her high school career she has built the perfect resume through test scores, an exemplary GPA and a host of extracurricular activities and volunteer opportunities including being the captain of her school’s quiz bowl team.

Zak on the other hand, has scraped by mostly on luck and some quick thinking. But when his teacher catches him plagiarizing a paper (for Health class people… come on!), Zak has to shape up, or delay his graduation. He agrees to join the quiz bowl team as an alternate, giving up the greatest weekend of

This series. Wow. So different and unexpected than most everything else out there. And this second book that is so unexpectedly different than the first, that reframes and deepens and changes The Riverman as it expands that book's universe exponentially.

In my review of The Riverman I wrote, This is a mystery book. But is it a fantasy book? That's the mystery. That's because Alistair was an observer in the first book, slowly drawn into caring about a strange world that might have been a fantasy horror and might have been a psychological thriller--with drastic consequences either way.

Now

Feed reminded me of the people in WALL-E who spent their lives sitting on mobile chairs, having all their needs taken care of. Of course, the people in Feed do walk around, and they’re on earth (mostly) not on a spaceship. Still, the inability, or at least the disinclination, to think for oneself, is the same.

The feed is a computer implant, which both brings in information and keeps track of all ones thoughts, moods, feelings. It’s like a combination of having Google in your head and that scene from Minority Report where the protagonist walks into a store and holograms keep popping up

Good, but not great. Published thirteen years ago, it doesn't quite hold up today. Ginny is unbelievably pathetic throughout most of the story, and only toward the Hollywood-like ending does she-surprise-develop some confidence. Normally I love pathetic people because I can relate to their insecurity, but Ginny's character is a tad too two-dimensional, not a fully fleshed out character worthy of my concern. I also didn’t like how the author handled the date-rape subplot, as if she just needed a “juicy” reason for us to stop liking that character, rather than giving that heavy subject matter

A beautiful love story set in the jazz age of Seattle. For centuries, humans have been the pawns in the game between Love and Death. You may be familiar with a few of the challenges, Antony and Cleopatra, Helen of Troy and Paris, Romeo and Juliet. And Death always wins…always.

A new game is afoot and Love and Death have chosen the players.

Flora is an African-American girl who is truly at home in the sky. A plane mechanic by day and a jazz singer by night, Flora lives with her grandmother and is trying to save up enough money to finance a flight around the world!

Henry works at the

It’s a tale as old as time: teens going to parties far beyond their years. For this Johnson County reader, the interest in Jason Reynold's When I Was the Greatest lies in the microclimate of Bed-Stuy in New York City.

For Ali and his friends Needles and Noodles, an invitation to one of MoMo’s infamous parties must be accepted, for it may never come again. At fifteen, the boys don’t belong there, and they realize it in short order when a fight breaks out and they all, but especially Ali, end up on the most wanted list of some dangerous dudes.

The ensuing events bring Ali and his family closer

This is the story of Amanda and how she overcomes her past and embraces her new life, learning to live with her father, and making new friends. Amanda has a complicated past that she struggles with and does not want people to know about. There are flashbacks, sprinkled throughout the book, which feature Andrew and his battle with everyday life. Andrew and Amanda are connected in ways that most would not understand, as they are the same person only in different versions. Andrew’s life was not easy and neither will Amanda’s be as she navigates life as a transgendered woman searching to find

Four different people, four separate stories, and four unique perspectives are all tied together by fear. As the school-wide assembly ends, the entire school discovers that all the doors are locked as a student starts shooting.  In this fast paced read, which only spans the course of fifty minutes, the reader gets the perspective of four students, who all have reasons to fear the boy holding the gun. Each character reflects on how they are tied to the shooter, decisions they have made, and how they got to this point all while testing their strength in this nerve-wracking, suspenseful book

Illuminae is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve come across recently. I don’t know what it would be like to read the book, but the audio was marvelous to listen to. The different voices encapsulate the personalities and essences of the different characters, making the story richer and adding depth. 

I also appreciated the unique format--the whole story is told in messages, transcripts and recordings. It begins with a memo about the information to follow, then goes right into two interviews with the main characters, Kady Grant and Ezra Mason.

These two teenagers just survived a devastating

Absolutely compelling action and suspense in a wonderfully unusual package. I never wanted to set it down, and now that I'm done I want to keep reliving it.

The book is presented as a case file of "primary" sources documenting an incident meant to be covered up. An incident that included the deaths of thousands from a small, illegal mining colony on the far reaches of space. The Illuminae Group has cobbled together transcripts of radio communications, chat logs, interviews, described security video footage, legal documents, arrest reports, and more. There's an endless variety of form, voice

All American Boys is a big-issue book that also makes an excellent character study. Rashad, a sixteen-year-old African-American boy, is the victim of police brutality. Quinn, a sixteen-year-old white boy, is a witness to Rashad's beating. These two guys live in the same city and go to the same school. Quinn plays on the same basketball team as some of Rashad's friends. And yet they barely know each other. The story takes place during the week Rashad recuperates in the hospital. Quinn comes to terms with the fact that he saw the beating that put Rashad there--and that the police officer is his

It's an occupational hazard that I read lots of different things for lots of different reasons. Don't get me wrong, they are almost all very good and I enjoy almost all of them, but there's the underlying awareness that I most likely wouldn't have read the majority of them if not for my job so they always feel just a little bit like work. Then there are books like this one that feel completely and entirely like fun.



Droll and witty in that particularly British way. Nerdily intellectual yet mocking of stuffy intellectualism at the same time; magic, computers, linguistic nimbleness, and

Taylor Greer has just graduated from high school in rural Kentucky. Born to a poor, single mother and without many of life’s advantages, Taylor manages to talk her way into a lab technician’s job at the hospital, save enough money to buy a beat up Volkswagen Bug, and get out of town before she winds up pregnant or as some tobacco farmer’s wife. Most of Taylor’s pluckiness can be attributed to the roots her mother has provided her—encouragement and faith in her daughter’s abilities that are worth far more than the money she doesn’t have to offer.

Taylor heads west in her Bug without a

Let me share a secret with you. I'm ashamed to admit, but I'm a total snob when it comes to wealthy characters. I generally find them unlikable, which I know is awful judgy of me. No matter how great John Green says it is, I wanted to barf all the way through The Great Gatsby. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye, is a great character despite his upper-class upbringing, but he's had a mental breakdown, which makes him likable in my book. When I was still living at home, my mom used to try to get me to read her favorite romance novels about rich heiresses and their

There are two things you know. One: You were there. Two: You couldn't have been there.

Wondering how that can be? So is Caden. Sometimes. When he stops to think about it. Often he just goes along and doesn't question things, just accepts that's the way they are. But other times he feels out of sync with his family, friends, and others around him. He feels confused.

Readers sharing Caden's story from inside his head will feel confused almost all of the time. It skips around from one place to another--one reality to another. Caden is a high school student living a typical life. Caden is on

The House You Pass on the Way is a short novel--less than 100 pages--but it contains unusual depth and beauty. It's a pre-sexual love story about two fourteen-year-old cousins who don't yet know where they fit in. One girl, Staggerlee, is biracial--black and white. One girl, Trout, is adopted. Both girls are struggling with their budding sexuality. Are they gay? Are they straight? Does it matter? Woodson gracefully captures the confusion these two feel as they explore what it means to grow from girls to women. 

Their intense, platonic relationship reminds me of the two girls in Woodson's

"Challenging" was the first word I heard used to describe this book. I think "surreal" was the next. Following that was "impossible to describe." Even the author herself, when asked to describe the book, talked about the themes and ideas that led to its creation without attempting to describe the plot or characters.

Other descriptions they could have just as accurately used: captivating; insightful; imaginative; perceptive; funny; and enlightening. That this book is unusual isn't the first or most remarkable thing you need to know about it, but that it powerfully and effectively conveys

There will be two lies, [the coyote] says. Then there will be the truth. And that will be the hardest of all.

And what lies they are. Even more so, as the coyote promises, the lies exposed by the truth. Nothing will be the same.

Not ever.

And that's not even to mention the small surprises and little white lies along the way.

For all that she can remember of her nearly 18 years, Shelby has enjoyed a quiet, stable life. She and her mom live in a simple house, do simple things. She is homeschooled. They have a routine that never changes. And she has little contact with others. Shelby knows

In general, I like my superhero stories epic and idealistic. The "fresh take on superheroes" idea is getting pretty worn out, and I've grown tired of people deconstructing superheroes and trying to apply the genre to "real life." But Zeroes pulls it off and really does seem fresh and original, even when relying on some standard clichés of both superhero and YA fiction.

It doesn't hurt that I've always loved teen superheroes. Spider-Man, the X-Men, Teen Titans, Legion of Super-Heroes, the Young Justice animated series--the strange, transitional feeling of being a teenager mixes well with the

Sheltered and naive. That's the narrator of this book. She's always lived a protected, easy life, and doesn't have much to be anxious about. Of course, she lives in a world without poverty. Where there has never been a murder in her lifetime. Where crime, accidents, and disease are minimal, and almost everyone lives happily and safely to old age. (As far as she knows, anyway.) So life is good and there's no reason to question anything.

Except that she's a human. A human teen, at that. There might be no reason to question anything, but it's human nature and impossible to avoid. Morgan worries

Johnston weaves a beautiful tale of sisterhood and love, while re-creating the story A Thousand and One Nights. Similar to the original story, this is a desert setting and the king has taken 300 wives, one from each village, before coming to the village of our unnamed heroine. She asks her sister’s mother to help ready her for the king. She wants to take the focus off of her sister and offer herself to the king instead, in order to save her sister. She is swept away with the king, as he has chosen her, and taken to his palace. Each night the king comes to her to listen to her tell stories of

The princess is soon to be married and not very excited about the prospect.  She believes a life of matrimony will be the end of her ability to live her own life and make her own choices; she will be required to live and choose for the king and the kingdom.

Three dwarves wind their way through tunnels beneath the mountains to reach a city on the far side. They are seeking the most beautiful fabric available to offer as a wedding gift to their beloved princess. When they reach the first village on the other side, terrible news awaits them. A sleeping sickness is slowly creeping across the land

The wild, unpredictable shapeshifter Nimona has just appointed herself sidekick to archvillain Lord Ballister Blackheart, promising to aid him in his quest to prove to the kingdom that the Institute of Law Enforcement and Heroics is up to no good.  But NImona doesn't play by the normal rules, and she quickly has everyone in an uproar wondering just who she is and where her mysterious powers come from.

What starts as a whimsical, frivolous parody of traditional heroic notions of good and evil quietly and unexpectedly becomes a meaningful investigation into the concepts, couched in deep

Vango is a thrilling adventure mystery set in Europe on the cusp of the second World War, focused on the mysterious identity of a young man on the cusp of adulthood. Not even Vango, said young man, knows the mystery of his origins, and no one believes he is constantly watched and hunted by shadowy figures. They consider him paranoid. Talented, pleasant, and promising, but strangely paranoid.

The novel opens with Vango's seminary graduation ceremony, but moments before he is made a priest the police burst onto the scene. Suddenly, Vango is scaling the walls of the cathedral while being shot at