After my recent round of waterworks,* I felt I was entitled to something light and romantic and adorable. So I picked up Susane Colasanti’s Keep Holding On.
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Sure, I thought, the title sounds a tad foreboding, but look at the cover! The girl is smiling! She’s standing all aw-shucks-like in her distressed jeans and doodled-on Cons! Clearly the boy is a Good Egg. He has glasses! And a star on his messenger bag!** Right?
Sigh. Welcome to another exciting round of Cover Art Bait-and-Switch.*** Rather than a nice ...
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I received a review copy of Sasha Gould’s Cross My Heart in March, but the been-there, done-that cover art didn’t catch my attention, so I set it aside. Recently, though, I ran across a blog post that discussed the drastic changes that Delacorte made to the artwork.
They changed it from the look of literary historical fiction on the advanced copy to a romantic mystery/paranormal look. A big shift in the marketing angle? Now that piqued my interest.
Read the last Bookshelves of Doom on 'Code Name Verity.'
And now, after actually reading the book, I feel ...
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Fast-forwarding a few centuries from her usual Arthurian-adventure milieu, Elizabeth Wein captures the heart-stopping drama of modern war in Code Name Verity, a gripping spy novel centered on the friendship of two young women in World War II Britain.
When secret agent “Verity” is caught by the Gestapo, much like Scheherezade, she promises to write down the details of her mission in hopes of prolonging her life and avoiding further torture. The narrative she weaves recounts the history of her friendship with Maddie, who piloted their plane that crashed in Nazi-occupied France. While Wein’s masterful plot is too explosive ...
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A few select tweets I posted while reading Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity*:
@LizB @SarahRettger 11% in, and OH MY GOD I LOVE IT SO MUCH.
@SarahRettger Am I going to be devastated by the end of this? Am I going to be CURSING YOUR NAME??
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@SarahRettger @LizB Just hit 68% and burst out with, "Oh my god. Omigod. OH MY GOD!" so loudly that I made Josh jump.
And two more that I posted a full 12 hours after finishing it:
@SarahRettger @LizB I was just talking to a student ...
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I’ve had a soft spot for Catherine Howard ever since reading Alisa M. Libby’s The King’s Rose. I mean, when you ask someone to name one of Henry VIII’s wives, nine times out of 10, they’re going to name Anne Boleyn.* She was fiery, passionate, dramatic, beautiful, canny and Henry’s equal in everything except power. Catherine Howard...well, if she gets a mention, it’s usually only as The Other Wife Who Got Offed. That’s if she gets a mention.
Read the last Bookshelves of Doom on 'Keeping the Castle.'
Of course, then ...
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Oh, Patrice Kindl. Ten years between books is far, far too long.
Her books always surprise me—they vary in length, theme and genre—and have just one thing in common: like Ellen Potter’s books, they all feel fresh and classic. Now, in Keeping the Castle, we’re treated to a Regency romance about a beautiful girl who needs to marry very well, very quickly...hopefully before her family’s rapidly deteriorating castle slides over a cliff and into the sea.
Keeping the Castle is exactly the sort of book that I find it difficult to write about.
Read ...
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I’ve been being verbally harassed, in a friendly manner, by one of my young patrons because I still haven’t read John Barnes’ Tales of the Madman Underground.
Every time I see her, she asks me about it. As we’ve been having the exchange, on average, twice a week for well over a year now, it’s been boiled down to two words:
Her: So...
Me: Nope.
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She is eternally optimistic, and I am eternally stubborn. Not that I have anything against the book! But generally, the more someone tries ...
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I thought I was being so clever, taking a job as, in effect, a professional reader. I had already arranged my career as a librarian as much as possible so that it was in sync with my favorite hobby—why not go whole hog?
What I didn't realize was that becoming a professional reader would effectively take away what most readers love about reading—that it is recreation.
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Let's stop right here to dispel a few myths. Nobody in the book business does what laypeople imagine we do, that is, sit ...
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Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a popular lady in the young adult realm. Lots of likable YA heroines read about her—mopes like Bella Swan tend to prefer Wuthering Heights—and most YA readers,* regardless of age have either read the novel or watched one of the many, many film adaptations.**
It’s no surprise that she’s so popular. After all, her story has a lot of the elements that we enjoy in teen fiction: mean girls, an unattainable-and-brooding love interest, an evil guardian, school as Hellmouth, tragic death, flights of fancy, family secrets, mystery, romance, betrayal, heartbreak ...
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Poet Stephanie Hemphill has a bent for history and dark subjects, having unleashed her signature novel-in-verse prowess with prize-winning results before on Sylvia Plath (Your Own, Sylvia, 2007) and the Salem witch trials (Wicked Girls, 2010).
But in Sisters of Glass she turns to a literally lighter topic, glassmaking in 15th-century Venice, to conjure up a page-ripping family drama involving two sisters torn between tradition and following their hearts. We were eager to speak with the Illinois native to learn the story behind her latest historical venture that young teens should devour.
Check out more novels in verse for teens ...
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With the surge in popularity of post-apocalyptic stories and the apparently never-ending popularity of vampires, it was only a matter of time before we’d get hit with a combination of the two.
Yes, that’s right. Julie Kagawa’s The Immortal Rules is set in a future United States, where the few humans who have survived the plague now have to contend with the rise of the vampires—as well as creatures who are even more bloodthirsty. Our heroine is Allie, a vampire-hating street rat...who gets turned into a vampire.
Read the last Bookshelves of Doom on Cate ...
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At 14, Ismae Rienne is already badass. She just doesn’t know it yet.
But how could she? She’s grown up knowing that her mother didn’t want her—the scarring on her body proves that her mother took poison in an attempt to abort her—and abused by her father. She’s just been sold into a bad marriage to a bad man. She has no real options and no real future.
Read the last Bookshelves of Doom on the great new SF book for teens, 'Obsidian Blade.'
Ismae knows all this, but she still has fire. She ...
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Last year, I picked up Cate Tiernan’s Immortal Beloved and I really, really enjoyed it. Which surprised me.
After all, with its tiny, self-loathing—and, of course, unbeknownst to her, secretly important and powerful—heroine and its muscle-bound, brooding male lead, it just looked like yet another entrant into the exhausting gladiatorial combat that the post-Twilight paranormal romance market has become. The characters even spell magic with a “k.” Which is way too far over the New-Age-shop-in-a-college-town line for me.*
Read the last Bookshelves of Doom on Obsidian Blade, SF for teens.
But, in Immortal Beloved, Tiernan did ...
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Recently, I was asked about the lack of GLBTQ characters in dystopian teen lit, and responded with some thoughts about how dystopic storytelling tools might be used to highlight American intolerance.
Responses to that post really highlighted for me how important it is also to look at the idea of simple inclusion of GLBTQ characters in stories—both those intended as social commentary and those that don't have any particular agenda in mind.
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While dystopian fiction has excellent tools for social commentary, let's face it, most current dystopian YA is ...
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First-time author and retired amateur steeplechase jockey Anne Hambleton lives on a farm in Vermont where she trains and competes thoroughbred ex-racehorses. In Raja, her novel for young people, and horse lovers of all ages, a thoroughbred with early Kentucky Derby hopes falls victim to injury—and to the dark side of horseracing.
Raja tells his story, cycling through owners and riders, triumphs and tragedies to emerge as a competitor in steeplechase (distance obstacle course racing). The novel mirrors Hambleton’s own work with equine rescues and racetrack retirees.
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Having Raja tell his ...
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The following won’t mean anything to some of you, but it will mean everything to others: “Wherever you go, there you are.”
Yes, that’s right. Pete Hautman’s The Obsidian Blade quotes Buckaroo Banzai*. And, Buckaroo fans, I’m happy to say: The Obsidian Blade is just as enjoyably weird.
Read the last Bookshelves of Doom on the new girl-spy book 'Ruby Redfort.'
For the rest of you, hang in there. I’ll back up. First of all, you’re all aware of how fantastic Pete Hautman is, right? With Sweetblood, he gave us a vampire story way ...
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Thomas Goodman-Brown has the looks, popularity, intelligence and billion-dollar pedigree that warrant envy. But when a demon masquerading as a stunning socialite detects Thomas’ emotional and mental vulnerabilities, the young man falls prey to her plan to transform him into a bodily host for the wicked spirit of her dead son, Edward.
Another Jekyll, Another Hyde is the third and final book in the Another… series by brother-and-sister writing duo Daniel and Dina Nayeri. This contemporary take on the Robert Louis Stevenson novella explores the nonchalant glamour of Manhattan’s upper crust while remaining loyal to the self-destructive and darkened ...
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Lauren Child’s works are aimed a bit younger than my usual fare, but her picture books are so quirkily adorable and hilarious that I find them irresistible*, and her chapter books about Clarice Bean have the same sort of feel. They’re childlike without being childish, offbeat and imaginative while still feeling grounded in reality, and just as enjoyable for adult readers as young ones.
Read the last Bookshelves of Doom on Ellen Potter's 'The Humming Room.'
Now, like the cool kids everywhere, Child’s gone meta. Yes, that’s right. Ruby Redfort, Clarice Bean’s favorite fictional ...
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After all the Hype, how's the Movie?
Several weeks ago, I bought advance tickets to the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games. Like most American households with teen readers, ours has been caught up in the hype for months. Would the movie honor or overlook its source, a book my daughter, like grillions of other kids, loved?
(This is no idle speculation. When I took her to see the movie adaptation of The Lightning Thief, she walked out of the theater rather than endure the bastardization of a sacred text. At today's ticket prices, that hurt. If the ...
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In the new graphic novel Ichiro, when the title character travels to Japan with his mother, he has mixed feelings about staying with his grandfather in a country he's never known before.
A visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum brings Ichiro’s feelings of confusion and displacement into even sharper relief. When he accidentally slips into another world and meets the legendary creatures of Japan's folk history, he learns more about himself and the real world than he ever considered.
Find more books for teens in which East meets West.
Here Ryan Inzana talks about the importance ...
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