Emotionally beleaguered teen and adult readers who overlook the book’s juvenile packaging will find both clarity and...
Words, emotions, and two irreverent senses of humor collide in Sher and Wertz’s (Drinking at the Movies, 2015, etc.) debut book for teens.
For all those whose frustration at being unable to name a particular emotion has ever overtaken the emotion they are unable to name, this clever lexicon is here to provide relief. In a witty if occasionally inelegant alignment of form and function, the author’s collection of imaginative portmanteaus (and one acronym), such as “irredependent” (irrational + independent) and “castrapolate” (catastrophe + extrapolate), pay homage to the complexity of feelings. Meanwhile, with humor just this side of ribald, Wertz’s comic-strip illustrations demonstrate that, while emotional complexity can elude definition, it is just as universal to the human condition as birth, death, and forgetting people’s names as soon as they’ve introduced themselves (“namenesia”). Situated somewhere between Urban Dictionary and a beginner’s guide to anxiety and introversion, the book highlights the importance of emotional literacy but stops short of addressing emotional competence, relying instead on the audience’s developed sense of irony to understand the validity of the newly named feelings while also managing to recognize any unhealthy emotional practices.
Emotionally beleaguered teen and adult readers who overlook the book’s juvenile packaging will find both clarity and camaraderie in its definitions. (Nonfiction. 15 & up)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59514-838-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A strong, well-written female protagonist sets this coming-of-age novel apart.
After a teacher gifts her a copy of a cult classic novel, student-athlete Nanette O’Hare rebels against her manufactured white, middle-class lifestyle.
The fictional cult novel she receives echoes The Catcher in the Rye in reputation. Soon enough Nanette consumes the book, obsessed with its open-ended conclusion. When she befriends the author, a recluse named Nigel Booker, Nanette questions her tendency to conform to the demands of her parents and school life. “I knew I was privileged, but what good was that if I still didn’t get to make my own choices?” Acting the matchmaker, Booker introduces Nanette to Alex, a like-minded young poet with a destructive streak to whom she finds herself drawn. “Suddenly, I wanted to be attractive, adored, desired.” With a bracing, confrontational style, Quick exposes new angles to this angst-ridden teenage prototype, but the first half of the novel is spent developing a familiar narrative. Nanette’s story truly begins to excel in the latter half. As Nanette’s new relationships demand more from her, the author plumbs the depths of her isolation. Catharsis here equals a journey of self-sabotage and self-discovery: “You’re at a time in your life when you need to feel and believe wildly—that’s just the way it is,” Booker tells her. Rare moments like these make Nanette’s story soar.
A strong, well-written female protagonist sets this coming-of-age novel apart. (Fiction. 15 & up)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-37959-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
Snarky and painfully astute. But in a good way.
See the girl on the train, the white one “with the frizzy red hair and funny mouth”? That’s 16-year-old Willa Parker. Willa has a simple two-point plan: move to the East Coast…and kill herself.
Willa leaves her hometown of What Cheer, Iowa (you heard that right), to attend The Pembroke School and (presumably) go on to Princeton, because her wealthy economist mother (who divorced Willa’s father and left them with nothing) says she “should.” Willa’s plan is derailed when she meets the ultraprivileged, uber-hip Remy Taft (yes, related to the president), the oddly friendless queen of Pembroke. The girls develop a close friendship, complete with witty-cute banter, a late-night joy ride on a stolen golf cart, and frequent Ecstasy trips. As Remy pushes Willa out of her comfort zone, Willa forgets her suicide plan, but it soon becomes apparent self-absorbed Remy has several secrets of her own. As Willa tries to save her best friend from destroying herself, she’s also figuring out whether or not she’s neighboring Witherspoon Prep hottie Milo Hesse’s girlfriend. Surrounded by wealth, Willa often questions the unfairness of privilege; her scholarship status and Midwest origins often make her feel inferior and out of place. Her first-person narration is self-deprecating, deeply thoughtful, and thoroughly funny, with a sometimes-chiding direct address that pulls readers into her confidence.
Snarky and painfully astute. But in a good way. (Fiction. 15-18)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-231367-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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