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These novels focus of the main character
and his or her struggles to forge an identity, make choices or
simply separate. Not all of the books feature characters living
in dysfunctional or disastrous living situations, some can be
classified as humorous, some are heart-warming and sweet.
| Anderson, Laurie Halse |
{Catalyst
The author of Speak has set another novel in high school. The same high school, in fact. Melinda makes a cameo appearance. But this is Kate Malone's story. She is an over-achieving senior, hoping to get into MIT, the only college she applied to and the Alma mater of her dead mother. Kate has many responsibilities and a great deal of conflict as events she cannot control head on a collision course and she becomes very close to having a meltdown.
Slightly unbelievable and a little too hip, but engaging with
dialogue that rings true. |
| Anderson, Laurie Halse |
Prom
Prom
is a hilarious romp that is very different than Speak
or {Catalyst.
Ashley Hannigan is 18, barely making it
through high school, has no plans for
college and vague plans about moving into an apartment with her
hot, bad-boy, dropout boyfriend, TJ. Her best friend and next-door
neighbor, Nat, is head of the prom committee. Ash could care
less about the prom and has no intention of going.
When the new math teacher is arrested for
embezzling the prom money, it looks as though it has to be canceled.
Nat drags Ashley to the meeting with the school administrators.
When the committee is about to be bulldozed by Ash's arch-enemy,
Vice-Principal Gilroy, she comes up with a plan to save the prom.
There is plenty of madcap action, and humorous
secondary characters like Nat's eccentric grandma who likes to
dance in the sprinklers and Ashley's very pregnant bus-driving
mother, testimony that her parents can't keep their hands off
each other. There are some situations such as underage drinking,
references to drug use and sexual activity, cutting classes and
profanity; all of which makes the novel realistic but may offend
some.
|
| Brashares, Ann |
The Sisterhood of the
Traveling Pants
Four girls claim to be best
friends since before any of them were born because their mothers
were all in the same pre-natal exercise class. This summer will
be the first summer where each girl will go separate ways. One
of the girls bought a pair of used jeans in a thrift shop and
was about to throw them out when, on a whim, each girl tried
them on and they fit everyone perfectly even though they were
all differently sized. The girls decided that the pants were
magic and they would mail them to each other through the summer. |
| Brashares, Ann |
The Second Summer of
the Sisterhood
The pants were stored in Carmen's
closet after the first summer. After all, they are magic and
there was that "no washing" rule. This time Tibby is
going away to film camp, Lena and Carmen are staying home and
Bee is running away from herself and the events of last summer.
Relationships are more complicated in this book and I enjoyed
it very much. |
| Brashares, Ann |
Girls in Pants: The
Third Summer of the Sisterhood
It's a pleasure to have the girls and pants back for the summer. This time, it's the summer after high school graduation and before each goes to a different college. Bee is going to Brown, Lena to Rhode Island Art Institute, TIbby to New York University Film School and Carmen to Williams, her dad's Alma mater. |
| Brashares, Ann |
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
The power of the pants seems to be unraveling as the girls cannot get together for their annual ritual at Gilda's because of the girls' summer plans do not allow for time spent together. Bee is flying out to an archeology dig in Turkey, Carmen is attending summer theater workshop, Tibby is taking a summer course at NYU Film School, and Lena is staying in Providence to take summer art classes at RSD.
This book is a bit mature for a grammar school library as it frankly describes realistic situations facing most young college women today. It is well done and realistic. Fans of the previous three book will absolutely have to know what happens to the foursome.
|
| Cofer, Judith Ortiz |
An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio
Twelve short stories linked by setting, El Building, a tenement inhabited by Puerto Rican immigrants in Paterson, NJ. Each story contains a beginning, middle and end, but characters often overlap stories and they all need to be read to understand some of the relationships. Themes like fitting in, loyalty, and family are explored. Each of the people in this building are struggling; parents are trying to assimilate to a strange culture and exert authority in their own homes, children are struggling with a poor educational system, a bleak outlook and straining against the rules of their parents. |
| Cohn, Rachel |
Gingerbread
Gingerbread is a sassy book about a sassy teenager named Cyd Cherisse who has been kicked out of boarding school for being wild. She happened to be sent to boarding school because she was wild. And she is wild. She is fourteen and carries around a rag-doll she has had, named Gingerbread, since she was five. She received the doll as a present from her real dad when she met him for the first and last time at the Dallas airport. She has a boyfriend named Shrimp and a best friend named Honey who is a nursing home resident. She also has a big secret. While this book is often laugh-out-loud funny, Cyd is very sophisticated and has some real tough issues. Recommended grade 8 and above. |
| Cohn, Rachel |
Shrimp
This long awaited sequel to
Gingerbread does not disappoint although this book lacks
the edginess of Gingerbread. Cyd Charisse is back in San Francisco with Syd-Dad and Nancy under an uneasy truce after agreeing to finish high school. Rumors of Shrimp's whereabouts abound and Cyd, now preferring to be called CC keeps getting mysterious postcards and packages. She decides to explore the world of female friendship, actually do some homework and becomes mildly horrified when she notes that she prefers Nancy and Syd's parenting style to the style of Shrimp's hippy parents who have returned from Papua New Guinea. |
| Cohn, Rachel |
Cupcake
Cupcake picks right up where Shrimp left off. It is autumn in New York City, Cyd has moved in with Danny and is about to start classes at a cooking school, Shrimp is in New Zealand and keeping his part of the "clean break" bargain and Cyd misses him terribly. While Cyd, aka CC and Cupcake, has matured somewhat, she is still lippy, hip and humerous. The situations she encounters as an eighteen-year-old requires a mature reader. The book stands alone but fans of the previous books will be eager to read it. |
| Curtis, Christopher
Paul |
Bucking the Sarge
Fourteen-year-old Luther T.
Farrell, of Flint, Michigan, is an unusual eighth-grader in many
respects. He is reasonably bright and wants to win the science
fair for the third year in a row, he has a best buddy, "from
cradle to grave, birth to earth, named Sparky and a resourceful,
demanding mother whom everyone refers to as "the sarge."
She runs a number of group homes and rental properties around
Flint and is a loan shark as well. Her connections enable her
to get a driver's license for an initially thrilled Luther. In
addition to school, Luther has a full-time job of running one
of the group homes and keeping "his crew" in order.
He also considers himself a philosopher, often quoting a philosopher
"who's name escapes me at the moment." As he begins
to truly examine his mother's operations, Luther must make a
series of decisions which will affect the lives of all around
him. |
| De Oliveira, Eddie |
Johnny Hazzard
I bought this book based on
its cover and jacket blurb before waiting for it to be reviewed.
The black and white cover photo features a young man from the
neck down caught mid-air doing a kick flip. Unfortunately, due
to the language, recreational drug use and sexual situations,
this book is not appropriate in a K-8 library, but is an engaging
and thought-provoking read for more mature and thoughtful readers
in spite of the language, which though crude is realistic, even
among middle schoolers.
Fifteen-year-old Johnny Hazzard is a likable
main character. When the book opens, he and his sister are on
their way to London from Austin, Texas to spend the summer with
their father and step-mother. These trips produce a mixture of
feelings in Johnny, he's looking forward to seeing his father,
likes his step-mother, misses his mother and his friends, but
feels like a foreigner each summer. Over the previous year, he
took up skate boarding and hopes to break some of the monotony
by finding some cool places to board.
He does and in the process, meets January
who is way out of Johnny's league, not only because she is blond
and beautiful but three years older. He lies about his age though
and they click. If this were just a story about a horny teenager
who meets a sophisticated older girl who was willing to show
him the ropes, I wouldn't be posting the title. There is depth
to this novel and Johnny as well.
He was profoundly affected by Michael Moore's
film, Fahrenheit 911 and has brought the book (I was unaware
that there was one) with him to London. He also takes a family
vacation to Belgium to visit his stepmother's relatives and some
World War I sites such as Flanders Field where he ponders the
miraculous Christmas when both sides refused to fight. He contemplates
the meaning of war in general, the present war in Iraq, what
it means to be an American, the Americanization of Europe when
it comes to pop culture, stereotypes and even learns to get along
with his big sister.
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| Flake, Sharon G. |
Who am I without Him?
Short Stories about Girls and the Boys in their Lives
A collection of ten short stories
written mostly about urban African-American girls and their experiences
with boys. The worries and concerns about weight, beauty and
clothes are universal. |
| Flinn, Alex |
Diva
The diva in the title refers to sixteen-year-old Caitlin McCourt, first seen in Flinn's earlier novel Breathing Underwater. This novel stands alone although readers of the previous novel will enjoy reading Caitlin's point-of-view. Diva takes place nearly a year later- with Nick completing his court-orderd anger-management program and steering clear of Caitlin. Caitlin auditions for a place at the Miami High School of the Arts because she wants a fresh start in her junior year; away from Nick and away from her cheerleading friends who really aren't. She really wants to be an opera singer and is tired that kids her age just don't get it. She feels that kids at an arts school will.
She nails her audition and is offered a spot in the junior class. Her next problem is convincing her mother to allow her to take a bus and train to a seedy part of Miami. Once she does, through a little blackmail, Caitlin is horrified to find out that there are cliques in this school as well and she feels she doesn't fit in with these super-talented kids.
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| Green, John |
Looking for Alaska
Miles Halter is beginning his junior year in Culver Creek, a private high school in Alabama which his father attended. He is bored with is uneventful adolescence, his most notable hobby is collection famous last words and he wants to experience what he calls "the great perhaps." Once he arrives at school, he meets his roommate, Chip Martin, aka "The Colonel," who has a large chip on his shoulder because he is brilliant and a scholarship student. He promptly nicknames Miles, "Pudge" and introduces him to his friends, most notably, Alaska Young. Together the Colonel and Alaska teach Pudge how to drink, smoke, play pranks and adhere to the school code, no ratting.
The book is SAD, but very funny along the way. The characters are interesting, messed up but very likeable. There is some language and sexual situations which make for a mature read. The story is divided into before and after which confused me for awhile, but I won't spoil it for anyone wanting to read it. The book, Green's first, won the Printz Award this year (2006) and it is well deserved. I look forward to reading more from this fresh, young voice in YA literature.
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| Green, John |
An Abundance of Katherines
John Green's second book won him a Printz Honor! This guy is on a roll! I enjoyed this book very much. I particularly liked the main character, Colin, a prodigy with an identity crisis and a problem with girls named Katherine-he keeps falling in love with them and they keep dumping him. In fact, it is the dumping by Katherine the XIX that sends Colin on a road trip with his best friend, Hassan. They end up in Gutshot, Tennessee when a sign advertising the tomb of Franz Ferdinand entices them off the highway.
Lindsay Lee Wells is their tour guide and while the actual tomb is a bit of a disappointment, Lindsay is a bit intriguing and the boys end up invited to the Peptol Bismal pink home that she shares with her mother, Hollis who is the owner of the textile mill that employs most of the town of Gutshot. Colin and Hassan are offered a job and the two decide to stay in Gutshot for the time being.
The book is often laugh-out-loud funny. Colin is both infuriating and endearing. In addition to this compelling character and plot, the supporting characters are colorful.
|
| Hautman, Pete |
Godless
Sixteen-year-old, agnostic-going-on-atheist,
Jason Bock gets decked under the town's water tower when he and
his friend Schin are discovered by the town's unpredictable bully,
Henry Stegg. Dazed and flat on his back, Jason looks up at the
water tower and has an epiphany. If there is a god, he wonders,
why can't it be a water tower? After all, water is essential
to all life and so he founds Chutengodianism, or the Church of
the Ten-legged God. Schinn, an avid sketcher and recorder becomes
Jason's first disciple and writer of sacred text.
What began as a joke, soon takes on a life
of its own as Jason converts more disciples to his religion and
they begin to add rituals such as climbing the water tower to
have mass. The novel capitalizes on the adolescent need to reject
the status quo and simultaneous need to belong. Jason is pretty
fully realized unlike most of the other characters in the book,
including the seriously deluded Schinn. But the novel is an adequate
exploration of faith, religions, persecution, tolerance and freedom,
good for some interesting conversations.
|
| Hautman, Pete |
Rash
Citizens of the USSA, the United Safer States of America, decided they would rather be safe than free and so it is illegal to verbally insult anyone, run without protective padding on anything but a padded track, or become obese. These are infractions that can land a person in prison run by conglomerates such as Coke, McDonalds and Walmart. Bo Marsten doesn't have good genes. Both his father and his brother were unable to control their anger and are in prison and Bo is on the brink of following them. When an insufferable classmate and fellow track team member horns in on his girlfriend, Bo lashes out.
Pete Hautman's books are edgy, thought-provoking and often funny. This one is no exception. Bo is a believable, likeable character. Rhino, his prison cell-mate is also memorable. It is not too much of a stretch to consider that our all too litigious society might just end up like that painted in the book.
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| Mary Hogan |
Pretty Face
Hayley is constantly told "You have such a pretty face!" and knows it is code for "Why don't you do something about your weight?" Her mother doesn't resort to code; she is constantly counting Hayley's calories, putting the entire family on vegetarian/ tofu diets, and inadvertently adding to Hayley's stress and resultant binge eating. She doesn't purge though; she is becoming unhealthily overweight.
It also doesn't help that Hayley lives in Santa Monica where the weather is perfect, the beaches are perfect and filled with chiseled perfection in bikinis (many thanks to plastic surgery). The story begins as junior year is coming to a close. Hayley thinks that her crush might have feelings for her when he asks her to meet him. Her best friend helps her get ready for her date. She even goes to the beach to please him only to discover he wants her to find out if her best friend likes him.
When Hayley's parents suggest that she spend the summer in Italy with her mom's best friend from college, who can blame Hayley for jumping at the chance? A lot of ground is covered in a relatively short book at the expense of character development, but this is a fun, if predictable read.
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| Johnston, Tony |
Bone by Bone by Bone
This first person narrative is spare, chilling and difficult to read or put down. David Church, newly turned thirteen reflects on the last four years of his life in a small town in Tennessee during the early 1950's. The Klan is alive and well. David is not sure that his physician father isn't part of the organization. Dr. Church is at turns terrifying and charming. He regularly quizzes David on the bones of the body and expects that David will follow in his footsteps and become a physician as well.
When David was nine, he defied his father's rules by befriending an African-American boy named Malcolm. The two were inseparable but always careful to stay out of Dr. Church's way, so as not to test the threat that Dr. Church made: that if Malcolm ever set foot inside his house; he would shoot him.
This book reflects the prejudices of the deep south during the Jim Crow era and the dialogue is laced with racist perjoratives.
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| Les Becquets, Diane |
Love, Cajun Style
Seventeen-year-old Lucy Beauregard
has three best friends, an intact family and a good relationship
with her parents and tante Pearl. Life in her sleepy Louisiana
town is pretty quiet and she likes it that way. She knows change
is bound to happen and when Mary Jordan gets back with her boyfriend
and Evie looks like she might hook up, Lucy feels a bit abandoned.
While she doesn't mind the attention of newcomer Dewey, even
if he is shorter than her, she does mind the attention her very
married mother appears to be paying Dewey's widower father.
I felt as if I were spending time with
long lost friends while reading this quiet, positive book about
relationships, growing up and change.
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| Manning, Sarra |
Guitar Girl
Seventeen-year-old Molly Montgomery
just wanted to have some fun starting an all-girl band with her
friends. But then she got discovered and found herself on the
road to fame and fortune. This chick-lit, Brit-lit is a fast,
fun, if predictable read. The descriptions of life on the road
with a rock band include drug use, drinking and sexual references
making this book more appropriate for older, more mature YA readers. |
| Morgenstern, Susie |
3 Days Off
William knows that he is blessed with good looks and little else. His mom is a hardworking single parent stuck in a dead end job and school is something that William goes through on autopilot. When Madamoiselle March, his passionate, young French teacher (this book was translated from French) demands to know what he is thinking, William responds that he was wondering what she looked like with no clothes just as the principal walks in the door. He earns a three day suspension instead of expulsion through the good graces of Miss March and can't bring himself to tell his mother and disappoint her. He spends the first day of his suspension showing an American tourist around a nearby town, the second helping two men unload a truck and the third in the city of Lilles where he joins a protest march and hooks up with an attractive college girl. |
| Murdock, Catherine Gilbert |
Dairy Queen
I just have to echo the blurb on the jacket of Dairy Queen and say that I loved this book. It is not only a book about family and coming of age, but a football book. Fifteen, almost sixteen-year-old D.J. Schwenk has failed English because she has taken over running her family's dairy farm due to her father's hip injury. She just couldn't manage the assignments and single-handedly doing all the chores. Her little brother helps when he can and her older brothers are away.
They were football stars at their small high school and D. J. used to help them train, so she knows an awful lot about football. She herself is a gifted athlete, but had to give up basketball. When stuck-up, rich boy and spoiled QB of a rival high school shows up at the farm to help out on orders of his coach, he and D. J. lock horns.
The book is laugh-out-loud funny and D. J. is a funny, likable character.
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| Murdock, Catherine Gilbert |
The Off Season
What a satisfying sequel! I laughed, I cried, I want to read it again! My goodness, I loved this book! |
| Myers, Walter Dean |
The Beast
Anthony Witherspoon has found
a way out of Harlem by getting into a prep school in Connecticut.
He leaves behind his poet girlfriend. When he returns for Christmas
break, he has a little trouble finding the rhythm of Harlem and
has made some friends at school who live downtown. He has also
discovered that his beloved Gabi has become an addict. |
| Paulsen, Gary |
The Glass Cafe or, The Stripper and the State: How My Mother Started
a War with the System that Made Us Kind of Rich and a Little
Bit Famous
Twelve-year-old Tony is an aspiring
artist whose single-mother happens to be an exotic dancer. When
his art teacher encourages the class to do figure drawings, Tony
asks if he can draw the dancers at The Glass Cafe, while in the
dressing room, not performing. When he turns in his sketches,
his art teacher recommends him for a museum show. When a museum
patron raises the question of Tony's youth and his subject matter,
the state child protective agency begins checking. Events spiral
out of control in this short, wacky, run-on sentence of a story. |
| Pfeffer, Susan Beth |
Life as We Knew It
This is the totally realistic diary of sixteen-year-old Miranda who is complaining about how all her teachers are making her do homework and writing assignments related to the moon. The entire world is about to observe a meteor hit the moon and the general atmosphere is almost party-like. The meteor is either larger or stronger than anticipated and pushes the moon closer to the earth, throwing off the pull of the tides and setting off tsunamis, earthquakes and ultimately monstrous volcanic eruptions. We've all seen the end-of-the-world scenarios played out in testosterone-filled action flicks. This book is even scarier because it focuses on one family's triumphs and tragedies in the wake of declining food and energy sources. |
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