Norah Piehl
Content by Norah Piehl
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Andi Alpers is desperately sad—or perhaps just desperate. Ever since the death of her little brother, she’s been adrift.
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In The Wicked and the Just, debut novelist J. Anderson Coats intimately introduces readers to an aspect of British history they may not know.
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Sarah wasn’t sure what she was looking for when she signed up for a class trip to the Florida Everglades.
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Just when you think that every possible approach to fairy-tale retellings has been heavily trod, along comes Marissa Meyer, who boldly sends her retelling of Cinderella into a futuristic new realm.
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The power-hungry computer HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey seems like a harmless teddy bear compared to the truly horrific technological threat in Catherine Jinks’ latest novel,
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In Tantalize, Cynthia Leitich Smith introduced readers to Quincie Morris, the budding vampire and plucky teenage owner of Austin&r
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Midway through Double, the novel’s narrator—at this point beginning to fear (rightfully) for his life—thinks about his new family, “Maybe none of t
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When Good Masters!
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I love a good boarding school novel. Kirsten Miller’s Mandel Academy is different—and far more disturbing—than any other fictional boarding school I’ve come across.
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Many American readers have recently discovered Swedish writer Henning Mankell, whose novels about Inspector Kurt Wallander have already become bestsellers worldwide.
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From time to time, I am reminded why I love reviewing children's books.
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Seventeen-year-old Miranda has no idea that she’s being watched—and followed and loved—by a guardian angel.
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Trillions of miles from Earth, a massive spaceship, the Empyrean, hurtles toward a goal they only know as New Earth.
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Quincie Morris is having a hard time of it. Still recovering from her parents' accidental death, Quincie feels distant from her guardian uncle, whose vampire wannabe girlfriend is seriously creepy.
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What if the only world you ever knew had a sky that was always blue, with puffy white clouds that never moved? What if every house on every street was exactly the same?
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As the first African-American student in the history of Draper, a prestigious Connecticut boarding school, 16-year-old Rob Garrett has the chance to break barriers, just like his heroes Jackie Ro
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2008 Printz Award Winner
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Most people are satisfied to come back from a vacation with a few souvenirs, perhaps a tan and some fond memories.
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Dinah seems much younger than her 15 years. She’s innocent and hopeful, someone who always sees the bright side of any situation.
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Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne's first book was a revelation for knitters regardless of their skill and experience level.
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It’s the summer between high school graduation and the start of college, and Emaline longs for a transformative summer, the kind she imagines many tourists encounter when they visit her small
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It’s been 10 years since Laurie Halse Anderson burst onto the literary scene with her powerful debut novel, Speak.
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Jennifer Donnelly’s 2003 young adult novel, A Northern Light, told the true story of Grace Brown’s 1906 murder from the point of view of fictional Mattie Gokey.
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At the customary Seder dinner celebrating the Jewish festival of Passover, the evening's youngest participant, usually a child, recites the Ma Nishtana, the Four Questions, which begin with, "
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In the near-future world of Suzanne Young's new novel, teen suicide has reached epic proportions, with one in three teenagers killing themselves before their 18th birthdays.
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Fourteen-year-old Kayla Dean thought she had her future all mapped out.
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When their mother dies suddenly, hit by a drunk driver, Will’s brother Adam finds refuge in friendships and “getting on with life.” Will’s father throws himself into his wor
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Fifteen-year-old Pearl (known to all as Bean) and her best friend Henry spend afternoons watching “Days of Our Lives” at Henry’s house.
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Bee should feel like the luckiest girl in the world: She’s a first-year student at Columbia University, pre-med; she lives in New York City; and she’s got a handsome, older, politically
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Sixteen-year-old D.J. (short for Darlene Joyce) Schwenk's family knows a lot about two things: football and farming. Dairy farming, to be exact.
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There’s something you should know: You probably won’t like Samantha Kingston very much, at least not the first time you meet her.
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Libba Bray’s last novel, the award-winning Going Bovine, was heralded as a departure for the author, who
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Every year millions of families visit a magical place Walt Disney World in Orlando.
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Believe it or not, the low-tech craft of knitting has a high-tech presence on the Internet.
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There's been a lot of talk lately about "literary" novelists turning their pens to writing genre fiction, from crime procedurals to zombie thrillers to vampire novels.
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Fifteen-year-old Kendra Bishop is sick and tired.
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Many writers of fiction for adults have tried to bridge the gap to writing for young people, with mixed success.
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One moment, 15-year-old Liz Hall is riding her bike to meet a friend at the mall.
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Imagine spending a week totally unplugged: no iPod, no Facebook, no e-mail or voicemail or text messages.
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Normal. Natural. These are words that Katsa would never, could never use to describe herself.
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David Almond, who has become known for his haunting, sometimes surreal novels for young people (Skellig, Kit's Wilderness), returns with Clay, possibly his eeriest and most thought-prov
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Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue is a big book in every sense of the word. It’s the lead book on Penguin Young Reader’s spring list, and it weighs in at nearly 550 pages. Most importantly, though, Bitterblue deals with hefty themes and emotions, which not only leave an impact on readers, but took a toll on the author herself.
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Ten-year-old Moon Blake knows a lot. He knows where to find food in the forest, even in the middle of winter.
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Laura Buzo, a social worker by profession, clearly understands the lives and concerns of young people, even if the young people about whom she writes are the kind of precocious youths who use words
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Summer travels to great American cities frequently involve trips to those cities' famous art museums, whether to enjoy the renowned art collections or simply to beat the heat.
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More than a year after suffering a debilitating brain injury, 17-year-old Jersey Hatch is finally headed home from the hospital, ready to pick up the broken pieces of his life.
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The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is a complex one, at times as perplexing to adults as it is to children.
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If ever there was a candidate for the current “It Gets Better” campaign supporting gay and lesbian teenagers, Esme Rockett is it.
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Ed Collier ( Collie for short) is on a mission. The year is 1934, and a series of tragedies has pushed Ed's family to the brink.
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At the beginning of Slam, Nick Hornby's first young-adult novel, 16-year-old Sam Jones says that everything in his life seemed to have come together.
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“Life would have been much easier if I believed in fairy tales,” remarks Fortunata at the beginning of Fortune’s Folly. Unfortunately, life for Fortunata and her
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Sara Ryan's first novel, 2001's The Empress of the World, was widely hailed as one of the first teen novels to portray a lesbian relationship as a romance, not an identity crisis.
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In the second decade of the 21st century, some might argue that there shouldn’t be a need for young adult novels exploring the angst and liberation of coming out as gay.
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Have you ever wondered what’s happening in your neighborhood when most people are asleep?
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Most kids know the traditional folk song "Scarborough Fair" (if they know it at all) from their parents' and grandparents' dusty old Simon & Garfunkel albums.
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Remember those after-school TV specials where the misunderstood, misfit high school student overcame all odds, learned how to be cool and discovered true love, all in 90 minutes?
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Ellie O’Neill is probably the last person you’d expect to get involved with a movie star.
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“Enter here to be and find a friend,” reads the stone entrance arch at the Irving School, a small boarding school in upstate New York.
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Over the course of her high school career—and three previous novels—Ruby Oliver has developed quite a reputation, at least in her own mind.
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She has, quite possibly, the most famous face in the entire world. Just as beguiling as Mona Lisa’s smile, however, is her long and captivating history.
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The course of true love, as Shakespeare wrote, never did run smooth, and nowhere is that truth more apparent than in Holly Goldberg Sloan’s debut novel, I’ll Be There.
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Eighteen-year-old Ben Wolf has just received a death sentence—he has an aggressive, terminal form of leukemia and at most a year to live but he's not about to take it lying down.
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Whenever I meet a couple, I inevitably wind up asking, "How did the two of you meet?" I am rarely disappointed with the answers to my question.
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M.
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Littlest One isn't quite sure what she is. She's practically transparent, but she casts a shadow. She's not like a dog (she doesn't have a tail, after all), and yet she doesn't seem quite human.
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Sometimes being God has its benefits. The whole “creating and naming everything on earth” gig was kind of a blast, and so is engineering the occasional cosmic miracle.
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Themis Academy is the kind of high-powered boarding school where the students take on extra projects, perform challenging music for the faculty and volunteer their time for worthy causes.
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Rhoda Janzen was having a really bad year.
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Since its original French publication in 1959, Le Petit Nicolas and its sequels have been classics, beloved by French children and translated into two dozen languages.
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<b>Understanding a sister's suicide</b> For 16-year-old Leila Abranel, dyslexia is both a curse and a blessing.
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Sarah Dessen is a master of writing about relationships. And by "relationships," I don't just mean the girl-meets-boy fodder of so many other young adult novels.
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Tamar's grandfather helped her survive algebra, taught her how to solve crosswords and enabled her to cope with her father's sudden disappearance.
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Phoebe is the youngest in a long line of Rothschilds, the eminent Jewish family that, over the course of more than 200 years, has attained wealth, power and a degree of protection even as the world
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