Angela Leeper

“TWO WEEKS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE,” promises a flyer at the local grocery store. Change is just what studious Georgia—whose piled-on academic and family responsibilities have resulted in secret panic attacks—needs. She recruits petite, artistic Riley, her best friend since kindergarten, and along with nearly a dozen high school students from their Philadelphia suburb, they travel to the border town of Juárez, Mexico, to give a squatters’ village called Anapra its first bathroom.

Beth Kephart’s lyrical new book, The Heart Is Not a Size, describes the community’s joyous interest in the Americans, their camaraderie and their survival amid poverty, harsh desert conditions and the increasing number of haunting, unsolved muertas—murders of young women and teens. Kephart’s gentle storytelling captures Georgia’s concerns, her “fuzzy collisions of optimism and despair,” as she tries to shoulder the burden of responsibility and confront the truth about Riley’s escalating eating disorder at the expense of their friendship.

Georgia’s secrets are also revealed with the help of fellow group member Drake, a privileged yet compassionate teen who shares her enthusiasm for the poet Jack Gilbert. While it takes the combined efforts of their team to transform the village, she discovers that one person can make a difference when it comes to friendship. Inspired by a trip the author took with family and church members to Anapra, The Heart Is Not a Size will encourage teens to open their hearts (no matter the size) in their relationships and give back to the Earth and its residents.

It’s been almost two years since Melissa’s father lost his long-fought battle to cancer. She keeps him alive by remembering the unusual information he loved, like the fact that glass takes a million years to decay. These interesting tidbits offer the high school freshman a new way of looking at the world, but they don’t provide any guidance on how to grow up and work through her continuing grief.

While her older sister Ashley begins preparing for beauty pageants, following in the footsteps of their gorgeous mother, who has started dating again, plainer Melissa just wants everything to remain the same. At least she can depend on Ryan, her childhood friend who still likes to ride bikes in the river wash behind their Phoenix desert homes—until curvy, confident Courtney transfers to their school and immediately sets her sights on Ryan. And Melissa has always thought she could depend on her adoring father’s impeccable reputation, until she discovers clues about a woman from his past.

As she dates a popular senior athlete (as much a surprise to her as it is to the rest of the school), all the while hiding her envy of Ryan and his new girlfriend, Melissa achingly ponders beauty, jealousy, secrets and the signs of first love. Instead of seeking out the answers to her family’s mysteries, she realizes that she can fill in the gaps with her own stories. And taking her father’s facts and wisdom to heart, she also realizes that relationships are like glass: they may break into pieces around you, but those pieces stay with you forever.

In Jillian Cantor’s expressive, eloquently rendered coming-of-age novel, The Life of Glass, the broken-glass motif echoes throughout Melissa’s heartfelt story of love and resilience. Cantor’s pitch-perfect narration and spot-on depiction of emotional turmoil will remind readers of the exquisite fragility of adolescence.

Angela Leeper is a librarian at the University of Richmond.

When the first World Trade Center tower is hit on 9/11, high school senior Claire worries about her mother at work and her brother across the street in elementary school; classmate Peter, skipping study hall to buy the new Bob Dylan album at Tower Records and dreaming of his first date with Jasper, wonders how listening to music will ever be the same; and Korean American Jasper, at home until his college classes begin, sleeps through it all and wakes to emptiness. In the eloquent Love Is the Higher Law, these young adults’ lives intertwine in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before the tragic event.

The focus of this episodic story is not on what happened on September 11, 2001, but during the hours, days and weeks afterward. Temporarily forced away from home, breathing in the dust of the remains and peering at the immense hole left behind, the three teens wonder how they will ever sleep, date and feel again. From even simple acts, such as a shoe store handing out free sneakers to fleeing workers, they discover that surviving is finding the gratitude in one another.

Author David Levithan’s repertoire includes Boy Meets Boy and other masterful love stories. While romance may be a possibility for Peter and Jasper, the real love in this novel is for New York City and humanity. Taking its name from a U2 lyric, the slim but powerful story also features pop culture song lyrics that continue to strike a chord with today’s hearts. Teen readers, just children on 9/11, may remember the facts from watching them on television, but Love Is the Higher Law relates the emotions of that day, defined by Before and After, and how we all began living in the After that rocked the world.

Angela Leeper is a librarian at the University of Richmond.

Prolific fantasy writer Sharon Shinn spins another imaginative tale with gentle romance in Gateway. Taking time out from a busy summer internship, Chinese adoptee Daiyu stops at a jewelry vendor near the St. Louis Arch and is captivated by the beautiful and unusual stones that reflect her birth heritage. After wearing them for only a few moments, she is transported to Shenglang, an alternate St. Louis that resembles 19th-century China and in which Chinese culture is dominant while whites and blacks serve as ostracized laborers.

The confused teen is taken in by a biracial couple, who explain to Daiyu that she is one of the few individuals who can travel between dimensions with the aid of magical amulets. They ask for her help in bringing justice to Chenglei, their corrupt prime minister. With the help of Kalen, an orphaned, white teenage boy, and a wealthy socialite, Daiyu quickly learns espionage tricks and the finer skills of high society for her auspicious meeting with Chenglei.

Once her mission is completed, the teen is free to return home, but she will forget all that she experienced in Shenglang, including her developing and secret relationship with Kalen. Caught between two worlds, Daiyu is afraid of losing memories from both. But can love survive beyond time and space? The possibility will enthrall teen readers, as will the author’s detailed descriptions of this parallel world; her interesting explanations of travel across time and dimensions; and thought-provoking discussions of race and culture. Shinn concludes with room for a sequel and the chance to explore love and time once more.

"I don’t mean to be weird P but in your letter you said how you wanted the truth about stuff even if it’s ugly and trust me it’s going to get a little ugly,” writes Jamie, aka Punkzilla, in this gritty novel told in letters. AWOL from the military school his conservative parents forced him to attend, 14-year-old Jamie has been scraping by in Portland, Oregon, rooming in a boarding house, stealing iPods for Fat Larkin, experimenting with meth and suffering from ennui.

When he receives word that one of his older brothers, Peter, a gay playwright living in Memphis and a fellow black sheep of the family, has cancer, the teen starts a long, strange journey to see his brother before he dies. In stream-of-consciousness prose, filled with idiomatic expressions, visceral details and dark humor, Jamie describes traveling by Greyhound bus and hitched rides and staying in seedy motels. Each interstate stop features a new cast of evocative, unpredictable characters from a boy genius obsessed with robots to an old lady with a leaky eye to a caring transsexual named Lewis. Filling in the gaps of Jamie’s story are letters from his depressed mother, his father, “the Major,” and other family and friends.

In this modern-day version of Kerouac’s On the Road, the teen discovers the vastness of the United States and tells his brother, “P life is really weird really really weird but I’m sure you already know that.” With a raw and unique style, author Adam Rapp draws attention to the marginalized youth of this country in a manner that’s never been accomplished before. Just as pressing as Jamie’s time crunch to reach his brother is his need to connect to other people—a need, Jamie shows us, we all have.

Angela Leeper is a director at the University of Richmond.
 

Child prodigy Ronald Earl Pettway has always accepted his gift of healing, which has led to endless tent revivals and a sheltered life on the road with elderly, scripture-spouting evangelists Sugar Tom and Certain Certain and his great-aunt Wanda Joy. But now that he’s turned 16, Ronald Earl, known simply as Little Texas, finds himself doubting his once-solid gift. He has begun to take an interest in girls, especially a ghost-like girl named Lucy, whom he failed to save one evening on a revival stop.

“One thing I have learned is every story of the strange has a mustard seed of truth,” Sugar Tom tells the boy, and in R.A. Nelson’s modern-day horror story, Days of Little Texas, forgotten truths wail to be heard.

Sensing Ronald Earl’s adolescent changes, Wanda Joy leads the troupe to Vanderloo, a former cotton plantation in Alabama. This last remaining structure atop an island, created when the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded the area, is better known to the locals as Devil Hill. Wanda Joy hopes to encourage the teenager’s loyalty to the church by testing his gift and avenging the diabolical death of her grandfather decades earlier.

With the help of Lucy, Ronald Earl discovers Vanderloo’s dark slavery secrets, held captive since its pre-Civil War days. His battle against its demons also becomes a personal fight against fear and for love and independence. Nelson’s eerie and sometimes downright scary descriptions of the plantation’s evil inhabitants and effective twists create a spine-chilling experience.

Although Ronald Earl may have a gift from God, he questions the world like any teenage boy. His stolen moments with Sugar Tom and Certain Certain, discussing his dilemmas and their own scrapes in life, provide rich commentary on living in the world today. Readers drawn to the story’s horror will also find a formidable champion for setting the past and present straight.

Angela Leeper is the Director of the Curriculum Materials Center at the University of Richmond.

They’re not charming or sexy. The undead members that make up The Reformed Vampire Support Group, by Australian author Catherine Jinks, are bored, apathetic, unattractive whiners prone to headaches, eye bleeds and nausea. Rather than spread their “infection” among more of the living, they curb their addiction and sustain themselves with specially bred guinea pigs (easy to clean up and dispose of) and supplements.

Narrator and Sydney native Nina used to be a party girl until she was fanged 51 years ago at the age of 15. Now she spends her time holed up in her faded bedroom, writing romanticized novels of vampire super-heroine Zadia Bloodstone. Former musician Dave, physician Sanford, arthritic Gladys, Internet scammer Horace and the rest of the motley group pick up odd jobs when they can (a vampire still has to pay the rent). Even their Tuesday night, AA-like support group has become mundane until fellow member Casimir (directly and indirectly responsible for most of the group’s fangings) turns up staked in his coffin.

Now the ragtag bunch must really support each other, as they solve the mystery of Casimir’s killer and protect themselves from a potential vampire slayer. They receive more help from Nina’s elderly chain-smoking mother, idealistic Father Ramon and unlikely strays they meet along the way. Because vampires are dead to the world during the day (literally and figuratively), these humans are needed to take care of daytime necessities and fill in the gaps of Nina’s narrative.

Through the adventurous twists and turns of saving herself from vampire haters, Nina discovers justice, friendship and maybe even romance. She begins to emerge from the depression, lethargy and victimization of vampirism (also symptoms of adolescence) to find life (er, death) worth living. With this budding heroine in her own right at the forefront, this ensemble of eccentric characters gives a wry spin to the ever-popular vampire tale.

As a child, Angela Leeper slept with a blanket around her neck to ward off vampires.