Jill Ratzan

YA novels have been written in the form of letters, diary entries, text messages . . . and now, in a long-anticipated follow-up to John Green and David Levithan’s collaboration Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the script of a musical theater production. In Green and Levithan’s original book, the 16-year-old openly gay, bodily large and ironically named “Tiny” Cooper writes and directs a musical, which fans now have the chance to read in its entirety.

Scenes vary from the outright hilarious (the requisite pun-filled locker room scene) to the amusingly ironic (a literal parade of ex-boyfriends) to the contemplative (Tiny’s father’s struggle with—and ultimate decision to—join him for a Mother-Daughter fashion show). The text, composed predominately of rhymed verse, includes lots of allusions to other musicals, insightful advice about love (a breakup means “you must rearrange your heart / It might feel like the end of the world / but it’s the beginning of your art”) and exactly the sort of easy acceptance that characterizes David Levithan’s work (“You’re gay? / Next you’re gonna tell me the sky is blue / that you use girl shampoo / that critics don't appreciate Blink-182”).

Levithan has accomplished something truly special in this confection of a book. Although its format is its most obviously unique feature, what ultimately stands out is its mixture of over-the-top silliness and deep emotional honesty. Unlike in Levithan’s groundbreaking Boy Meets Boy, there’s no apologetic half-fantasy component here: Hold Me Closer demonstrates loudly and gloriously that contemporary gay-centered YA lit no longer needs such literary crutches to succeed.

Jill Ratzan teaches research rudiments in central New Jersey. She learned most of what she knows about YA lit from her terrific grad students.

African-American twins Maya and Nikki and their neighbor Essence have always had their lives completely planned. They’ll date the right boys, attend historically black all-female Spelman College and be best friends forever. 

But as their senior year starts, their surety gets shaky. Nikki appreciates the freshness and variety that gentrification has brought to their neighborhood, but Maya resents the lack of local black-owned businesses. Essence and her perpetually drunk mother move across town, and a wealthy white family—including a cute boy and his racially ignorant sister—move in. As student council president, Maya finds herself constantly at odds with the new Richmond High principal, an outsider whose vision for the school doesn’t match that of many students. As the year progresses, the three friends find that relationships can evolve, goals can shift and the past can help inform the present as well as the future.

There’s never been a better time for author Renée Watson’s YA debut. Narrator Maya is perceptive, whether participating in an ongoing hallway-postering campaign or explaining why a celebration of “tolerance” shouldn’t replace Black History Month. A single racial slur appears in a particularly tense moment, but otherwise this is a gentle yet powerful reflection on choices, changes and contemporary African-American teenage identity.

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Watson about This Side of Home. 

Jill Ratzan teaches research rudiments in central New Jersey. She learned most of what she knows about YA lit from her terrific grad students.

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Comparing a new young adult author to superstar John Green is risky business. Fans of Green’s work are bound to bring a certain set of expectations to their next read—expectations that All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven meets and even exceeds.

Theodore Finch is the school freak. He can rattle off statistics about suicide as easily as literary quotations, and he’s never bothered joining Facebook because he doesn’t have any friends. His fellow senior Violet Markey is a frustrated writer struggling to redefine her identity and reframe her future plans after the car accident that killed her older sister. When the two teens find themselves working together on a geography project, they soon discover that there’s much more to be learned on their “wanderings” than mere sightseeing. As Violet draws Finch out his shell and Finch teaches Violet to make peace with the past, their relationship seems headed toward long-term happiness. But some problems turn out to be too deeply entrenched to be solved.

Told in alternating perspectives, this heart-wrenching, deeply personal novel includes lots of motifs familiar to Green fans, like road trips, physics metaphors and even references to unusual Indiana landmarks. Niven expertly crafts both of her narrative voices to reflect her characters’ changing moods and perspectives, and she’s at her strongest exactly when her characters are at their most conflicted. In the end, as the two travelers learn, life isn’t as much about what you take as what you leave behind.

Jill Ratzan teaches research rudiments in central New Jersey. She learned most of what she knows about YA lit from her terrific grad students.