BookPage Teen Top Pick, March 2016

Painful family secrets may be at the heart of the latest novel by British author Jenny Downham, but families change and grow over time, and there is peace and healing just within reach. 

Seventeen-year-old Katie first meets her grandmother, Mary, in the hospital. Mary suffers from dementia, and her husband recently died from a massive heart attack. Despite being estranged from Mary for years, Katie’s mother, Caroline, is Mary’s emergency contact. When Caroline must return to work, Katie becomes the main caregiver for Mary, and she quickly realizes that her grandmother’s memories are deteriorating before her eyes. However, the more Mary and Katie interact and take risks together, the more Mary’s memories return, resulting in long-buried family secrets coming to the surface. As Katie struggles with her identity and Mary struggles with her memories, these stories unravel, exposing revelations about all three generations of women.

Downham delivers an engrossing and emotional novel, complete with a thread of historical fiction that employs Mary’s flashbacks as the backdrop to the story. With tremendous finesse, Downham pulls readers into the mind of someone suffering from Alzheimer’s, a place where memories quickly fall out of reach. The story is fluid, perfectly paced and can be easily read in one sitting. This is a heartfelt book that sensitively and honestly reveals family issues, and it’s one that teens won’t want to miss.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In many books, especially fantasy novels, one of the best parts of the reading experience is the chance to pore over detailed maps of real or imagined places, from Middle-earth to Oz. In her debut novel, Heidi Heilig takes things a step further and places maps squarely at the center of her plot.

Nix’s father, Slate, is a Navigator, skilled at traveling through time and space—and even in between historical and mythological versions of the world—by steering his ship, the Temptation, between maps. Nix and her father have traveled from medieval Scandinavia to modern-day New York City, all as part of Slate’s quest to find the ultimate map: the one that will take him back to Hawaii in 1868, the last place and time he saw Nix’s mother alive.

Slate takes more and more risks as he comes closer to his goal, blinded by romanticism and opium until he’s unable to see the truth—that someone else who knows about Navigation may, in fact, be using Slate’s desires for their own ends.

The world Heilig has built is a creative blend of actual history and fantasy elements grounded in ancient and modern myths. Her novel is simultaneously an adventure story, a love triangle and a meditation on big topics like the idea of home and the tension between fate and free will. The good news is that The Girl from Everywhere is just the first part of a duology, so readers will be able to accompany Nix on another journey. 

The Russell family is splitting up. Dad, never home much anyway, is moving out for good. The eldest daughter, Jan, is headed away for her first year at Brown. So now it’s just Mom, pretty and headstrong 15-year-old Melanie and gorgeous but oblivious 16-year-old Erika. The two sisters are not friends, but on Halloween, they both attend a party with highly spiked punch. Melanie gets so wasted that she’s barely aware of coming on to Gerald, a friend who has worshipped Melanie for years. For his part, Gerald is so thrilled by Melanie’s sexual advances that he fails to notice that she’s passed out before the end. Erika is there when Melanie is found stretched out on the floor, undressed from the waist down.

Claire Needell’s debut novel explores the definition of rape through Melanie’s story: Is it rape if Melanie was too drunk to remember having sex, much less give consent? Despite the urgency of this topic, it gets a bit buried amid subplots concerning Jan’s relationship with her boyfriend, the eccentricities of Jan’s college roommate, Erika’s quirky naiveté and too-frequent analyses of each sister’s temperament. The numerous viewpoints seem to dilute the central issue rather than reveal its complexity.

Nevertheless, readers who are interested in timely issues, such as those explored in the novels by Jennifer Brown or Ellen Hopkins, will be intrigued by the important questions raised here. An author’s note further clarifies the definition of rape.

Diane Colson is the Library Director at City College in Gainesville, Florida.

It seems so simple at birth: boy or girl. But genitalia don’t indicate whether the boy will fall in love with other boys, or whether the girl will grow to identify as a boy who loves girls. In Symptoms of Being Human, Riley’s biological gender is never revealed to the reader, even though Riley’s innermost feelings are revealed through Riley’s blog. Following a psychiatrist’s advice, Riley uses the blog and its growing popularity as an effective tool to help withstand the stress of a new school and Riley’s congressman father’s run for re-election. Through this online platform, Riley pours out reflections on gender fluidity (“It’s like a compass in my chest . . . the needle moves between masculine and feminine.”) and dreams of acceptance. In contrast to the positive reception that Riley finds online, school is torture, and Riley’s penchant for gender-neutral clothes attracts the worst bullies. 

Through the acceptance of a LGBTQ support group and Riley’s blog, author Jeff Garvin’s groundbreaking novel packs in as much advice for genderqueer teens as possible. The most important message may be that it is acceptable to live outside the gender binary. In his author’s note, Garvin provides resources to help teens struggling with gender identity issues, as well as the often-attendant anxiety and depression.

Diane Colson is the Library Director at City College in Gainesville, Florida.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In a universe just slightly different from our own, small spheres in a rainbow of hues are hidden throughout the world, wherever people live. When matched with another sphere of the same color and “burned” by holding them to one’s forehead, spheres increase human abilities: A common pair of Army Green spheres promotes resistance to the common cold, while rare Mustards grant high IQ.

Sphere hunting has become a global business, where multinational corporations coexist with small-time flea-market sellers. Sully is one of the latter, trying to earn enough in his afterschool sales to help his mother pay the rent on their small apartment. When he meets Hunter, a teen girl in even worse economic straits, they team up to look for spheres, knowing that billionaire Alex Holliday will use any tactic to acquire the most valuable spheres . . . especially the match to the one and only Midnight Blue. The results of Sully and Hunter’s searches will change the world in ways that no one could predict.

The high-action ending, while unexpected in some ways, is appropriately set up throughout the story, making for a surprising yet satisfying resolution. Hugo Award-winning author Will McIntosh ventures into YA lit for the first time with this combination of urban fantasy, magical realism, science fiction and adventure. In this world, the bizarre seems normal, the fantastical follows its own rules and within these rules, anything can happen.

Jill Ratzan matches readers with books in a small library in southeastern Pennsylvania.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After her suicide attempt, 16-year-old Vicky Cruz wakes up in the hospital with her stomach pumped. Given the choice to stay for two weeks or go home, she makes her first step toward recovery and tells her father that going home would be a mistake. In group therapy, she meets Mona, E.M. and Gabriel, each with a different mental illness and each possessing the ability to help each other in ways that doctors, family and friends cannot. They help Vicky realize she has clinical depression—as well as the emotional strength to face the life that waits for her, if she wants to live.

Straight-talking but not overbearing, honest but not overly dark, The Memory of Light offers an accurate depiction of depression. Witnessing Vicky’s breakthrough is a powerful experience for readers, and piecing together her progression to the suicide attempt and watching her grow as she begins to comprehend how her depression began is nothing less than a gift from author Francisco X. Stork, who drew from his own experience with depression to write this novel.

Through the group members, Stork touches on other mental illnesses of psychosis, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. This is a well-rounded work of fiction, with the frank and helpful lesson that sometimes we need to pretend in order to survive.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Teen Top Pick, February 2016

On January 30, 1945, a Soviet submarine torpedoed the German ship Wilhelm Gustloff, killing more than 9,000 people. While designated as a military transport vessel, the Wilhelm Gustloff was severely overloaded with civilian evacuees from the Baltic region, including an estimated 5,000 children. The high death toll makes this sinking the greatest maritime tragedy in history. Today, the wreckage still lies off Poland’s coast and is often referred to as “the ghost ship.”

Acclaimed author Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray) explores this little-known World War II tragedy in her intense and compelling third novel. Salt to the Sea focuses on the lives of four young people from different homelands, each separated from their families during wartime. The narrative shifts throughout as Joana, Emilia, Florian and Alfred chronicle the often terrifying events that bring them together. The first three are seeking escape on the crowded ship; Alfred is one of the Nazi soldiers stationed on it. 

To tell this harrowing tale, Sepetys traveled to several countries to research the event, but she also has a family connection: Her father’s cousin fled Lithuania and had a pass for the ill-fated voyage, but she ended up on another ship. In the author’s note, Sepetys writes: “As I wrote this novel I was haunted by the thoughts of the helpless children and teenagers—innocent victims of border shifts, ethnic cleansings, and vengeful regimes.” 

Teen readers will be drawn in by the short chapters, strong characters and heartbreaking story. In scenes reminscent of the sinking of the Titanic, matters of life and death are decided in a single moment.

Deborah Hopkinson lives near Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book for young readers is Beatrix Potter and the Unfortunate Tale of a Borrowed Guinea Pig.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Short novels, especially books in verse, often belie their important and insightful contents. So is the case with award-winning poet / author Marilyn Nelson’s American Ace, which peels back the layers of a family, its history and its identity.

The story is told in short verse through the eyes of Connor Bianchini, grandson to Nona Lucia. When Nona Lucia dies, she leaves her son a letter that will potentially change his strong, proud Italian family’s (as well as outsiders’) view of what they believed to be true. The letter reveals that the man who raised Connor's father was not his birth father. Connor investigates the clues left behind, in the letter and in the birth father’s class ring, that reveal that the unknown birth father was not only black but likely a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen.

The discovery is a shock. As Connor’s father posits, “Odd, that black blood should be invisible?” Connor’s research leads him to many facts about the Airmen and, in turn, to realizations about personal identity and belonging. In one of the more telling phrases in the book, Connor notes about the Airmen: “The way they were treated makes me ashamed. But the way they treated others makes me proud.”

American Ace is a quick and absorbing read, great for introducing readers to both novels in verse and an important historic topic. As Connor notes, “I feel like there’s a blackness beyond skin, beyond race, beyond outward appearance. A blackness that has more to do with how you see than how you’re seen.”

This is a bright spot in historical fiction.

Through an otherworldly power of imagination, Charlotte and Branwell Brontë are able to transport themselves to the fictional world they created as children, sometimes bringing their younger sisters Emily and Anne along. Now 19 years old and the eldest sibling, Charlotte admits that the price they pay for crossing over is too great, and she attempts to abandon her beloved characters and the shining city of Verdopolis. But it’s soon clear that the inhabitants of Verdopolis will not be left behind quietly, and the Brontës must use their shared influence over the city to break free completely, before irrevocable damage is done.

Lena Coakley’s remarkable intuition for subtle differences in the Brontës’ personalities shines as chapters alternate between the four young writers’ perspectives. Emily’s wild passion, Charlotte’s moral strength and Anne’s quiet steadfastness are quickly established through short but deft moments of dialogue or internal monologue. Branwell, who didn’t leave behind novels that hint at his personality, is portrayed as a young man filled with love and admiration for his brilliant sisters, especially Charlotte, but also struggling with intense anxiety over his own talent and the limited options for a poor parson’s son. Coakley carefully avoids anachronistic language, keeping the reader firmly rooted in the “real” setting of 19th-century Yorkshire despite the plot’s supernatural elements.

Nearly seamless in its meld of believable historical fiction and unbridled fantasy, Worlds of Ink and Shadow will be enjoyable not only for teens discovering the Brontës for the first time, but for any reader intrigued by this remarkable family.