One hot summer day, Syd storms into work at the Proud Muffin—the best queer-owned bakery in Austin, Texas—full of breakup woe and ready to channel it into baking delicious treats, including a spur-of-the-moment special, Syd’s Unexpected Brownies. To Syd’s horror, everyone who eats the sorrow-laden sweets soon finds their love lives in disarray. So Syd and Harley, the bakery’s bicycle delivery worker, embark on a mission to serve everyone who ate the brownies an antidote, like a piece of Very Sorry Cake or a slice of Honest Pie. Getting the right treats into the right mouths turns out to be more complicated than Syd thought, and then Harley begins to look awfully cute in their (or sometimes his; pins on Harley’s messenger bag signal Harley’s pronouns that day) bike shorts and Western boots.
In The Heartbreak Bakery, author A.R. Capetta describes both baking and the excitement of first love in luscious, sensuous detail. The book’s sumptuous recipes combine real directions with Syd’s colorful commentary; the first ingredient in Breakup Brownies is “4 oz unsweetened chocolate, broken up (I mean, it’s right there, how did I not see this coming?).” Plus, Capetta folds in food metaphors throughout: An awkward situation feels like a crumbling sheet of pastry dough, and at one point Syd’s heart “wobbles like an underbaked custard.”
Syd, who is agender, is an expertly constructed protagonist and a notable step forward in representing the full spectrum of gender identities in YA fiction. Syd’s earnest musings about gender, bodies, performance and identity are likely to resonate deeply with teens who’ve shared those thoughts and experiences, while offering cisgender teens an approachable lens through which to begin to understand their peers. The Proud Muffin’s welcoming atmosphere provides Syd a home away from home. Among its customers, a range of identities and relationships are modeled and celebrated. Capetta offers a multitude of ways to use and share one’s pronouns, as well as techniques for avoiding pronouns altogether.
Like the contrasting flavors in a peach strawberry basil pie, Syd’s journey of self-discovery melds perfectly with the quest to find and repair the brownies’ damage. Suspend your disbelief in everyday magic and enjoy this frothy, fulfilling confection with a lemon ginger scone and a tall, chilled glass of iced green tea
Like the contrasting flavors in a peach strawberry basil pie, this frothy confection melds a journey of self-discovery with a quest to repair broken hearts.
Vanja Schmidt has never led a charmed life. From a young age, she was forced to work as a maid at Castle Falbirg, where she suffered everything from petty cruelty to unspeakable abuse at her employers’ hands. Even Vanja’s friendship with Princess Gisele left her with more scars than support. So when Vanja saw a chance to swipe a magical string of pearls that she could use to steal Gisele’s identity, she seized it.
After a year of posing as Gisele and continuing her covert crime spree, Vanja’s latest theft earns her a deadly curse from the goddess Eiswald. If Vanja can’t find a way to make up for her crimes in the next two weeks, the curse will turn her into the same precious gemstones she’s been stealing. To make matters worse, Eiswald sends her shapeshifting daughter to keep an eye on Vanja, there’s a frustratingly talented young detective hot on her trail—and the real Gisele is still out there, furious at Vanja’s betrayal.
This colorful cast is the best part of Little Thieves, and author Margaret Owen pursues every opportunity for her strong-willed characters to clash, banter and bond with one another. Whether they are scheming over breakfast sausages or teaching knife tricks to orphans, the characters’ vivid personalities always shine through.
Owen dedicates Little Thieves to “the gremlin girls,” and Vanja wears that descriptor as the honorific it’s intended to be. Vanja’s heists are clever, her insults are creative and her vulnerabilities are striking. She’s a complex protagonist, and Owen expertly demonstrates how her devious personality is simultaneously a flaw, a strength and the direct result of her past experiences. The compassion and sensitivity Owen displays toward Vanja will easily earn her a place in the hearts of all her fellow gremlins.
Amid the book’s plentiful action scenes and witty repartee, Vanja also offers biting commentary on power and privilege. Characters wield authority over one another—whether through divine magic, mortal law, the threat of violence or familial obligation—and these power imbalances shape every interaction and drive the novel’s many intertwining conflicts.
Little Thieves is an endlessly entertaining fantasy tale about characters on their worst behavior learning to be their best selves.
Little Thieves is an endlessly entertaining fantasy tale about characters on their worst behavior learning to be their best selves.
Jennifer Mathieu swings for the fences in Bad Girls Never Say Die, a feminist retelling of S.E. Hinton’s 1967 category-defining classic, The Outsiders. It’s not quite the equal of Hinton’s grand slam, but Mathieu’s fresh spin makes for a home run of a read.
Evie Barnes is a self-described bad girl living in Houston in 1964. She wears heavy eyeliner and joins her “tuff” group of girlfriends in skipping school, smoking and drinking. When Evie is attacked and almost raped by a drunk boy at a drive-in movie, she believes her bad-girl status has been cemented. No good girl would put herself in a position where she could get hurt by a boy, right?
Wrong. Diane, the epitome of a good girl from the nice side of town (Evie calls her a “tea sipper”), stops the assault but unintentionally kills the boy in the process. This sends Evie and Diane on a police-dodging odyssey of unexpected friendship as they discover what it really means to be a bad girl.
In The Outsiders, characters regularly have the snot beat out of them for being part of the wrong crew, but the threat to the young women in Mathieu’s novel feels more existential. Yes, a young man attacks a young woman, but Mathieu doubles and then triples down on the horrors that women face every day. In a stunning moment of catharsis, Evie reflects, “It seems like if you want to really love and feel and breathe in this city, you’re labeled trash. Or bad. Especially if you’re a girl.”
Of course, that existential threat, which is the true antagonist of the story, has a name: It’s patriarchy. And Mathieu knows it. It’s why every female character in the book (and there are quite a few) is imbued with depth and purpose, no matter what side of town they’re from or how old they are. They’re all fighting the same cultural force that is determined to keep them down.
Best known for Moxie, another YA novel about young women fighting “the man,” Mathieu offers another rallying cry in Bad Girls Never Say Die and proves it’s good to go bad.
Moxie author Jennifer Mathieu swings for the fences in this feminist retelling of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.
Robin Talley, author of the new YA novel Pulp, shares a glimpse into the underground world of 1950s lesbian pulp fiction that changed her life.
My first glimpse of a lesbian pulp novel came from a refrigerator magnet.
I was a college student browsing in an LGBT bookstore when an image leaped out at me from across the aisle: “I PREFER GIRLS,” it proclaimed in all-caps, alongside a painting of two women clutching at each other while dressed in skimpy vintage clothes.
I was mystified by where the image could’ve come from, but in that moment, I didn’t care. I bought the magnet, took it home and proudly slapped it on my dorm room minifridge.
It wasn’t until years later that I learned I Prefer Girls was a novel published in 1963—and that it was part of an enormously successful midcentury genre now called “lesbian pulp fiction.” During World War II, paperback books finally took off, and by the 1950s publishers were rushing to put out original paperback novels. They were printed on ultra-cheap paper, with the idea that a man would buy one of them in a bus station, read it during the trip and toss it into a trash can once he reached his destination.
(And yes, the books were very much intended for men. It didn’t seem to have occurred to most of these publishers that women were an audience worth targeting—let alone queer women.)
Most of the lesbian pulp authors were men, too, often writing under female pen names, but a handful of the authors were lesbians themselves. In many cases, it was the first opportunity these women had to write about their own experiences and communities.
The stories often had tragic endings, thanks to publishers’ fears of controversy and censorship. Pioneering author Marijane Meaker was instructed to put one of the protagonists in her 1952 novel Spring Fire into an asylum following a nervous breakdown at the end of the book and to have the character’s former girlfriend promptly forget she’d ever been anything but straight. And Tereska Torrès’ Women’s Barracks was the subject of much outrage at a public hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials. (Incidentally, news reports of that hearing led to millions of additional sales for Women’s Barracks, so it wasn’t all bad news.)
Despite everything they were up against, some of the books written during that era are incredible. The collection Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965, compiled by powerhouse lesbian author and editor Katherine V. Forrest, is full of gripping midcentury writing as well as fascinating glimpses into the lives of the LGBT community in the pre-Stonewall era. Nearly all of the characters are closeted, and many of them face discrimination that threatens to destroy them, but the worlds the characters inhabit and the lives they live are still incredibly rich.
But even though lesbian pulp fiction was selling in numbers that most modern romance authors can only dream of, actual lesbians, along with other gay, bisexual and transgender people, were facing impossible odds. Same-sex marriage and other legal protections were unheard of, discrimination was a matter of course, and outright persecution was common.
The same era when lesbian novels were thriving was also the height of the lavender scare in the United States. From the late 1940s and all the way into the 1970s, the federal government went to great lengths to identify any potential gay, lesbian or bisexual employees and summarily fire them. Gossip spread by a disgruntled coworker or a belief that someone’s voice was too low or hair too short might be all it took to get an employee kicked out of the job and officially banned from any future government employment. The rumor mill also made certain they could never get a job anywhere else either.
Thousands of people lost their jobs. Along the way, many were outed to their parents in an era when outing often meant the severing of all family ties. Suicide was common.
I never came across anything in my research about whether the same men who conducted the interrogations and ordered the firings (because it was pretty much all men there, too) also read lesbian pulp fiction in their spare time. But odds are, most government officials in that era would’ve seen absolutely no contradiction between being titillated by fictional lesbians and ruining the lives of actual queer people.
That contradiction wound up being the most interesting part of writing Pulp. From the beginning, I envisioned it as a dialogue between two queer teenage girls, both writers like me, living in very different circumstances and battling hypocrisy.
Pulp starts with Abby, an out-and-proud lesbian high school senior in 2017. Abby lives in Washington, D.C., and she regularly goes to protests with her friends to speak out against the injustices happening in the world around them. One afternoon she stumbles across an eBook of a lesbian pulp novel and becomes fascinated by the dramatically different world it represents. She decides to track down the author, who wrote under a pseudonym and vanished after publishing only one book. The 1950s have always seemed like a million years ago to Abby, but as she searches for the mysterious author, she starts to understand exactly how much the world still hasn’t changed.
Interspersed with Abby’s story, alternate chapters introduce Janet, an 18-year-old closeted lesbian living in 1955 who also happens across a lesbian pulp novel and decides to try writing one of her own. While she’s writing, Janet also falls in love for the first time, but her best-friend-turned-more, Marie, has just been hired as a secretary at the U.S. State Department. Her job would be in major jeopardy if anyone found out about Janet or discovered Janet’s book.
While I was researching Pulp, I naturally read a lot of lesbian pulp fiction (my personal favorites are Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt and Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker series), and it gave me a whole new appreciation for the women who wrote these novels right in the middle of the horrific landscape that was the United States in the 1950s. These authors helped to lay the groundwork for the modern publishing industry. I’m a queer woman writing fiction about LGBT teenagers, and if it hadn’t been for the queer authors who first paved the way, I might never have been able to see any of my books in print.
We take for granted now that the world is ready to read stories like these, but that’s only true because activists worked for decades to make change. Reflecting on their work is a great reminder of how far we still have to go to ensure representation of marginalized characters—and of how lucky we are, even with all the challenges we’re still confronting, to be living in today’s world instead of the era just a few generations back.
Squad is the first graphic novel from YA and picture book author Maggie Tokuda-Hall (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea), and it features eye-catching illustrations by comics artist Lisa Sterle. It’s the story of Becca, the new girl at Piedmont High School, who is invited to join the most popular clique of girls at school. Then she discovers that they’re not so much a squad as a pack. Of werewolves.
Maggie, tell us a little bit about Becca, the main character of Squad. What ideas were you hoping to explore through her story?
Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Becca is someone who wants to fit in so badly. She’s a try-hard who doesn’t have a natural knack for making friends. She thinks that if, somehow, she just does everything right then maybe, MAYBE she’ll fit in and everything will be OK, and she won’t feel so lonely anymore. And so when she has a group of friends, she’s willing to overlook anything about them: their microaggressions, their casual racism, their cruelty. The fact that they’re straight-up murderers. They’re bound by a sense of having been wronged, and they have been wronged. All of us have been. Rape culture hurts everyone.
Becca is meant to be a stand-in for the rest of us. It’s so human to want to fit in. It’s so human to want justice. But are power imbalances ever the way to seek justice? Is the death penalty ever right? What does punishment accomplish, really? These are things Becca allows us to ask ourselves, even if she makes decisions we may disagree with.
What challenges did you encounter as you worked on this story?
Tokuda-Hall: The hardest thing was trying to find the right frame to tell this story. Ever since I graduated from the real Piedmont High, I’d been trying to figure out how to write about what I saw and experienced there. I didn’t have the language yet, but now I know it was rape culture. I was furious. Heartbroken. And it took me more than 15 years after graduating to be able to craft the right story in the tone I wanted to address it.
When Fred Rogers defended PBS’ funding before Congress, he read the lyrics of a song he sang to children to help them cope with being mad, and there’s a line from it that I think about a lot: “What do you do / with the mad that you feel / when you feel so mad / you could bite?” Sorting through my own anger was the hardest part of writing Squad, and the hardest part of talking about it.
“These girls aren’t role models, and they aren’t heroes. . . . They’re girls who have been beaten down by a world that will never love them back, no matter how ‘perfect’ they are.”
Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Can you talk about the way that consent is represented in Squad, and what you hope readers take away from it?
Tokuda-Hall: Squad is about rape culture, obviously. And so of course there are terrible boys, exactly who you’d expect. But the girls also have a really unhealthy consent praxis. They think they’re these white knights riding against predators, and yeah, they are, I guess. But they also threaten to kill Becca if she doesn’t join them. Becca is so chuffed to be invited that she doesn’t think about it that way; she was going to say yes, but she couldn’t have said no if she wanted to and lived. The girls enforce horrible body standards that are, in my view, an extension of rape culture, this effort to always keep the female body obedient for the male gaze. They do this without questioning themselves, without seeing the ways they’re enforcers of the very culture they purport to destroy.
These girls aren’t role models, and they aren’t heroes. They’re murderers. They’re also victims. They’re girls who have been beaten down by a world that will never love them back, no matter how “perfect” they are.
Squad is equal parts revenge fantasy and a question of what justice is in our world, which is so deeply entrenched in patriarchy, rape culture, racism and misogyny. Law enforcement doesn’t help with any of these things—in fact, it is very much an extension of them. Revenge feels good, but that isn’t justice, is it? I don’t know what justice is. But I do know that I’m not equipped to dispense it.
Werewolves are usually portrayed as masculine creatures—but not so here. Where did the inspiration for your “squad” of werewolf girls come from?
Tokuda-Hall: I think anything that’s been arbitrarily gendered is begging for subversion. And honestly, who looked at werewolves and periods and didn’t connect the dots? Uterus-havers experiencing something secret and bloody once a month? I couldn’t possibly think of any real life situation that’s analogous to that.
There’s also something inherently camp about werewolves. They’re human/dog crosses. Even if they’re scary, they’re still goofy. I love that about them, how ripe they are for comedy.
“No matter what we do, we’re somehow monstrous. So fine. Let’s be monsters.”
Maggie Tokuda-Hall
What werewolf tropes—or general horror tropes—did you hope to challenge? Did you intentionally preserve any tropes?
Tokuda-Hall: The one werewolf trope that I love is that they’re monsters born out of trauma. Typically, a werewolf doesn’t ask you if they can bite you, at least in most of the stories I know. I’m a person who’s been sexually assaulted, and I know that feeling of monstrous violation leaving me with consequences I was ill-equipped to handle. It made werewolves an apt cipher. I don’t mean to say that everyone who’s been assaulted is made a monster by it, but I do think it can create a craving for revenge. At least, it did for me.
The trope I was most interested in challenging was that, in horror, female monsters only get to be scary if their power comes from sex or age. Making them disgusting bloodthirsty dogs was sort of a middle finger to that. Even when we’re monsters we’re supposed to be hot. If you’re a woman, people are going to judge you and find you wanting. There’s no “right” way to be a woman in our world. You should be smart but not a nerd! You should be hot, but you shouldn’t act like you’re hot! You should look presentable and good all the time, but you shouldn’t try too hard! Be skinny, but not anorexic! Be one of the guys, but don’t fart! It’s impossible. No matter what we do, we’re somehow monstrous. So fine. Let’s be monsters.
From its inception, was Squad always going to be a graphic novel?
Tokuda-Hall: I have wanted to tell some version of Squad for a very long time, but I wasn’t able to crack it until I decided it needed to have werewolves, and it needed to be a graphic novel. As soon as I did, it flowed really easily. It was a complete joy to write, and it was similar to writing a picture book in that you want to leave room for an illustrator to make it their own, too.
Can you give us a little behind-the-scenes glimpse at how Squad was made?
Tokuda-Hall: I wrote the script like I was possessed, then my fantastic agent, Jennifer Laughran, helped make it make sense, and then the marvelous Martha Mihalick at Greenwillow gave it a home. We edited it together and passed it to Lisa, who had a couple of smaller notes that I added in. Lisa and I didn’t get to collaborate much directly, but watching her take this book and make it her own amazing vision has been both humbling and career-affirmingly rad.
Lisa Sterle: I signed on as the illustrator after Maggie already had the pitch and the first draft of the script finished, so I got to read the whole thing pretty immediately. To be honest, I was sold at the first mention of girls turning into werewolves. I love supernatural fantasy, so this was a concept that hooked me in fast. After reading the first chapter of the script, I immediately had such a strong idea of who these girls were, and I hadn’t even really visualized them yet. The dynamics between the squad felt immediately familiar, and I related so much to shy Becca’s desire to fit in and her sense of longing to belong somewhere. I think it’s a familiar narrative to anyone who’s been a teenage girl. The horror aspect of boy-devouring werewolves was icing on the cake.
“I had a whole mood board full of outfit ideas for the squad, because I wanted them to each have their own sense of style and yet feel like they all coordinated.”
Lisa Sterle
Though the script was completed before I started on the artwork, I did a lot of the directing myself as I formatted it for a graphic novel. I figured out the page breakdowns, panel breakdowns, which scenes needed to be splash pages or needed more breathing room, when to focus on characters or the surroundings and so on. So even though the story was done, I definitely appreciate that I got the opportunity to put my own special stamp on it through the art and the comics medium.
Maggie, what’s different about working on a book with a collaborative partner like an illustrator versus working on a novel where you’re the sole contributor?
Tokuda-Hall: IT WAS THE BEST. It is 100% better than working on your own. Illustrators are perfect magical creatures, and we don’t deserve them. She drew! So many! PICTURES! And they are all amazing! I cannot fathom what it’s like to live in her head and to be able to breathe life into drawings and to make characters come alive. But I can say that I am a huge fan of her work, and I cannot wait for her to achieve the unbearable fame her talent deserves.
Writing a novel is like being trapped in a room with yourself. You may be great company to yourself, but I know that to my own taste, I am not. Working with an illustrator relieves some of that great loneliness that comes with being a writer.
Lisa, you’ve illustrated lots of interesting things, from comics and comic book covers to a tarot deck. How did working on a graphic novel compare?
Sterle: Working on a graphic novel was a new experience for me! It was wonderful to not have to feel rushed by a monthly delivery schedule like in comics, and to really be able to take my time on each step of the process. Sometimes it was challenging to keep the momentum, though! 200-ish pages is a LOT, and at times it can feel like it never ends. I found ways to stay inspired and motivated though, such as inking a couple pages during the pencils stage to switch things up creatively.
What were your inspirations for the overall look and feel of the book?
Sterle: I knew going into this project that I wanted to do something bright and colorful, as it was the first comic I’d really fully colored myself. My Modern Witch Tarot was actually a bit of an inspiration, because through those illustrations I really uncovered a palette that spoke to my pop sensibilities.
Fashion was also a big inspiration. I had a whole mood board full of outfit ideas for the squad, because I wanted them to each have their own sense of style and yet feel like they all coordinated as well. The Chanels from “Scream Queens” were an inspiration, as were Cher Horowitz from Clueless, Lirika Matoshi’s dresses and Cara Delevingne’s style, to name a few others.
I love how you differentiated the girls, even when they’re in their werewolf forms. What techniques did you use to give the werewolves their individual looks?
Sterle: Figuring out the werewolves was one of the first big challenges! I definitely went with a more wolflike approach than humanlike, and that meant that they could have been hard to tell apart from one another. I considered differentiating them with jewelry or some kinds of accessories at one point, but I landed on the surprisingly simple approach of just having their fur color match their hair for the most part. I did have to tweak slightly since two of the girls have black hair, but I think it worked out in the end.
“Lisa is a marvel at creating the emotional world of a character in their body language and on their faces.”
Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Can you talk about how you used color in these illustrations?
Sterle: I love bright colors, especially when paired sparingly with pastels—kind of an ’80s/’90s vibe. I tend to stay away from earth tones, and I feel like that was an easy solution to unifying colors throughout the book. The daytime and school scenes are all very bright and warm, while the nighttime scenes tended to have a cooler, blue-green scheme, which worked out perfectly to really make the red POP when the werewolves and gore show up.
How did you approach illustrating those violent scenes?
Sterle: I’ve always been a fan of horror, so I’ve formed thoughts on what I like and dislike when it comes to gore and violence. I tried not to go too far into the realism, but I do think that in certain scenes it was important to show what these girls were really doing. No sugarcoating here! But I’m not a fan of gore for its own sake, so I tried to make sure I wasn’t going over the top unnecessarily.
Maggie, what are some things you love about what Lisa brought to the book?
Tokuda-Hall: The facial expressions. There would be direction in the script, like “Marley looks annoyed.” But then Lisa would imbue these facial expressions with so much depth and complexity. She’s annoyed, yes, but she’s also disappointed and a little embarrassed now that Lisa is done with her. Lisa is a marvel at creating the emotional world of a character in their body language and on their faces.
It is also worth noting that Lisa is like . . . a cool person. And I am not. And so she was able to lend the aesthetic a coolness that I wanted but in no way could have created on my own. The girls’ fashion is so correct and current. They’d all be dressed the way high schoolers dressed when I was in high school if I’d had to do it myself. Which, needless to say, wouldn’t be right. I’m almost old enough for all my teen fashion to have come back around, but not quite.
Do you have a favorite illustration of Lisa’s from the book?
Tokuda-Hall: All of Lisa’s work is exquisite. But probably the seemingly silliest thing that I really, truly, deeply love is that she added sound effects. I didn’t write any of those. So, for example, when Bart O’Kavanaugh gets eaten, there’s a “SPLORCH” sound effect. Has there ever been a word as onomatopoetic as splorch? Anyway, it lends the book the correct, campy, comic book-y vibe to help cut through the trauma. It’s really important for that reason, I think, because otherwise the book’s tone is a little off. This is a horror comedy. Splorch helps drive that home.
What are you most proud of having accomplished in Squad?
Sterle: I brought to life four very unique characters, each with hopes, dreams, insecurities and faults. I think we told a pretty complex story, disguised as a fun supernatural horror teen drama.
Tokuda-Hall: I wrote the first draft of Squad in the summer of 2018, just before Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings were held in the Senate. Like many other people who’ve been sexually assaulted, I was inspired by Christine Blasey Ford’s courage, and I confronted the man who sexually assaulted me. He was a friend from Piedmont. Someone I trusted, someone I’d grown up with. The publication of Squad feels like the end to the time when I felt afraid or victimized or disempowered because of what he did to me. Men like him can’t scare me anymore. I’m the scary thing in the woods now.
And as the goddess and prophet Beyonce Knowles-Carter said, “Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.”
Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea) and illustrator Lisa Sterle discuss their first graphic novel collaboration, in which teenage girls are never quite what they seem.
High school junior Becca has always been bookish and smart, the kind of girl no one really notices. So on her very first day at Piedmont High School, she’s surprised when she draws the attention of beautiful Marley and her megacool friends, and she can’t quite believe their interest in her is authentic. Granted, Arianna can be a little blunt, and Amanda and Marley make not-so-subtle attempts to tweak Becca’s personal style to match their own, but they all seem to genuinely enjoy spending time with her. But when they take her to a party, Becca realizes in the most disconcerting way possible that Marley’s clique isn’t a squad—it’s more like a pack.
Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall upends many classic werewolf tropes in Squad, her first graphic novel. Werewolves are typically hairy and muscular, but they’re also governed by the full moon, and Tokuda-Hall imbues them with feminine power. Squad is a revenge narrative and a quasi fable about consent, but beneath its supernatural premise, it’s also a classic teen drama that will disrupt readers’ assumptions about fashion-conscious teenage girls.
Illustrator Lisa Sterle’s bold, energetic artwork perfectly complements the novel’s themes of friendship, loyalty, betrayal and the possibility of love. Her palette ranges from muted jewel tones in nighttime scenes to rich reds as bright and bold as blood. Her depictions of the werewolves are particularly skillful, as she uses color and shape to connect each girl’s human and wolf forms. The book’s layouts are varied and dynamic, with small panel groupings occasionally interrupted by spreads that highlight moments of drama and emotion. Be forewarned: Squad’s most violent panels are fairly graphic, and these scenes of uncontained carnage can seem especially jarring when juxtaposed against the candy-colored, meticulously polished personas that the girls project in their human forms.
Squad is a story of dramatic contrasts and surprising transformations, and both its words and images underscore the notion that underneath their carefully cultivated surfaces, teenage girls might not be precisely what they seem.
We’re turning our attention to successful sophomore titles that soared over the high bars set by their authors’ first books.
The Lawrence Browne Affair
Cat Sebastian‘s first romance novel, The Soldier’s Scoundrel, had a pitch-perfect sense of the English Regency period and the dangers of being a gay man in that era. But in her second book, The Lawrence Browne Affair,Sebastian takes the queerness that has always lurked behind within gothic fiction and thrusts it fully into the light. Lawrence Browne, Earl of Radnor, is convinced that he’s going insane due to his difficult family history, his attraction to men and the panic attacks he experiences. When a well-meaning vicar hires him a secretary, Lawrence thinks it will be easy to scare him away with his supposedly “mad” behavior. But Georgie Turner is not a normal secretary: He’s a con man looking for a place to lie low, and the only thing that scares him about Lawrence is the horrendous state of his financial accounts. Sebastian’s wry wit is on full display, and her ability to make the thrills of initial attraction palpably real gives this romance all the wonder of an unexpected second chance.
As a book review editor, to admit that you haven’t read that novel that everyone else and their mother have raved about—well, it doesn’t feel great. For a time, Yaa Gyasi’s bestselling, universally heralded 2016 debut novel, Homegoing, was the source of one of my primary shame spirals. But then September 2020 rolled around and with it her follow-up, Transcendent Kingdom, a tremendous novel of heart, mind and soul. It’s about Gifty, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who grows up in an all-white evangelical Christian community in Alabama, and grapples with the complexities of her family alongside her own experience of moving from the mysteries of faith to the vast, limitless discourse presented by her career as a neuroscientist. As widely as these questions range, the novel is extremely tight, even tidy, and that kind of storytelling is precisely the way to my heart. It sent me hurrying to Homegoing, finally ready for anything and everything Gyasi has to offer.
Stephanie Danler’s debut novel, Sweetbitter, became a bestseller and was adapted into a television series, launching her career into the stratosphere. Her second book, Stray: A Memoir, published in May 2020, after the U.S. had gone into lockdown but before the publishing world had pivoted to remote book events, so it didn’t receive the same attention as Sweetbitter—despite being emotionally potent, beautifully written and gripping to boot. As Stray opens, Danler has moved back to California, where she grew up with parents who were beautiful, unstable addicts. The treacherous landscape of Laurel Canyon kicks up memories of her painful past while an affair dissolves in the present, and as she weaves between the two, trauma takes on a dreamy, phantasmagoric quality, as ubiquitous as the heat. As far as second books go, this one is a mature achievement. And if you have a thing for devastating dysfunctional family memoirs, Stray can hang with the best of them.
The first thing to know about I’ll Give You the Sun is that it was published four years after Jandy Nelson‘s debut, which is an eternity in YA publishing, where authors typically write a book a year. The second is that, perhaps because Nelson took that time, it’s extraordinary on every level. It’s full of sentences that seem as though Nelson came to an intersection while writing and instead of deciding to turn or go straight, she levitated her car and flew to the moon. And then there’s its structure: two narrators, twins Noah and Jude, and two timelines, when they’re 13 and when they’re 16, before and after a tragedy that altered the paths of their lives. Breathtaking is a word critics like, and it comes close to describing the experience of reading this book. But it’s more like the way a roller coaster feels once your stomach is back where your stomach belongs and you’re careening down the track, relieved and ecstatic to still be alive, nearly weightless, almost in flight.
—Stephanie, Associate Editor
The Days of Abandonment
In the decade between Elena Ferrante’s first and second novels, her debut was made into a movie, and still no one knew her identity. During that time, certain literary circles obsessed over knowing who Ferrante really was, but perhaps if they gave The Days of Abandonment a closer reading, they would discover how irrelevant and destructive such a question is. Following a woman, Olga, in the aftermath of her husband’s desertion and infidelity, this sophomore novel shows how closely and precariously identity and reality are linked. We see Olga’s life crumble until she finally reaches a nadir from which the only way forward is up. Being confined inside a narrator’s thoughts during a time of such catastrophe and despair is a specialty of Ferrante’s, and here her powers reach a goosebump-inducing, worldview-shattering peak. While the Neapolitan novels might be considered her masterpiece, The Days of Abandonment has everything one could get from Ferrante.
—Eric, Editorial Intern
The editors of BookPage recommend successful sophomore titles that soared over the high bars set by their authors’ first books.
The market for teen books just continues to grow, and though we can’t cover them all in these pages, we want to let our loyal readers know about a few new titles in some of the hottest teen series out there.
From the hills of Hollywood to the private grounds of elite schools, there are plenty of books set in the exclusive world of privilege and money. Scandal, by Kate Brian (latest in the long-running Private series), reunites readers with Reed Brennan as she returns to the prestigious—and dangerous—Easton Academy. Meanwhile, those who enjoy stories about the fabulously rich and famous will be happy to know about Jen Calonita’s Broadway Lights, the newest title in her Secrets of My Hollywood Life series. And of course, don’t forget about Lauren Conrad’s sequel to L.A. Candy, Sweet Little Lies.
For those whose tastes run more toward the scary or supernatural, there’s a wealth of exciting new titles, like Lisa McMann’s Gone—third in the series that began with 2008’s Wake, about a girl who unwillingly experiences other people’s dreams—or the chilling post-zombie-apocalypse story The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan, sequel to last year’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth.
And on March 16th, L.J. Smith will release The Return: Shadow Souls, the latest in the Vampire Diaries series, now the basis for the TV show of the same name.
Finally (and also on March 16th), the last book in Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series will be released. Lord Sunday will follow 12-year-old Arthur Penhaligon as he comes to the end of his quest for the seven Keys that began with 2003’s Mister Monday. Teens who love fantasy and adventure won’t want to miss any of the books in this exciting series!
The market for teen books just continues to grow, and though we can’t cover them all in these pages, we want to let our loyal readers know about a few new titles in some of the hottest teen series out there.
It should be acknowledged from the outset that Joyce Carol Oates is one of America’s greatest living writers. For decades, her prolific pen has produced novels and nonfiction and criticism, at the rate of two or three books a year, and she does this while serving as a professor at Princeton University.
The year 2002 saw Oates take on yet another genre with the publication of Big Mouth and Ugly Girl, her first novel for young people. This month, Small Avalanches, a compilation of tales for teens and young adults that includes classic stories as well as new work, arrives on bookshelves. Kids don’t know how lucky they are.
Oates’ trademark is her ability to tap, uncontrived, into the danger that’s implicit in everyday life, from the tragic slide of old age in The Visit to the volatile stranger in the title piece, Small Avalanches. Reality isn’t a barrier to Oates either. Death shows up in denim in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? and ghosts, both benign and deadly, drift through The Sky Blue Ball and the appropriately titled Haunted.
These days, it seems as if kids are treated as future consumers of bestseller fiction. All the more reason teens should read books by writers such as Oates. It’s surprising that she waited so long to tackle the young adult genre. She must remember her childhood vividly, because the words her characters say and the thoughts they think ring so true. Her collection captures all the intensity and emotion of adolescence.
Small Avalanches isn’t for the casual reader, and neither is it for the immature one, but consider this: Oates began writing novels as a teenager, long before she was ever published. The young, serious reader, and perhaps future writer, will love this compelling book. It is a look at what a writer’s writer can accomplish.
James Neal Webb has two children; both are good writers.
It should be acknowledged from the outset that Joyce Carol Oates is one of America's greatest living writers. For decades, her prolific pen has produced novels and nonfiction and criticism, at the rate of two or three books a year, and she does this…
BookPage is celebrating the virtues of verse during National Poetry Month with a group of volumes sure to inspire budding bards everywhere. For young readers, the economy and emotion of poetry hold a unique appeal, and this special month is the perfect time for them to learn more about a genre that's centuries old but still as fresh as an April shower.
A prolific and established children's poet, Karla Kuskin has put together a marvelous collection titled Moon, Have You Met My Mother?. From the understated (I have a little guppy/I would rather have a puppy) to the hilarious (Butter/butter/butter/butter that's a word/I love to utter) to the profound (Watch the day curtains close/hear the wind going grey/at the edge of the edge/you and I/turn the page), Kuskin covers topics that will engage and challenge young readers.
Poems about pets, the seasons, the human body and the moon are enlivened by Sergio Ruzzier's simple line drawings. Sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing, his classic illustrations will remind readers of the sketches of Shel Silverstein. The Sun in Me: Poems About the Planet, compiled by Judith Nicholls, is a wonderful tribute to the natural world. Though works by Emily Dickinson, Issa, David McCord and Sappho are included here, lesser-known writers also shine. The opening poem, Mary Kawena Pukui's "Behold" sets the tone: "Sing out and say/Again and refrain/Behold this lovely world." What follows are 28 poems that celebrate and encourage respect for the earth, each accompanied by Beth Krommes' charming scratchboard pictures. Detailed, energetic and full of the life of the planet, they're the perfect visual complement to this broad collection of provocative poetry.
Author Diane Ackerman and illustrator Peter Sís have published a lovely, understated volume of verse called Animal Sense. In five chapters that reflect the five senses, Ackerman muses on the magic of various animals and their special ways of interpreting the world. The section on hearing, for example, offers an homage to bats and their remarkable auditory powers, as well as a tribute to the songs of baby birds. Readers of Animal Sense will find it hard not to be charmed by the millions and millions of dots that make up Peter Sís' remarkable illustrations. A star-nosed mole poking his head out of his hole looks especially sweet, and Jackie the German Shepherd, with his phenomenal sense of smell, fairly pops out of his page. A delight for animal and poetry lovers alike.
The first time I read The Wishing Bone and Other Poems by Stephen Mitchell, I was struck by the book's old-timey feel. The watercolor and ink illustrations by Tom Pohrt are reminiscent of Kate Greenaway's pictures, and the playful, unusual word choice similar to the work of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll will transport readers to another time. In the illustrations to a poem called "The Trial," a kangaroo serves as judge, and a bewigged pig is the attorney. Any person privy to the inner workings of the judicial system will love the confusion that ensues when the defense attorney (a bear) states, "I know my client's innocent/But can't remember why/You'll have to take my word for it/He wouldn't hurt a fly. /If only I could find my notes/The proof would make you cry." Such celebrations of words and their sounds are what poetry is all about.
Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps is a different sort of poetry anthology. Published as a project of WritersCorps, a program that allows at-risk youth to "improve their literacy and self-expression," this slim paperback is filled with all the joy and angst urban teens feel today. Relationships, racism, homelessness no topic is taboo or too difficult for these young writers to reflect on in verse. At the beginning of each chapter in this powerful collection is a writing prompt for readers to consider as they compose their own poems. Given the wide popularity of poetry slams in many schools, this volume should serve as an inspiration for any fledgling poet.
BookPage is celebrating the virtues of verse during National Poetry Month with a group of volumes sure to inspire budding bards everywhere. For young readers, the economy and emotion of poetry hold a unique appeal, and this special month is the perfect time for them to learn more about a genre that's centuries old but still as fresh as an April shower.
Maybe it's the reality TV craze, but it seems that today's books for teens are less focused on moral lessons and more focused on the issues of everyday life. In honor of the American Library Association's Teen Read Week (October 19-25), we've chosen some recent books that typify this trend by reflecting the challenges and interests of a new generation of readers.
Inner-city angst
No one cuts to the heart of inner-city teen issues like Walter Dean Myers. The Beast begins when 16-year-old Anthony "Spoon" Witherspoon leaves his Harlem neighborhood for a Connecticut prep school called Wallingford Academy, which he hopes will help him fulfill his dream of attending Brown University. The only thing he regrets is leaving his girlfriend Gabi, who has a real talent for poetry. At school, Spoon's classes inspire him, and he gets along with his classmates. It's only when he goes back to his old neighborhood for the winter break that he realizes how much and how quickly things can change. His best friend, Scott, has dropped out of high school. Gabi is still the sensitive poet he left behind, but the stress of family problems has pushed her into drug use. Spoon's attempt to save her will change them both.
The author of several acclaimed young adult novels, Myers grew up in Harlem, and if the disadvantaged teens seem a little too good to be true at times, knowing that Myers has been there himself allows the reader to suspend disbelief. The Beast's ultimately uplifting ending will satisfy teens.
Finding the way The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things by Carolyn Mackler explores the challenges faced by teens on the other side of New York City. Fifteen-year-old Virginia Shreves considers herself a loser in a family of winners. Her parents and older brother and sister are all thin, attractive, intelligent and fluent in French. Virginia is "larger-than-average," detests French and prefers People magazine to classic novels. Her best friend has just moved to Walla Walla, Washington, her clandestine romance with a classmate called Froggy is on the rocks, and her fitness-obsessed mother has decided that now's the time to do something about Virginia's weight problem. Confronted with the disapproval of her parents and the rude comments of the more popular students, Virginia starts a dangerous descent into starvation dieting and other self-destructive behaviors. When her brother, Byron, is suspended from Columbia, Virginia realizes that her family might not be so perfect after all—and finds a way to accept and discover herself. Mackler, whose Love and Other Four-Letter Words was an IRA Young Adult's Choice book, does an amazing job of capturing the wistful self-consciousness of teenage girls, and Virginia's transformation is inspiring.
Good advice
The mature lives led by today's teens have inspired a crop of self-help and motivational titles. Mawi Asgedom, an Ethiopian refugee whose inspiring memoir, Of Beetles and Angels (2000), was a BookSense '76 pick, offers one of the best. The Code: The Five Secrets of Success for Teens tells teens how they can improve their lives through knowing their inner character and refining their outer goals. Asgedom shares many inspiring case studies as well as his own experiences of overcoming difficulties in a conversational style that will appeal to teen readers. Each chapter is devoted to one of the five secrets and ends with a short section called "Your Turn," which gives teens the opportunity to put the chapter's message to immediate use. Asgedom, a graduate of Harvard, has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, named by ESSENCE as one of the 40 most inspiring African Americans and has given the commencement address at Harvard. His practical advice will motivate teens to greater levels of success.
Star quality
Nothing says "teen" like rock n' roll. The Book of Rock Stars by Kathleen Krull is the perfect volume to slide under the door of that teenager who just won't come out of his or her room (and has the music turned up too loudly to hear you knocking). The brief profiles of stars from Jim Morrison to Chrissie Hynde to Kurt Cobain are accompanied by gorgeous color art by Stephen Alcorn and full of fascinating tidbits. Can you name the only person who's been inducted three times into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame? (Eric Clapton as a Yardbird, a member of Cream and a solo artist.) Three rockers who died at age 27? (Joplin, Morrison and Cobain.) The book concludes with suggestions for further research into each star, including websites, books and albums. This compelling introduction to some of rock's major figures will interest teens and offer an opportunity for parents to reminisce about the music of their youth.
Maybe it's the reality TV craze, but it seems that today's books for teens are less focused on moral lessons and more focused on the issues of everyday life. In honor of the American Library Association's Teen Read Week (October 19-25), we've chosen some recent books that typify this trend by reflecting the challenges and interests of a new generation of readers.
If you live with anyone under the age of 20, you might have noticed them looking longingly at the calendar and marking off the days (indeed, you might be marking off the days yourself). School’s already out, summer’s well along, the final Star Wars movie hit the screens weeks ago, and Christmas . . . well, even the stores don’t start playing carols until October. So what’s causing the sighs and anticipation? Why, it’s the magical arrival on July 16 of the sixth book about the young wizard in training.
<b>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</b> (or <b>HBP</b> to fans) has a first printing of 10.8 million copies, the largest initial print run for any book in American history. But exactly what happens in book six, no one, except J.K. Rowling and her tight-lipped editors, can say. The book has been treated with a level of security worthy of a state secret, and with remarkably fewer leaks to the press. It’s harder to get an advance copy of HBP than it is to Disapparate from Hogwarts. Unless you have the Inner Eye of Professor Trelawney, you’ll just have to wait with the rest of us Muggles until July 16. (Bookstores around the country are hosting midnight parties and will start selling the book just after 11:59 p.m., July 15.) Depending on your budget, you can choose between the regular edition of <b>HBP</b> and the deluxe edition, a slipcased beauty with special artwork and a retail price of $60.
Needless to say, the secrecy hasn’t stopped a steady stream of speculation and even outright wagering as to the plot, events and characters. Whole Internet sites are dedicated to analyzing the least little clues, from the cover art to offhand remarks by Rowling. Recently, bookies in the U.K. refused a flurry of wagers on who gets killed off in book six, in part because the wagers originated from the town where the books are being printed. Rowling has since downplayed the rumors, though not so far as to rule out the prediction.
The two great mysteries of <b>HBP</b> are the identity of the Half-Blood Prince and the question of which favorite character will die. As for the latter, Rowling has stated that no one (except Harry and Lord Voldemort) is 100 percent safe, and has kept mum otherwise. The identity of the Half-Blood Prince has seen a few more tidbits spilt; it is not (as some speculated early on) either Harry or Voldemort (or his teenage counterpart from <i>Chamber</i>). Could it be a character whose mixed heritage is already known (such as Hagrid, Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas and a few others) or a character who is well-known but whose origins are not (Snape is a favorite, as is Dumbledore) or a character not yet introduced or one mentioned but never encountered (such as Godric Gryffindor, co-founder of Hogwarts and ancient defender of Muggle-born students)? If you want to join the speculation, a great place to start is Rowling’s official website. It’s a delightfully animated exploration of Rowling’s cluttered desk, brimming with clues, hints and hidden oddities. From there you can follow links to Potter-fan web sites and Rowling’s American and British publishers. The Scholastic site offers a glossary and an audio pronunciation guide for wizardly words a great boon to Muggles like me, who discovered that I said many things woefully wrong.
<i>Howard Shirley is a writer in Franklin, Tennessee, who is convinced that Godric Gryffindor is the Half-Blood Prince. Unless, of course, it’s Hagrid. Or someone else.</i>
If you live with anyone under the age of 20, you might have noticed them looking longingly at the calendar and marking off the days (indeed, you might be marking off the days yourself). School's already out, summer's well along, the final Star Wars…
It’s 9 p.m. on the first Sunday night of the month. Around a living room, my book club has polished off the pound cake that Christina, this month’s hostess, topped with lemon curd. We’ve also just concluded a spirited discussion of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, even though one of us got bogged down in the middle (“Can I just say it’s not Jane Eyre?”) and another one of us never even got started.
That’s okay. As a club, we’ve been meeting in one configuration or another for years, and we’re casual. Not finishing the book has never been a reason not to enjoy the meal and the gossip, and we don’t even mind when the non-reader joins the conversation with an opinion based on the back cover copy.
But now begins the dangerous part of the meeting. What are we going to read next?
Amy has brought her entire bedside book pile for us to look at, but Michelle is feeling more like nonfiction. Anne recommends another classic, but Jayne disagrees. Libby says we should read John Updike, who died recently. Sarah has a terrific novel in mind that sounds like it would be great for discussion, only she can’t remember what it was called. Christina has only one request: can the book be short?
I love book club, and I love my book club friends. We’ve been with each other through thick and thin. They celebrate every one of my book publications with me, but I won’t let the club actually read and discuss one of my books.
And yet I have to confess that, secretly, I believe my most recent novel, Impossible, is the perfect book club book, possibly even the rare one that that our club will sometimes encounter, the book that manages to seduce everybody into doing the reading and participating excitedly in the discussion. In my book club fantasy of discussing Impossible, our conversation focuses first on the plot and characters and themes, but then widens into a discussion of our own experiences of being women and lovers and mothers and daughters.
Lucy Scarborough, the main character of Impossible, is a daughter in transition into becoming a woman, a lover, a mother—an adult. Her transition is urgent: she is racing the clock of her own accidental pregnancy in an attempt to make a shirt without needle or seam, find an acre of land between salt water and sea strand, and plow the land with a goat’s horn and a single grain of corn.
You might recognize those lines. I had been haunted by the ballad "Scarborough Fair" for almost as long as my book club existed. I had known for years that I wanted to write a novel about the story that, to my mind, lurked behind and between the ballad’s lyrics, a story that would force me to think hard about the primary question the song poses: What is true love?
But for many years, I did not sit down to write this story. I did not have the courage until a time in my life when the central question about love took on an extreme and personal urgency.
Then I wrote in a passion. I wove in family, mystery, danger, a faerie curse, and the history of the Child ballad "Scarborough Fair, or, The Elfin Knight." And as I wrote, I discovered that the story pivots on the meaning of love in all its many aspects, and that true love was wider than romantic love. It includes all the other love and help that we need in our lives. The love of parents and family. The love of friends.
Story is metaphor, of course.
And so, I think I will be brave and ask my club, one month soon, to read my book, Impossible, with me. Because just now, as I write, I have realized that what I really want is to share a little more of my heart with them, my friends, my book club. And I hope that the discussion we’ll have after that will show me a little more of theirs.
National Book Award finalist and Edgar Award-winning author Nancy Werlin reads with her book club in Peabody, Massachusetts.You can watch a trailer forImpossibleon her website.
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IMPOSSIBLE CONTEST Win copies of Impossible to read with your book club! It's easy: 1.) Create a book club profile on our site if you haven't already—must include a photo or image. 2.) Write a review of any book you've read as a club before September 1. That's it! Winner will be randomly drawn from among the eligible entries on September 7, 2009.
It’s 9 p.m. on the first Sunday night of the month. Around a living room, my book club has polished off the pound cake that Christina, this month’s hostess, topped with lemon curd. We’ve also just concluded a spirited discussion of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette
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Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
