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.

Chronicling in poetry one teen’s interior journey to process and understand the sudden, completely life-altering tragedy that has struck his family, his village and his country, Up from the Sea is a delicate and deep novel-in-verse that shows how we learn to go on living, and start anew, even after unprecedented loss.

On March 11, 2011, 17-year-old Kai cared only about the school day ending so he could practice soccer with his friends. But when the 14th largest earthquake in the world strikes the Tohoku region of Japan and, following closely on its heels, one of the largest tsunamis ever recorded decimates 300 miles of coastline, Kai’s life becomes literally, mentally and emotionally flooded. The tsunami completely wipes away Kai’s entire village, and he’s at such a loss that he doesn’t even want to try to tie together the shreds of his former life to make anything out of what’s left. But when Kai learns of an opportunity to visit New York City to speak with the children who survived that city’s tragedy a decade ago on September 11, 2001, he remembers that NYC is where his long-absent American father last lived. He’s at first desperate and then determined to demand either aid or answers from the man.

Author Leza Lowitz uses her first-hand experiences of living in Japan when the earthquake and tsunami struck to weave together a memorable amalgam of people and places. As the full meaning of Kai’s loss dawns on him, we witness all his worry, angst, anger, survivor’s guilt and sadness, as well as his eventual coping and recovery, providing a rare view of the human spirit.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

Principal Trenton has just finished giving her speech at Opportunity High School’s assembly. The students, teachers and administrators make their way to the doors, quickly realizing they are locked. Unseen by everyone in the room, a boy with blond hair sticking out of a black cap enters the one unlocked door to the left, raises a gun and directs a student to lock the door. The shooting starts with the principal and continues to anyone who approaches the shooter. Panic, screams, blood and death follow in a matter of seconds.

Marieke Nijkamp holds nothing back in her gut-wrenching debut. The story unfolds in alternating chapters with multiple points of view: the shooter’s twin sister, Autumn; her girlfriend, Sylv; Sylv’s brother, Tomás; and the shooter’s ex-girlfriend, Claire. The shootings are graphic, the fear is real, and every move is a matter of life or death. Intensity and terror build at breakneck speed over the next 54 minutes, as the backstory of this shooting unfolds between the lines.

Through the narrators’ prose, Tweets and blog posts, Nijkamp approaches other serious, realistic issues, including bullying, abuse, rape and deep-seated grief and loneliness. With an ending that will leave readers rocked with fear, grief, chills and tears, this outstanding debut will hit close to home and is best suited for older teens.

As the Civil War churns through its final year, 13-year-old Samuel does his best to keep his younger brother, Joshua, out of trouble. At their Tennessee orphanage for black boys, Father Mosely teaches the boys how to read and write and pray, activities at which Samuel excels. When it seems that Joshua will be blamed for a shocking transgression, pious Samuel stands up and falsely admits to the wrongdoing. Little does he know that his punishment takes him out of the free state of Tennessee and deep into Mississippi, where everyone with black skin is a slave. Sold to a family-owned plantation, Samuel is callously dubbed “Friday.” Yet despite his loss of identity and the terrible plight of his fellow slaves, Samuel remains luminously faithful to his God. His goodness attracts the attention of Gerald, a boy near Samuel’s own age who acts as the master of the plantation while his father fights with the rebels.

In his first young adult novel, Jon Walter conjures a fresh look at the intimacy between slaves and their owners. Gerald genuinely values Samuel’s friendship, and a particularly telling scene involves Gerald’s attempt to whip a slave. Walter portrays Samuel’s pure religious faith with lovely passages that ring through his endless travails. This novel will surely become part of the Civil War literary experience, offering readers of any age much to ponder.

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

Seventeen-year-old Lucille and her 10-year-old sister, Wren, have been abandoned by their father (who went crazy) and their mother (who left town, leaving no forwarding information). Lucille is left to pay the bills, maintain the house and care for her sister. She’s worried that if anyone finds out, she and her sister will be placed in foster care, so her best friend, Eden, is the only person she can count on. To complicate things, Lucille has been secretly lusting after Eden’s twin brother, Digby.

Forced to find a job to make ends meet, Lucille applies to a local restaurant known for its knockout beautiful waitresses (think black hot pants and cleavage-revealing tank tops). Lucille hides her desperation through lies to Wren, Wren’s teachers, her boss and even to herself, refusing to ask for help while sinking further in quicksand. With Eden and Digby on Lucille’s side, things go smoothly—until they don’t. A series of events, including a huge plot twist that brings a new meaning to friendship, force Lucille to reveal her struggles.

Debut author Estelle Laure delivers an emotionally charged, artistic view of a world where parental abandonment and the fear and threat of state custody are very real. Lucille is externally strong yet internally fragile, while Wren is perceptive and displays an impeccable willingness to love and forgive. Laure captures the desperation for acceptance on a variety of levels in this poetic, heartbreaking read that will resonate with teens.

Parker Grant has it all under control. She’s earned herself upwards of 100 gold stars—one for each day she hasn’t cried since her father’s death. She’s got the high-school scene down pat—so much so that she holds daily office hours for anyone seeking social advice. And even though she’s blind, she’s perfectly capable of taking solo morning runs.

Just don’t ask her about Scott Kilpatrick. Because if you do, she might very well lose it altogether.

Eric Lindstom’s debut novel, Not If I See You First, is a striking exploration of friendships, first loves and all the ups and downs that come with them. Parker’s blindness adds a layer of depth to her character, but while it’s certainly fully rendered, it’s by no means her defining characteristic. Her “come at me” bravado and her sassy back-and-forth with her friends are all as true to life as the deep-seated vulnerability hiding underneath. While most readers won’t relate to Parker’s physical disability, they will find they recognize plenty of her in themselves.

In fact, the protagonist and her crew are all in the throes of discovering who they are, and accepting those discoveries, but at the same time, they're the type of mature, fiercely loyal friends we’d all kill to have in any phase of life.

Not If I See You First tackles all the anxiety, joy and self-evaluation of high school in a way that will ring true to both older readers and those who are still in the midst of it.

Determining what's real and what's imagined is just part of 17-year-old Calvin’s everyday life. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Calvin believes his world is intrinsically linked with that of Bill Watterson’s iconic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes—he was, after all, born on the last day the strip was published. As he communicates daily with tiger Hobbes—knowing he must be a delusion—Calvin feels the only way he’ll ever be normal is to travel to meet Watterson and have him draw just one more comic.

So Calvin, Hobbes and Calvin’s best friend, Susie (he wonders at times if, she, too, is a delusion), set out on an ill-advised and perilous quest across frozen Lake Erie, all the way from Canada to Ohio, to meet Watterson. Along the way, the trio tries to sort out life, love and reality, while braving the elements, challenging their own demons and meeting some characters along the way.

National Book Award finalist Martine Leavitt has created a cleverly framed story about living with mental illness from a first-person point of view. The book is written in dialogue among Calvin, Susie and Hobbes and as a letter to Watterson. Everyone may question his identity and his reality from time to time; Leavitt poignantly and wrenchingly shows what it’s like to struggle with that all the time. Although intended for an older audience, it bears similarities to the insightful look at disability from the eyes of the beholder in Sharon Draper’s award-winning Out of My Mind.

Following the life and brief fame of a young black dancer living in New York City during the 1840s, Juba! is the historical tale of one man’s desire to use his art as activism to overcome the systemic racism that has hindered his people, and his nation, for generations.

Scraping by in the impoverished and Irish-immigrant Five Points district, William Henry Lane—better known by his stage name, Master Juba—lives to dance. But Juba rarely gets the chance to dance for pay these days, as the racial divisions between what an audience wants to see (blackface and minstrel shows) and what an artist wants to perform (something that transcends race and vague stereotypes) hold him back.

During one of his earlier bookings, Juba catches a huge break and unknowingly is interviewed by well-known novelist Charles Dickens, who writes both a character sketch and a rave review of Juba’s incomparable dancing skills and talents when he returns to England. This sets in motion a life-changing whirlwind of events for the dancer. But as Juba begins to find fame with his art, he may have to sacrifice his happiness and pride to appease the jaded masses.

The recently deceased Walter Dean Myers wrote more than 100 children’s and YA novels throughout his lifetime, including the New York Times bestselling and Printz Award-winning Monster, and he won countless awards for the majority of them. Juba! is a strong final note for Myers, who used his unique and insightful voice to the shed light on the racial and social plights of a people ever searching for equality.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

Teen love, angst, secrets and lies make up a lot of realistic YA fiction. Fortunately, those topics can also add up to some of the best storylines, as in Courtney C. Stevens’ second novel.

It’s hard enough to be a teen facing typical teen issues. But when Sadie is severely physically scarred and her best friend, Trent, is killed in a car accident, Sadie’s world is put on pause. She doesn’t want to return to school. She doesn’t want to face—literally—her friends. And she can’t get past the way her friends Gina and Gray were involved in the crash.

Sadie turns to Trent’s brother, Max, who provides a compassionate ear—and soon, a bit more, as their relationship blossoms. But as that happens, mysterious notes about Sadie’s past start appearing in her mailbox, and she finds it difficult to trust anyone. As as her thoughts turn more to the past, to times she shared with Trent and the gang, she wonders if any of them will ever fully recover, physically or mentally.

Secrets and lies—as indicated in the title—plague the many complex relationships in this novel, which addresses some heavy topics. But Stevens keeps the atmosphere appropriately light, as readers peer into Sadie and Max’s budding relationship and as the quartet of friends reunites for paintball and a road trip to the “Fountain of Youth.”

Carefully unveiled secrets come out at the end, leading to a conclusion that is believable and satisfying. This is a nice, relatable bit of realistic YA fiction.