BookPage Teen Top Pick, November 2014

Kekla Magoon’s books just keep getting better. The first time I read her work, I was serving on the Coretta Scott King Awards committee, and we honored Magoon with the Steptoe New Talent Award for The Rock and the River. So it’s with special pride that I look forward to each of her subsequent releases.

A review of How It Went Down could read like a cliché: “ripped from the headlines . . . as fresh as the morning paper . . . as gripping as any story on the nightly news.” But this book is not cliché at all. Written shortly after the death of Trayvon Martin and published shortly after the killing of Michael Brown and the response in Ferguson, Missouri, it’s a hard book to read without flashing back to headlines.

It’s the story of one young man, Tariq Johnson, who is shot while walking down the street at 5:30 p.m. by a white man who drives away in a borrowed car. Though Tariq carried no weapon, the shooter claims self-defense and is released after questioning. What might have been a linear story is made much more interesting as many of the survivors—grief-stricken, angry family members, gang friends and neighbors—reveal their own tales. Each person has an attachment to Tariq, and each tries to figure out the truth.

The reader gets caught in the same maze as everyone else: Who was Tariq? What happened on that afternoon? These hundreds of vignettes, with their varying narrators and conflicting perspectives, could leave the reader confused, but Magoon keeps a firm hand on her story. We may never find the answers we’re looking for, but after reading this book, we will look at the headlines with a much more critical eye.

This is not only a book to read in one gulp; it’s a book that asks you to slow down and read it over and over again. It’s an important, compelling story that everyone should read, especially high school students trying to make sense of our supposed post-racial world.

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Contemporary young adult literature is full of teenage heroines trying to survive in a world, either real or fantastical, that has gone completely mad. Sometimes the power they find within themselves is natural, sometimes supernatural; it can be a gift or a curse. Marie Lu’s wonderful new novel has many of these familiar qualities.

In The Young Elites, a plague has left many adults dead and young children marked and scarred. When some of the children start to display strange powers, society decides that they are dangerous, cursed—a malfetto. For Adelina Amouteru, this means that her cruel father will do just about anything to get rid of her.

When Adelina commits a crime and tries to run away, she is caught by the Inquisitors and sentenced to death. It is only the arrival of the infamous Young Elites—malfettos who live in hiding—that saves her. Adelina must learn to control her powers if she wants to be one of them, but there are external forces testing her loyalties and decisions that are nearly impossible to make.

Lu portrays Adelina with heart-wrenching authenticity. We cheer for her, but we fear her a little, too. The Young Elites is the first in a series but ends neatly. Here’s hoping she’s already at work on the second one.

Jennifer Bruer Kitchel is the librarian for a Pre-K through eighth level Catholic school.

Set in the wealthy fictional town of Haverport, New York, The Doubt Factory is the story of one teen’s determination to fight society’s most overlooked evil—the public relations industry that covers up and spins corporate atrocities, even if the worst firm happens to be headed by her own father.

Alix Banks attends the prestigious and exclusive Seitz Academy, where affluent parents pay to have their children taught by the best and to be insulated from the evils of the outside world. However, the school’s charade of security comes crashing to the ground when Moses Cruz, the leader of a radical crew of teen activists, assaults the principal and vandalizes a school building. During the fray, Moses grabs Alix and suggests that her father is much more than he appears. When Alix starts monitoring her father’s behavior, she is confronted by the darkest sides of Big Brother, the radicals who fight the unseen Man, conspiracy theories and the illusions of safety and privacy in a country that claims to uphold and protect the inalienable right of free speech.

In this incredible thriller, unexpected plot twists occur as often as every page turn, and morality and rightness oscillate within a gray area. National Book Award finalist Paolo Bacigalupi’s smart and honest approach to critiquing the PR industry is rare and refreshing.

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Paranormal investigator R.F. Jackaby sees what no one else can—banshees, leprechauns, even monsters. If they’re wreaking havoc in New Fiddleham, Jackaby is on the case. What he can’t manage to do is keep an assistant—until he meets the spunky Abigail Rook. Adventurous and keenly observant, Abigail has fled her wealthy British upbringing to make her own way in 19th-century New England.

During their first murder investigation, Abigail’s eye for detail provides Jackaby with clues he would have overlooked. Together they discover the victim is Arthur Bragg, a local reporter who had been investigating a serial killer—one who may or may not be human.

Like Sherlock Holmes, Jackaby is eccentric, arrogant and blunt—but he also has a zany quality. After all, he lives with a beautiful young ghost and a duck who does his bookkeeping. Narrator Abigail plays the role of Dr. Watson, helping Jackaby maneuver the societal norms he seems to disregard. Very few girls in 1892 would steal tuition money and cross an ocean for adventure, but perhaps that’s what makes her especially appealing to contemporary readers.

Jackaby is a slow build of clue gathering and a-ha moments, all leading to the hour of discovery.

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Sara Farizan’s debut, If You Could Be Mine, told a wrenching tale of young love lost to the complications of growing up and growing apart. The stakes in Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel are slightly lower, making for pure rom-com pleasure.

Leila keeps a low profile at her private high school. She likes girls, but that’s not something she’s ready to make public. When new girl Saskia transfers in mid-semester, Leila quickly becomes smitten: “It’s like finding a magical unicorn in a high school full of cattle.” While trying to get to know Saskia, Leila tests the waters, coming out to friends and family, though not always as planned. Leila fears rejection by her family, who are Americans but hold Persian values. Nevertheless, her parents are wonderful, embarrassingly square and touching in their concern, despite not understanding what’s wrong.

Farizan’s second novel is sweet, tough, sexy and ultimately hopeful.

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Teen Top Pick, October 2014

Following the success of her best-selling adult novel The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer brings her considerable talents to her first young adult title, Belzhar. Wolitzer returns to a subject that occupied her as a senior in college, when she was completing her first novel: the poet Sylvia Plath.

“Big changes happen to young people when no adults are around,” notes Wolitzer, and that is certainly true for Jam Gallahue and the other students in Mrs. Quenell’s Special Topics in English class at The Wooden Barn, a boarding school for “emotionally fragile and highly intelligent teens.” It’s a last resort for Jam, who fiercely loved British exchange student Reeve Maxfield for 41 days, and has been unable to recover from his death.

Jam and the other students don’t know why they’ve been selected for Mrs. Quenell’s class. And they certainly don’t know what to make of the antique journals she hands out, along with the assignment to write in them twice a week. Even more puzzling is their teacher’s instruction to “look out for one another.” But soon after beginning her journal, Jam has no choice but to turn to her classmates for support, because what she experiences while writing is both frightening and exciting. The journals have the power to transport them into a world of the past—a world they call Belzhar, after Plath’s most famous work, The Bell Jar.

Enlivened by humor, memorable characters and a page-turning mystery only revealed in its final pages, Belzhar explores the role of trauma in young lives. Fans of E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars need wait no longer for another novel to capture their hearts and minds.

Deborah Hopkinson lives near Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book for young readers is The Great Trouble.

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Richard’s first sign that something is amiss in the turtle’s nest is the sound of wet, whistling breathing coming from within. As he pushes aside the protective straw, an old man wearing a shower cap bursts out, gagging and rolling his weird eyes in opposite directions. Richard, meet Skink, aka Clint Tyree, former governor of Florida. In the years since his presumed death, Skink lives way off the grid, waging ecological warfare against those who drain swamps to build theme parks, dump refuse in wildlife preserves, and steal turtle eggs from nests.

When Skink calmly announces that he is off to find Richard’s missing cousin, Malley, Richard hops in the car and heads off on the adventure of his life. Skink is as hilarious as he is impassioned, enthusiastically cooking up roadkill and wreaking havoc on litterbugs. As he and Richard catch up with feisty Malley and her low-life kidnapper, Richard begins to understand why Skink is the greatest hero that Florida will never know.

Skink—No Surrender is geared toward a slightly older audience than Hiaasen’s earlier YA books, while reintroducing characters that romp throughout his bawdier adult novels. Budding environmentalists and Hiaasen fans will find much to enjoy.

Diane Colson works at the Nashville Public Library. She has long been active in the American Library Association's Young Adult Library Association (YALSA), serving on selection committees such as the Morris Award, the Alex Award and the Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award.

With a contract for her first YA novel in hand, recent high school graduate Darcy Patel puts college on hold and moves to New York City. But living and writing in the city turn out to involve more than just hobnobbing with the publishing community. She also needs to find (and furnish) an apartment, stick to a budget . . . and navigate her first romantic relationship.

Chapters from Darcy’s point of view alternate with those from her book, Afterworlds, in which a near-death experience propels a girl named Lizzie into an alternate world where ghostlike powers—and a hot teenage death god from Indian mythology—await. As Darcy works through issues like the ethics of appropriating cultural icons, the acceptability of borrowing plot ideas from fellow writers and the choice between college and other paths, these ideas begin to appear in Lizzie’s internal story as well.

Afterworlds is a long book—it’s essentially two books in one—and its target audience is unclear. Darcy’s comments about high school being old news won’t ring true to teens who are still students themselves. Author Scott Westerfeld’s descriptions of life as a YA writer, from lonely hours hacking through edits to the excitement of conferences and school visits, are vivid yet somehow empty, as though these aspects of Darcy’s story function mostly as a vehicle for Westerfeld to tell his own. But it’s precisely this adult perspective that allows Westerfeld to pepper his story with writerly inside jokes, including a pet parrot named after a famous YA lit character and the difficulty of competing for attention with a former child star at a major publishing conference. Ultimately, this self-awareness forms the book’s main strength, as Afterworld inspires readers to rethink their assumptions about the distinctions between characters, readers and writers.

Jill Ratzan reviews for School Library Journal and works as a school librarian at a small independent school in New Jersey.

The last thing Emily Bird remembers is the party. It should have been just another networking event to connect prep-school students with internships and Ivy League acceptances, especially within the elite Washington, D.C., African-American community. But when Bird wakes up days later in a hospital room, she knows she’s forgotten something important about that night. That feeling is further reinforced when mysterious messages begin hinting that she knows a secret about a deadly terrorist-linked flu virus that’s recently reached pandemic proportions.

With her house quarantined and her high-profile parents vanished, Bird and her friend Marella try to uncover the truth within a network of lies. But a dangerous spy from a secret organization is also on the prowl, hoping to discover Bird’s missing memory before she can use it to unmask what may be a worldwide conspiracy.

Like the best young adult dystopias, a just-futuristic apocalyptic setting perfectly complements the protagonist’s personal identity struggles. Is she the meek and obedient Emily or the independent, powerful Bird? Which of her highly cultivated friendships are just alliances, and which are real? Does she have the courage to break up with Paul, the boy her parents expect her to date, in favor of Coffee, whose passion for organic chemistry extends to making his own designer drugs? How can she navigate a society where her race is constantly working against her? And what’s the point of planning for the future when the world might end at any moment? Love Is the Drug is a suspenseful, empowering and emotionally honest read.

Jill Ratzan reviews for School Library Journal and works as a school librarian at a small independent school in New Jersey.

Zac knows all the statistics about his leukemia—the survival rate, the chance the cancer will return even if his new bone marrow gives him a temporary clean bill of health. But he’s still hopeful he can get back to his old life after months in solitary with only his mother for company—his mother, and the faceless girl fighting her own battle next door.

Mia is angry—angry she has cancer, angry the treatment makes her so sick, angry her doctors and mother don’t seem to understand she just wants the treatment to be done so she can get back to her friends. The only one who seems to understand, even a little bit, is the boy in the other room. He knows nothing about her except that a sore ankle led to her cancer diagnosis. He calls her lucky—she has good odds.

Then Zac goes home to try to regain his pre-cancer life, and Mia goes home with so much less than she ever dreamed. Inevitably they end up together again—Zac desperate to help, and Mia desperate to run from everything.

It’s almost impossible for a book about two teens fighting cancer to escape a comparison to The Fault in Our Stars, and on a very surface level the two books share DNA: sick teens falling in love, sometimes angry, sometimes hopeful, sometimes resigned. What Zac and Mia does best, however, is capture the feelings of loneliness and isolation. Mia’s need to pretend her cancer doesn’t exist separates her from her friends even as she interacts with them online, and when the reality of her illness catches up with her she finds it impossible to connect with her former friends, who have nothing heavier than a zit weighing on their minds.

Zac and Mia is much more than a book about illness; it's a book about learning to trust a person, and trusting they can care about you when you feel completely unlovable.

Molly Horan has her MFA in writing for children and young adults from The New School.