Young Adult – Peaceful Reader

2019 books in review

I’ve read an amazing amount of great literature this year. It was a treat to look back and reminisce about each book on my GoodReads account and it is my hope that I can inspire one reader to pick up at least one of these fabulous books. I prefer fiction over nonfiction so I surprised myself with three fantastic memoirs this year. Leonard Pitts has an excellent article “This is the Year of Reading Women” in order to push himself to read more works by women. I am glad to say looking through my lists women authors continue to take a lead for me.

Nonfiction:

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Becoming by Michelle Obama

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Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg

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Educated by Tara Westover

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The gifts of imperfection by Brene Brown

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Better than carrots or sticks; restorative practices for positive classroom management by Dominique Smith

Fiction:

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Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Where the crawdads sing by Delia Owens

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Salvage the bones by Jesmyn Ward

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Heads of the colored people by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

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The Bar Harbor retirement home for Famous Writers (and their muses) by Terri-Lynne DeFino

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The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg

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Helen Hoang’s book’s The Kiss Quotient and The Bride Test

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Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Conversations with friends

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Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Young Adult/Children’s Fiction:

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Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky

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Front Desk by Kelly Yang

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Scar Island by Dan Gemeinhart

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Louisiana’s Way home by Kate DiCamillo

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Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds

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Summoner Series by Taran Matharu

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Wishtree by Katherine Applegate

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Here Lies the librarian by Richard Peck

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Walking with Miss Millie by Tamara Bundt

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Aru Shah and the end of time by Roshani Chokshi

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Amina’s voice by Hena Khan

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Merci Suarez changes gears by Meg Medina

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Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed

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Ban this book by Alan Gratz

I’m so gratefully to work in a field where I enjoy the homework very much. There are so many fantastic diverse authors out there now and I loved what I read in Amal Unbound, Are Shah, and Merci Suarez, Amina’s Voice, Ami Polonsky for Grayson, and Kelly Yang! I hope 2020 brings as much joy reading.

YA books related to social justice

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to read a few young adults books with social justice themes. The Hate U Give would be a perfect example of a book for teens about a shooting of a black teenager. This is work we are doing to find appropriate texts for 6th grade students and while I may allow my daughter to read a wide variety many parents are not happy about younger students reading about real-life (sometimes scary) situations. We had a large pool of books to choose from and unfortunately we had to cross many off the list right away. My job was to read a few of the questionable titles and see if any would be appropriate.

1. Ball Don’t Lie by Matt de la Pena (2005); Matt’s debut and it’s excellent. This book tells the story of Sticky, a teenager who has fallen through the cracks his whole life. First with his single mom while she suffers from mental health issues and ultimately commits suicide in the apartment with him in the next room. After her death, he is shuffled from foster home to group home never able to find a good match. While this is an excellent book there is just too much in here for 6th grade students to process. Death, suicide, teen pregnancy, petty crime, and drugs all play a role in who Sticky is-luckily for him, his passion and skills at basketball help him to escape some of his situations. I loved Matt’s dystopian series The Living and all of his picture books including his brand new Love collaboration with Loren Long.

2. If you come softly by Jacqueline Woodson (2006); Woodson, one of my favorite authors, writes eloquently about first love in this story. Ellie and Jeremiah are from two different worlds and meet accidentally at school. In their first meeting when they bump into each other spilling Ellie’s books across the hall they both feel sparks and spend the first weeks of school looking for each other again. Jeremiah is transferred into Ellie’s English class and once they start spending time together they find a solid connection. Jeremiah’s father is a famous filmmaker and his mother is an author but they no longer live together. Ellie is the youngest in her family and all her siblings are off in their adult worlds. Twice her mother has left her family and even though she’s been reliable for the last few years Ellie has a hard time trusting she will always be there. Everything I’ve read of Woodson’s is filled with truth and this one hits home on love, consequences, family, and what it still means to be black in America today.

3. House Arrest by K.A. Holt (2015); A novel in verse, this story tells the tragic story of Timothy who steals a man’s wallet so he can pay for medicine that his baby brother needs to survive. Levi has been very sick his whole little life and lives at home with constant care from Tim, his mom, and a cycle of babysitter/home health care providers. The father has been absent for the past few months and Tim’s mom tries to keep it together. Tim tells us his story through journal entries he writes to his probation officer and counselor as he tries to do penance for what he’s done and to stay out of the juvenile detention center. This is my first K.A. Holt book and I like her style. Another title of hers was a hot seller at our recent Scholastic book fair-From you to me which is about a sister’s grief.
House Arrest is the only book on our list that is “appropriate” for our 6th grade audience. It has a strong social justice theme w/out sex/kissing/swears.

4. Pinned by Sharon G. Flake (2012); This one I’ve not read yet but I will. Autumn and Adonis are both differently abled young adults who work to overcome what is stacked against them. Autumn is on her school’s wrestling team which is a cool twist. And Adonis is in a wheelchair and has a crush on Autumn. I’m interested to see how this story plays out; I’ve enjoyed other books by this author such as The Skin I’m in.

I also recently finished Well, that was awkward by Rachel Vail and now I have Groovy Girl reading it. It was a great retelling of the Cyrano story. Not so much a social justice them except it is about accepting yourself in all your own glory; a lesson for many teens (and adults).

Kwame Alexander's novels in verse

I think of my library students very much as my own. I take full interest generally in what they read so when I had several 6th grade students hugging, Kwame Alexander’s Solo, lovingly in their arms-I was intrigued. One such 6th grader sighed and smiled as he relayed the plot to me, ending with “you just got to read it Mrs. Holt.” So I did.

I’m in awe of Alexander’s ability to write in verse. It flows so freely, fluently and is filled with a gentle jive. I could see why these 6th graders in particular were swooning. It has everything; a little bit of rock & roll, a legend, a rich and famous lifestyle, romance but then a feel good trip to Ghana where another way of life is sought. It concludes gracefully without a perfect ending just like life.

Two other books keep flying off the shelf in our library; The Crossover and Booked both by Alexander. I’ll have to wait until summer to read them as they check out as fast as they come in.

I hope Kwame Alexander continues to write for elementary as well as young adult. He has a fresh voice that keeps my kids looking for more. I love following him on social media as well; he’s out there talking books and literacy like an ambassador!

Grasshopper Jungle

If you want to discover stacks and stacks of good books at your local library you need my friend Tina to go with you. Any time I meet her there she loads me up as we walk down the shelves. On our last trip she handed me Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith and said “here read this, because I can’t, and let me know how it is.” She’s not a fan of dystopia but she was interested in the Iowa setting.

So I read it and for the first 40 pages I kept thinking I should quit. And then I’d read a little more and a little more and then it started to grow on me. At about the half way point I couldn’t stop reading which made me laugh because that’s just what I tell my students-keep going~the really good stuff doesn’t always happen in the beginning. I didn’t almost give up on it though because stuff wasn’t happening-it was the main character, Austin, that drove me nuts. He’s telling us the story as a sort of historical document and we really get to know Austin-it’s his coming-of-age tale after all-right in the middle of the end of the world.

My thoughts were poor Austin all he can think about is being horny and every single page is about his desire to have sex, shit, masturbate, sex, shit, masturbate, with a lot of smoking mixed in. And then just when I thought I couldn’t take his relentless need to talk about it all so much I let it slide~after all he’s 15~and began to appreciate what Austin had to say about his relationship with Robby, his best friend. I loved that he was so confused about his relationship with both Robby and his girlfriend, Shann because it’s tough to be in love with two people at the same time. His friendship with Robby was a breath of fresh air because he cared so deeply. I grew to like him.

I also thought it was a realistic look at small town Iowa with it’s boarded up shops, crazy family drama, and lots of corn. And the book definetely makes a case for not messing with genetics. Say no to GMOs of any kind. And Austin does a great job of reminding us that everything is connected and life is a massive game of 6 degrees of seperation.

Now the huge 6-foot-grasshopper creepy things I can’t even talk about them…

Someone on goodreads mentioned that you either get Andrew Smith or you don’t~and I completely agree. This book is not for everyone but it is good.

Now you don’t have to read it Tina. I thank you for handing it to me though even if my hand now feels a little grubby.

A sample:

It took me a very long time to work up the nerve to kiss Shann Collins, who was the first and only girl I had ever kissed.
There was a possibility that I’d never have kissed her, too, because she was the one who actually initiated the kiss.
It happened nearly one full year after the Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy End-of-the-year Mixed-Gender Mixer.
Like Robby explained to her: I was shy.
I was on the conveyor belt toward the paper shredder of history with countless scores of other sexually confused boys.
After the Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy End-of-the-year Mixed-Gender Mixer, I tried to get Shann to pay more serious attention to me.
I tried any reasonable method I could think of. I joined the archery club when I found out she was a member, and I offered multiple times to do homework with her. Sadly, nothing seemed to result in serious progress.

She finally comes around when he gets in trouble at school for reading The Chocolate Wars by Robert Cormier. If you can handle it you should read it. Welcome to Eden if you do.

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

I picked this book up from Scholastic about a year ago. Published in 2010, it is on an award list for Iowa this year and the premise had me intrigued. Also I was fascinated by the fact that the author wrote it as part of her doctoral program.

It proved to be as interesting as it’s synopsis led me to believe. Written as a letter to her captor Gemma pulls us directly into her story. Frustrated with her parents as they prepare for an international flight, Gemma takes off to buy herself a cup of coffee and gather her thoughts. While searching for the right change to hand the barista a stranger comes to her rescue offering to pay for the coffee with the right currency and fixes her cup up with a packet of sugar. By taking charge of the situation he wins her over with a few soft words and a drug in her drink. She is swept literally off her feet by Ty to a lone cabin in a remote Australian location. Gemma attempts to escape several times only to be brought back by Ty because nothing is near. He has the cabin stocked up with food and he plans to hide away from the world with Gemma by his side.

She’s never had a boyfriend and is not real close to the few friends she had back in London so Ty is able to pull her in because she’s not sure of her own emotions. There are parts of him that she is attracted to and yet she never fully forgets that he is her captor. I thought Lucy Christopher did an amazing job of portraying this precarious relationship with glimmers of kindness mixed with Gemma’s true reality of being stolen from her life; bad or good it was still her own life.

“So I followed you. I don’t know why really. I could say it was because I had nothing else to do except stare at four walls, or that I wanted to try escaping again, but I think there was more to it than that. When I was trapped in the house, it felt like I’d already died. At least when I was with you, it felt like my life mattered somehow…No, that’s not really it; it felt like my life was being noticed. It sounds weird, I know, but I could tell that you liked having me around. And that was better than the alternative, that feeling of emptiness that threatened to drown me every hour of being in that house.” (96)

The cover for this book and even the few inside illustrations that lead into the story are really well designed and make perfect sense once you turn the last page. My copy of Stolen has a nice award sticker on the front for the Michael L. Printz ALA honor book. If you haven’t picked this one up yet I recommend it. At 299 pages it won’t take you long…

Click her name to find her website: Lucy Christopher and see news about her new title, The Killing Fields.

Interesting YA titles

I finished both of these in September and what ties them together is love and the power of acceptance; something most humans desire. One uses that power and the other makes it into a curable disease.

The List by Siobhan Vivian:

Filled with the craziness of high school it brought back memories of how BAD it can be. I thought it said a lot though for all that high school student’s experience-being popular is weird and being unpopular is just as weird. If only all high school students could learn to be themselves; a very difficult concept because most teens have yet to truly find themselves as it often takes years to figure it all out.

Mount Washington H.S. has this tradition of a published list plastered all over the walls right before homecoming. The list shares the prettiest and the ugliest female student in each class. At any level it is difficult to appear on either side of the list; yet both sides display negative behavior because they are on the list.

Siobhan Vivian relays the stories of all eight young women affected by the list and we learn just how being a member of this small group changes them. In order to ignore the list you’d have to be a very mighty girl! I was not a brave soul in high school and would have found it heart-breaking to be even mentioned. Even the young women chosen for the pretties side struggle with how to keep up with the image they think every one expects. My first thoughts were that the list must be written by a guy or a group of guys. The ending left me shaking my head and praying for a second women’s movement!

A quote:

She lifts her chin a few degrees. ‘I’ve decided not to take a shower for a whole week.’

‘For real?’

‘Yup,’ she says, making the p pop. ‘I’m not showering, I’m not brushing my teeth, putting on deodorant, anything. I’m wearing these same clothes, not just the shirt, but the jeans, the socks, the underwear, the bra. My last shower was on Sunday night, before I went over to your house.’ She folds her arms. ‘I won’t participate in any kind of hygiene until Saturday night.’ It feels good to say her plan out loud. Now there can be no backing out.

‘What’s on Saturday night?’

‘The homecoming dance.’ It sounds so utterly ridiculous, but she keeps a straight face. ‘I’m going as smelly and disgusting as I can possibly make myself, dressed in these clothes.’

Milo laughs and laughs, but when Sarah doesn’t join, he stops. “Wait. You’re not serious.’

‘I am.’

‘Why are you letting that stupid list get to you? You hate the girls at this school, obviously for good reason. And now you want to show up at their dumb dance? This isn’t like you at all.’ (101)

Even the young women chosen for the pretties side struggle with how to keep up with the image they think every one expects. The ending left me baffled and praying for a second women’s movement!

Delirium by Lauren Oliver (2011):

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This is a glorious look at a future world where love has been deemed a disease. Can you imagine? They make a good case for why love could be perceived as a sickness. Lena is an orphan living in her aunt’s household waiting for her treatment that will prevent her from getting the disease. Many good plans fail to work out though and Lena meets someone that makes her feel all the effects of love which confuses her. Does she feel this way because she is now sick or are the people protecting her lying to her? As love often does her life becomes complicated as she balances her quiet life at home with her new desire to break the rules and see Alex as much as she can.

I enjoyed the relationship between Lena and her best friend Hana. They are good to each other but have a few struggles and conflicts throughout the story but in the end they find they can count on each other.

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I was named after Mary Magdalene, who was nearly killed from love: “So infected with deliria and in violation of the pacts of society, she fell in love with men who would not have her or could not keep her.” (Book of Lamentations, Mary 13:1).

We learned all about it in Biblical Science. First there was John, then Matthew, then Jeremiah and Peter and Judas, and many other nameless men in-between.

Her last love, they say, was the greatest: a man named Joseph, a bachelor all of his life, who found her on the street, bruised and broken and half-crazy from deliria. There’s some debate about what kind of man Joseph was-whether he was righteous or not, whether he ever succumbed to the disease-but in any case, he took good care of her. He nursed her to health and tried to bring her peace. (87-88)

I enjoyed how Oliver twisted our own biblical stories to create and re-enforce this new history and makes a convincing argument against love.

Both books were borrowed from my local library.

I’m reading Maggie’s Stiefvater’s sequel to The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, and love it. I downloaded it to my kindle to encourage myself to finish a book on this device. I love using it as a mini-computer and as a game device but have yet to finish a book on it. Dream Thieves will be my first and I’m proud to say I’m half way through or in Kindle-speak 48%.

2 Excellent YA Stories

I recently went on a YA craze so I could vote for Iowa Teen summer reads. I’ve waited all summer looking each time at the library for Eleanor and Park at my closest library and it was always checked out. I got lucky one day and found it sitting there waiting for me.

Eleanor and Park (2013) by Rainbow Rowell

What a fantastic read this is! Eleanor re-enters her family life after having spent the last year living with a family friend. She meets Park on the bus as she makes her way to her new school. Nobody else wants her to sit with them, that awful thing that happens on school buses across the nation when someone new comes to town and they are a little gawky, unusual, or overweight. She’s shunned by everyone but Park as their relationship begins with little more than head nods and small smiles. Eleanor hides her family life from him as much as possible and as a reader my heart went out to her as she attempted to feel comfortable in Park’s “normal” household, with two loving parents and food in the refrigerator. Their relationship blossoms and they are both changed by it. I loved this stark look at how a child from an abusive home and in poverty struggles to maintain just a small glimmer of hope through all that is her regular life. Every character in the story is one you will love (or hate) and you will want their lives to continue even as you turn the last page.

The Raven Boys (2012) by Maggie Stiefvater

I loved Stiefvater’s Shiver series so I’m not sure what took me so long to pick this one up off the shelf. I don’t think I even investigated what it was about yet when it appeared on my teen list to read for the summer I was anxious to read it. Once I started I had trouble putting it down. Work kept getting in the way! Blue is the daughter of the local psychic in Henrietta and their house is filled with a merry group of friends who also dabble in the magical arts. Her relationship with her mother is solid and happy until a group of Aglionby Academy boys enter into Blue’s life. The group of boys led by Gansey are all looking for a ley line that runs through Henrietta. Gansey knows who ever unlocks the ley line will hold it’s power and help him in the search for Glendower the Welsh king. I’m a fan of fantasy and enjoyed all parts of this intricately-woven tale. I wanted to sit at the table in Blue’s house and have my cards read by Maura, Persephone and Calla. I’m now very excited to read The Dream Thieves out September 17-just around the corner.

I would add both titles to my best of YA along with Ask the Passengers and The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Have you read any these books? Which one resonated the most for you?

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

My friend Tina and I strolled through the library one afternoon on lunch break and I came home with an arm full of books. Anna and the French Kiss was one of them. Tina always reads the newest stuff and often picks up brand new books that the library has ordered for her. She’s on the cutting edge of book-newness!
I, on the other hand, am always a little behind! It is a good thing I have her to lead me a long like a blind person.

Synopsis:

Anna’s wealthy writer dad decides she needs to experience a year abroad her senior year. Anna is happy with the life she’s already living in Atlanta with a great mom, a little brother, a wonderful best friend and her job at the movie theater with Toph, her might-be crush. Her divorced parents get her set up at The School of America where she meets her next door dorm neighbor, Meredith who in turn introduces her to the rest of her friends. `Etienne is one of them and he makes Anna a blushing and bumbling idiot for most of the book. They get all their signals mixed and confusion occurs.

My thoughts:

I loved all the characters and the Parisian setting was beautiful. I did so want to shake both `Etienne and Anna at different times. Good golly: `Etienne has a girlfriend for more than half the book-obviously it’s not working out-but really you can tell he is totally smitten with Anna. She, on the other hand, keeps throwing this almost crush with Toph in `Etienne’s face every chance she gets. Once they finally begin to connect it is a bit of magic though.

Stephanie Perkins has a gift for a teen chatter, which makes it easy to read. I’m very interested in her follow-up books, Lola and the Boy Next Door and Isla and the Happily Ever After. I understand these are companion books but I would really like to know what happens to Anna and `Etienne once they are ever so close to each other in California. Of course, Anna and the California Kiss lacks a bit of romance! If your behind the times like me don’t leave this book behind.

It begins:

Here is everything I know about France: Madeline and Amelie and Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, although I have no idea what the function of either actually is. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and a lot of kings named Louis. I’m not sure what they did either, but I think it has something to do with the French Revolution, which has something to do with Bastille Day. (3)

I know a little bit more about France than this but an interesting starting point for Anna…