Can I really call Jeannette Walls’ The Silver Star a debut novel? After all, everyone knows The Glass Castle. And Half-Broke Horses was a novel, wasn’t it? Well, yes, but it was a fictionalization of her grandmother’s life. The Silver Star is Walls’ first work of pure fiction. It touches on many of the same themes [...]
Today we review two notable debut novels featuring teen protagonists who are talented at the sports they love — riding and rowing. There are a surprising number of similarities between these books. Both take place in elite boarding schools, and feature teens who are new kids among long-time classmates, less wealthy outsiders struggling for the [...]
Back in January, we had a conversation (in reference to Derf Backderf’s Alex Award-winning My Friend Dahmer) about what makes a graphic novel “nonfiction” and the rigidity of categories like “fiction” and “nonfiction.” A couple of new comments have been added to that thread, so please head over to the above link to read the whole chain, but [...]
In both of today’s nonfiction titles, the authors speak directly to their readers. Both have the potential to become favorites with the right teen reader. First up, Edward O. Wilson’s passionate and inspiring Letters to a Young Scientist. Maybe it’s the time of year, but I can’t help thinking that this would make a terrific graduation [...]
Today we have three very different graphic novels. Matt Kindt’s Red Handed, a gorgeous, full-color novel with an intricately structured plot has been the source of a bit of debate. Kimberly over on Stacked.com, while granting the novel’s interest, found its experimental structure ultimately frustrating. And when I gave the book to one of my [...]
For fans of James Daily and Ryan Davidson’s The Law of Superheroes (which we reviewed here), or for anyone who is interested in the idea but doesn’t want to invest in reading the whole book, Daily and Davidson have been guest-blogging on the very influential legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. They’ve been addressing such pressing [...]
It is my great pleasure to write about The Sea of Tranquility today. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a book quite so much. I read it at the same time as a few other books because I wanted it to last. Each time I checked something while writing the review I got caught [...]
Last month, we looked at four stories too unbelievable not to be true, and I thought those would be the strangest stories I heard this year. That was before I heard about Marina Chapman, for whom being raised by monkeys is only the beginning of her troubles–and not even the most trying. She was also [...]
OK, I’ve talked about this before (and I’ll probably talk about it again!). Not all nonfiction is narrative, and narrative non-fiction isn’t the only kind of non-fiction that teens will read. When last we spoke, I offered some statistics to (possibly) back that claim up. Today, I’m here to offer something much more substantial: three [...]
Susan Nussbaum has already won the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for this, her first novel, Good Kings Bad Kings. The Bellwether Prize was created by Barbara Kingsolver to honor writing that addresses issues of social justice and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships. It is now administered by PEN America. Previous [...]
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