Welcome to this week’s big fiction debut, and it could not be more suited to young adult readers. For the gamers and science fiction fans (but not only the gamers and science fiction fans) in your library, this is likely to be the book of the year. With a place on several best of the [...]
Lucia Greenhouse’s memoir reveals how her family was torn apart by her father’s strict adherence to Christian Science tenets even while her mother was dying of cancer. The author’s blog continues the conversation. fathermothergod is an Oprah Book to Watch for August, and brings to my mind the amazing, Alex-Award winning memoir Jesus Land by [...]
Today we have another memoir that combines research on a topic near and dear to the author’s heart. Yesterday it was superhero comics, today it is food allergies. Poet Sandra Beasley writes about life with severe allergies. And by severe, I mean constantly life-threatening. We all know teens who struggle with allergies, and those of [...]
Rosamund Lupton’s debut is a novel of siblings. The sisters are 26 and 21, not so far beyond teen readers in years. The entire novel is a letter from the older sister to the younger, now deceased. The directness of the narrative voice will appeal to young adults. Also, as the review’s final sentence makes clear, this [...]
John Prendergast and Michael Mattocks relate their very different, but connected, experiences in this joint memoir. Prendergast wrote a Huffington Post article to explain his hopes for the book, including increased awareness of the issues around which he co-founded the Enough Project, which works to “end genocide and crimes against humanity” in Sudan, eastern Congo, [...]
The popularity of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City (Crown, 2003) has never flagged — with adults. His new book, about the rise of the Nazi Party in early 1930s Berlin as witnessed by American Ambassador William Dodd and his family, in particular his daughter Martha, might do better with teens. The Holocaust [...]
Novels set in rural America are hardly ubiquitous in YA literature. Between dystopian trilogies, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and Gossip Girls readalikes, sometimes I wonder if we are leaving the real world behind. This debut is set in rural Wisconsin, in the not too distant past. As Connie’s review makes clear, The Bird Sisters is [...]
Michelle Moran has written a string of very successful historical fiction works based on the lives of famous women. Her books include Nefertiti (Crown, 2007); The Heretic Queen (Crown, 2008) about Nefertari, the niece of Nefertiti ; and Cleopatra’s Daughter (Crown, 2009), about the children of Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Her new novel centers on Madame Tussaud, [...]
Long-time favorite Alice Hoffman has a new book out today. Like The Probable Future (Doubleday, 2003) and Blackbird House (Doubleday, 2004), The Red Garden is a group of interconnected stories, this time set in rural Massachusetts from colonial times to the present. Many teens have already discovered Alice Hoffman through her YA titles, Green Angel (Scholastic, 2003) [...]
How better to ring in 2011 than with a book focused on changing our world for the better? TISCH, Jonathan M. & Karl Weber. Citizen You: Doing Your Part to Change the World. 273p. Crown. May 2010. Tr $24. ISBN 978-0-307-58848-7. LC 2009053438. Adult/High School–Tisch brings readers up to date on the many challenges [...]
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