Huge, ABC Family. Episodes: ABC Family, Hulu. Based on the book by Sasha Paley, Simon & Schuster. The Plot: A summer at weight loss camp. The Good: This is not about fat teens at a weight loss camp. This is about teens at summer camp. Will is sarcastic and angry. She doesn’t want to be [...]
Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group. October 2010. Reviewed from ARC from ALA. The Plot: Lisabeth Lewis, seventeen, has taken three of her mother’s Lexapro and intends to take more. A messenger knocks on the door, hands her Scales, informs her she is now Famine (as in one of the [...]
ALA’s Banned Books Week is the one week in the year when we seek out books that we think other people shouldn’t read and think of ways to prevent them from reading those books. Because one should always think of the children, it’s best to begin with books that other people’s children should not be [...]
The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove by Susan Gregg Gilmore. Crown, a division of Random House. 2010. Reviewed from uncorrected proof from publisher. The Plot: As the title promises, the life of one Bezellia Louis Grove, starting with her birth announcement in 1951. Bezellia recounts her youth and teenage years as the daughter of one [...]
The Eternal Ones: What if love refused to die? by Kirsten Miller. 2010. Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group. Personal copy. The Plot: Haven Moore, 17, is from tiny Snope City, Tennessee, but she dreams of New York City. No, really — she has dreams and flashbacks to New York City, a place [...]
There are so many different types of Young Adult Book Blogs out in the book blogosphere! Some are written by teenagers. Some are written by people who are no longer teens. Some are written by librarians, some by teachers, some by readers. Some are about a personal reader reaction. Some are about booktalking or handselling [...]
Tales of the Madman Underground (An Historical Romance 1973) by John Barnes. Viking. 2009. Reviewed from ARC from a conference. The Plot: Lightsburg, Ohio, 1973. Karl Shoemaker has a simple resolution for his senior year: don’t get the “ticket,” the slip of paper from school that sends him to group therapy during school hours. Instead, be [...]
Believe it or not, I had this post drafted well before a certain someone said books about rape victims recovering from depression are ”filthy.” I offer him profound thanks, for doing such a brilliant job of illustrating the problem with using “clean” and filthy” for describing the content of books. Now, on with the post! “I need a list [...]
Efrain’s Secret by Sofia Quintero. Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House. 2010. The Plot: It’s not a secret that high school senior Efrain Rodriguez takes his future seriously. He has a plan: Harvard. Maybe Yale. Ivy League, not New York City. The problem is he’s at a Bronx high school where Ivy [...]
Laurie Halse Anderson‘s Speak is being attacked for being “filthy” and “soft porn” in an editorial in a Missouri paper, Filthy Books Demeaning to Republic Education. (Note: no, not Republican. Republic, it’s the name of a town.) Here is the money quote: “In high school English classes, children are required to read and view material [...]
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