This is my last review of the year (and the day)! By some miracle of will power, I met my half-cannonball goal despite only starting reviews last month. Must do better next year, for realz. My final post is for Mara, a YA graphic novel set in the future where professional sports is an even bigger business. Sport competitions keep everyone distracted from the endless world war cycle of Earth. Mara is superstar volleyball player whose been training since she was 2 years old! Barely legal, she lives […]
Special Topics in Grief
I loved Wolitzer’s earlier book, The Interestings, and in some ways this young adult novel seems like an offshoot thematically. Instead of a summer camp in upstate New York, the characters in Belzhar are at The Wooden Barn, a “therapeutic boarding school” for teens in Vermont. This is basically Jam Gallahue’s story; she was sent to this school because she has been mourning the death of her British exchange student boyfriend for too long. Jam is chosen to be part of a special topics class […]
Bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble
I wasn’t that into Whipple’s Transparent, which was about an invisible girl who is hiding from her criminal father. I liked House of Ivy and Sorrow more. It’s about witches, a world where the witch community is dying out and their power is fading. Jo and her grandmother are the last of their family. The women always leave their baby’s father, so Jo has never known her dad…until the day he shows up at their door. I waited way too long to write my review […]
Sweet (?) Sixteen
Turning 16 is a big, meaningful birthday – it’s supposed to be one of those landmark, milestone birthdays that everyone remembers. Girls get a little bit more mileage out of it, what with the whole sweet sixteen thing, but even for guys, turning 16 tends to mean a certain amount of freedom – there’s the whole license thing, just for a start. Mine wasn’t like that, for various reasons, but I remember the hype. In the book, Sixteen; Stories About That Sweet and Bitter Birthday, […]
3 YA New Releases from Entangled Teen
When people complain that young adult novels have nothing to offer the serious reader, it’s pretty clear to me that they’ve never actually read any YA. These new releases from Entangled Teen deal with issues ranging from human cloning and reproductive coercion to arranged marriages and people who ostracize anyone with “impure” bloodlines. Plus, dragons, because YA can get away with being a lot more fun than some other genres!
A Real Love Story (in all its 80’s glory)
This YA novel has been on my to-read list for a while and I loved it just as much as I thought I would. Rainbow Rowell’s novel, set in the 80’s, tells the unlikely love story of Eleanor and Park, two high school students who don’t quite fit in their Nebraska high school but for very different reasons. Park is the only Asian in his school—the son of a white father and a Korean mom, and has dealt with being “different” all his life. Though […]
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