The House on Mango Street is a short novel about a year in the life of a Mexican American adolescent named Esperanza. She and her family (parents, two older brothers and a younger sister named Nenny) have moved into a house of their own in Chicago for the first time. In a series of vignettes, Cisneros paints a deeply moving picture, or series of pictures, of life on Mango Street and of Esperanza’s hopes and fears. Cisneros’ background as a poet comes through in her […]
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!
Before I Fall: Death, Redemption, and Why Popular Kids Suck
We all have those books that we see time and time again. Someone tells us about it, it’s recommended because you bought another book, there’s just something about the book that makes it constantly pop up, yet you never read it. Before I Fall was one of those books for me. A YA, woe-is-me kind of novel. This is the second one I’ve read in as many months that opens with the death of the narrator. I’m still unsure how I feel about that trend as […]
Swan Lake in the Amazon rain forest
Eighteen year old Harriet Morton lives with her stuffy professor father and strict and joyless aunt in Cambridge. Her only chance to escape the drudgery of her life is through books or the weekly ballet lessons that her father inexplicably lets her take. When she is offered a position with a travelling ballet troupe going to perform Swan Lake in a remote city up the Amazon river, but denied permission by her father, she rebels and runs away. When the troupe arrive in Manaus in South America, […]
I’m a teenager and my world is ending. But seriously.
Not one to often pick up a young adult novel, I was intrigued by this month’s book club choice. Much like the protagonists, I had to fiercely struggle my way through Grasshopper Jungle, but I’m glad that I did. This book is, well, weird. The narrative choices are interesting and for the first half of the read for me, annoying and distracting. Our narrator is sixteen-year-old Austin and he prides himself on being a historian, with volumes written about the nothingness that happens in Ealing, […]
Caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea…
Target: Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1) Profile: Speculative Fiction, Young Adult There is a gritty reality to Paolo Bacigalupi’s work. A grim straightforwardness that crushes the optimism older SF styles. On its own, this same honesty produces brilliantly brutal speculative fiction, like Windup Girl. But there is a necessary optimism to Young Adult literature that is at odds with Bacigalupi’s tone. Ship Breaker lives in artificial space between two styles, carving out its own literary niche, but at the same time feeling discordant and incomplete. And yet, it […]
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