Weekend Young Adult (and Crossover) Reviews

Geraldine Brennan reviews a number of teen books for The Observer.  Tim Bowler's Buried Thunder sounds especially good: "The suspense and claustrophobia, and the war in Maya's head between reason and paranoia, reminded me of Alan Garner's classic The Owl Service. It was hard to believe that Maya's family could move into their new home, acquire guests and scare them away all within a week, but the story is strong enough to survive a sketchy set-up."

Ibi Kaslik reviews Tim Wynne-Jones' Blink & Caution for The Globe & Mail.  "Despite the gimmicks and occasional heavy-handedness, Blink and Caution captures the alienation of adolescence and the painful process of becoming oneself, in a time fraught with complications and chaos both from within and without."

Pam Norfolk considers Julie Hearn's Wreckers for Fleetwood Weekly News. (U.K.)

Deb Abela reviews Ursula Dubosarsky's The Golden Day for ABC-Canberra. ("A haunting and beautifully written story...")

J.P. Wickwire reviews Lauren DeStefano's Wither for Jacksonville.com-The Florida Times-Union.("Written with both maturity and literary merit, it is a poignant and satisfying romance sure to spawn many sequels.")

Susan Carpenter also reviews Wither for the Los Angeles Times "Not Just for Kids" column.  Carpenter writes, "A wonderfully toxic brew of meddling and polygamist gamesmanship, Wither is an exciting and powerfully written addition to the increasingly packed shelves of dystopian YA."

Carpenter also reviews Ruta Sepetys Between Shades of Gray for The Kansas City Star.

Leslie Wright considers Karen McQuestion's Favorite for BlogCritics.org, picked up by Seattle PI. ("...an unexpected story set with great characters.")

Lisa Brown discusses Elizabeth Eulberg's Prom and Prejudice and Rick Yancy's The Monstrumologist in The Joplin Globe.

Julia Z. Rosenberg reviews books for kids and teens about sex at ParentDish. 

Michael Berry reviews three new fantasy novels "set in the British Isles" for the San Francisco Chronicle.  I am sure two of these will crossover to a teen audience.  (The last novel reviewed, Matt Haig's The Radleys, stars "a middle-class, suburban British family trying to cope with the supernatural, in this case their repressed need to drink human blood."  Sounds intriguing, but not particularly appealing for the Young Adult reader.)

Meghan Cox Gurdon takes a look at John Stephens's The Emerald Atlas--a Middle Grade/Young Adult novel aimed at the 9-to-15-year-old reader--in the Wall Street Journal.

The Seattle Times provides capsule reviews of local books for children and teens this week.  (New Deb Caletti and a cyberattack thriller are among them.)

Weekend Young Adult (and Crossover) Book News

It was a slow week in Young Adult (and Crossover) Book News.  (Good thing, since I spent the weekend in Chicago discussing undergraduate research and am still catching up on life.) Here's what I found for the week of March 28-April 3:

Cat Clarke recommends her favorite top 10 books with teens behaving badly for The Guardian. It's a good list and well worth reading.  I especially like Clarke's justifications for her choices, as in this paragraph about Cory Doctorow's Little Brother: "Teen hackers in futuristic San Francisco desperately cling to their civil liberties in a sinister Orwellian society. I fell in love with this book even though I didn't understand half (OK, more than half) of the techno-speak. Apparently you're not supposed to trust anyone over 25, so that's me told."

Anthony Horowitz talks about his family in The Observer.


Amy Pattee takes on the much-discussed Bitch Feminist YA book list for Kirkus Reviews and recommends four books as feminist titles.

Steven Mihailovich profiles Cindy Pon (Fury of the Phoenix) for the La Jolla Light.


Charlie Higson has moved on from Young Bond to "a world in which everyone over the age of 14 is consumed by a plague that turns them into deformed, demented and droolingly bloodthirsty zombies."  Christopher Middleton talks to Higson for The Telegraph.

Weekend (and Crossover) Reviews

Here are the (late) YA/Crossover reviews from major media sources, March 14-20:

Monica and Hannah McRae Young review books for young readers in the Winston-Salem Journal.  They provide capsule reviews for a number of YA novels in verse (Dizzy in your Eyes, by Pat Mora; Orchards, by Holly Thompson; Glimpse, by Carol Lynch Williams; Karma: A Novel in Verse, by Cathy Ostlere), but the one that goes on my to-read list is So Shelley, by Ty Roth, for this description: "This dark novel is not for the easily shocked or naive reader.  The author has re-created characters around the Romantic Age British poets--Keats, Byron and Shelley--with a plot that is both gruesome and strangely evocative."

Melinda Bargreen reviews "three new novels by Kristin Hannah, Anjali Banerjee and Lise Saffran, all set on islands in the Pacific Northwest" for The Seattle Times.  Night Road, by Kristin Hannah, looks like it would appeal to teen readers.

Mary Quattlebaum reviews five new YA titles for The Washington Post, including Ruta Sepetys's Between Shades of Gray, a novel I want to read: "Few books are beautifully written, fewer still are important; this novel is both."

Meghan Cox Gurden also reviews Between Shades of Gray for the Wall Street Journal.


Karen MacPherson reviews poetry for kids of all ages including a volume by and for teens, Falling Hard, edited by Betsy Franco, in The Washington Post.

Linda Elisabeth Beattie considers Sarah Collins Honenberger's Catcher, Caught for The Courier-Journal.


Philip Marchand reviews Tim Wynne-Jones's Blink & Caution for the National Post The Afterword page. Marchand discusses what makes a novel YA in the review.

Susan Carpenter reviews Brandon Mull's Beyonders in The Kansas City Star.


And here's a kid-review of a YA title in the Guardian: SophieDophie writes about My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, by Annabel Pitcher.

Meneesha Govender reviews Jennifer Lynne Barnes's Raised by Wolves for IOL (South Africa):  ("Raised by Wolves is packed with intriguing and supernatural escapism that should have many teen readers hooked. I wonder if it’s going to become a new hit series?")

Pam Norfolk reviews John Grisham's YA novel Theodore Boone: Half the Man, Twice the Lawyer for The Clitheroe Advertiser and Times.

Susan Carpenter considers Blake Nelson's Recovery Road and Nic Sheff's We All Fall Down for The Los Angeles Times' "Not Just for Kids" column.  ("A novel and a memoir teenage drug addiction and rehab is seen from the addict's perspective.")

Alice Jones reviews Godspeed: The Kurt Cobain Graphic for The Independent.


Here's a review of the adult-->YA Crossover Title I'm listening to now: Judy Romanowich Smith talks Kate Morton's The Distant Hours for The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.  ("A tale of pure mystery and delight.")


Mary Harris Russell reviews a younger YA title, Angel in my Pocket, by Ilene Cooper, in The Chicago Tribune.  Harris Russell also provides a capsule review for Shaun Tan's Lost and Found with John Marsden's The Rabbits.

Weekend (and Crossover) News

I know it's already Tuesday, but a busy weekend leads to a late news roundup.  Better late, than never, I hope!  Here's the "news" from March 14-20:

Corey Wittig talks Alex Awards in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Sarah Pekkanen writes of girls and boys and the gender divide in children's and teen books for The Washington Post. She begins with a discussion of Forever, a book my students will be blogging about soon.

Kimberly Morgan discusses "More Than Just Vampires and Wizards: Why Young Adult Fiction is Worth Your Time and Money" for Yahoo's Associated Content network.

I don't know about you, but I loved coloring books as a teen--especially intricate ones designed for adults.  Maria Popova reviews five such coloring books for The Atlantic.


Check out the finalists for the Lambda Literary Award here at School Library Journal.

Don't miss Sally Lodge's interview with Cheryl Klein on the publication of Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults in School Library Journal.



You will find lots of YA and Crossover titles recommended by Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo, Katy Guest, John Walsh, and Michael Rosen in "The 50 Books Every Child Should Read" article in The Independent.


Adrian Chamberlain profiles YA novelist Susan Juby on the occasion of the publication of her first adult novel, The Woefield Poultry Collective, for The Times-Colonist (Victoria & Vancouver Island).


Aric Davis, who has previously written thrillers for adults, takes on YA with Nickel Plated and thinks about the boundaries of violence when writing for teens. (In the Wall Street Journal SpeakEasy blog.)

Weekend (and Crossover) Reviews

Susan Carpenter reviews Brandon Mull's Beyonders for the Los Angeles Times's "Not Just for Kids" column.

Bill Eichenberger reviews David Halperin's Journal of a UFO Investigator: A Novel for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ("...as much a philosophic treatise as it is a voyage through fantastical worlds")

Summer Moore considers the seventh in James Patterson's Maximum Ride series Angel in the Winston-Salem Journal. (..."a strong installment in the series. It is full of fight scenes mixed with puppy love and many fantastic flying descriptions that will make readers wish they had wings.")

Sharon Galligar Chance reviews Ireland-centered books, one of them a Young Adult title (The Book of Tomorrow, by Cecelia Ahern), for the Ventura County Star. ("Ahern, who is the daughter of the former prime minister of Ireland, is well known for her sassy, brassy, chick-lit novels, and "The Book of Tomorrow" is no exception to the rule.")

Jodi Delong reviews a flipbook ("...two stories, back to back... you read one story by one author, and then flip the book over to read the second story") for teens by Christy Ann Conlin for The Chronicle Herald (Halifax).

Darcey Steinke reviews Judy Blundell's Strings Attached for the New York Times.

Meghan Cox Gurdon reviews Tim Wynne-Jones's Blink & Caution for the Wall Street Journal.  Gurdon finds the book good, but objects to some of the language and imagery: "...perhaps because the book is so skillfully wrought, one wishes that it could have been written without not just foul language but also foully specific images, such as that of a 16-year-old girl sleeping with a sadistic drug dealer." Hmmm....I'm putting Blink & Caution next on my crossover-reading list.

Graham Moore reviews the new Sherlock Holmes YA, Death Cloud, by Andrew Lane for the New York Times. (The NYT is a bit behind with their YA reviews this month.  Strings Attached and Death Cloud have been reviewed elsewhere for weeks.  Oh, but here's a new title: Pamela Paul takes a look at Deadly, by Chibarro, in the Children's Bookshelf column: "...the rare Y.A. novel in which a girl’s intellectual interests trump adolescent romance.")

Karen MacPherson reviews books for kids with disability themes for abcactionnews.com.  Two of the titles MacPherson discusses are Jordan Sonnenblick's After Ever After and Antony John's Five Flavors of Dumb.


Molly Fischer considers Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife in the The New York Observer. Fischer begins the review with "A young-adult novel is like porn: hard to define, but you know it when you see it" and compares The Tiger's Wife, which has been reviewed positively elsewhere, to a children's or YA novel in its structure and themes.  In other words, a crossover book, but not in a good way, at least according to Fischer.

Christy Ann Conlin (whose own YA novel was reviewed this week by Jodi Delong and cited in this post) reviews Michelle Paver's first adult novel Dark Matter: A Ghost Story for The Globe and Mail.  (Paver is the author of the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series.)

Weekend (and Crossover) News

For the teens who loved Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood, there are tie-ins available: Liesl Bradner highlights Daniel Egneus's seriously-beautiful illustrated version of Little Red Riding Hood for the Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy blog and Susan Carpenter tells of the ebook version of the Red Riding Hood film written by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, also in the Los Angeles Times.


Lee Wind interviews Jodi Picoult for SheWired.com.  Wind asks, "you have a huge teen and young adult following...Does awareness of your teen readers shape your writing?"  And Picoult answers:

I love my teen fans. First of all, they're not shy. They write me all the time and talk about how much they enjoy my books, and who wouldn't like that kind of feedback!?...I love teen narrators because they have a built-in BS meter. They won't let you get away with a lie; they always cut to the heart of the matter. 

This is an excerpted question and answer.  Don't miss the entire exhange!

Last week I linked to an interesting article on teen books today in India, and this week there's a fascinating article on feminist publishing in India and its growing success on livemint.com (&The Wall Street Journal).  One feminist house, Zubaan, has a new imprint for children ("upt to teens") called Young Zubaan.  Commissioning Editor Anita Roy says this is foucs is due to the fact "children’s books in India are conservative, preachy, derivative and just not very good."

Tad Vizner profiles Amanda Hocking, the young writer who made tons of money selling her YA fiction in self-published ebook format, for TwinCities.com. Interestingly, Hocking credits bookbloggers, to whom she sent print-on-demand copies of her books, with her early success.

Do you want your teen or tween to read "great books" they haven't read in school?  Then check out this article on "Great Books Camp" in The Christian Science Monitor.


Marlene Charnizon rounds up what teens are checking out from public libraries for The School Library Journal. 

Weekend News

Here's the news for the first week of March. As might be expected a lot of it relates to the launch of the Guardian's kids- (and teens-) only site.

First up: A note to parents and guardians, by Michelle Pauli, on how to sign up and use the new site.

Michael Morpurgo and Jacqueline Wilson are launching the site, which is for children only.

Marjorie Blackman speaks for the latest Guardian Children's Book Podcast. (Her latest book for teens, Boys Don't Cry, is written from a teen dad's point of view.

Philip Pullman states he'd "like to be Lee Scorsby" (who wouldn't?) in this fabulous interview in the Guardian.

Hillel Italie profiles Walter Dean Myers for the Associated Press, here linked to Forbes.com.

Philip Reeve on World Book Day and reading for the Telegraph.

More on World Book Day from the Guardian:

• World Book Day now includes books for teens.
• In honor of this fact, the Guardian has published a top-teen teen favorite book list. (Harry Potter remains on top for kids ages 13-18.)

Here's a fun article in The Daily Texan about Sarah Pitre and Jenny Bragdon, the bloggers behind Forever Young Adult.

U.K. celebs (I've never heard of) cite their favorite YA reads and crushes for MTV.co.uk.

Mackenzie Smith profiles Alex Flinn, author of Beastly, for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

And here's an interesting piece: 10th-grader Yadi Angeles asks "Why are Teen Novels so Dark?" in The Philly Post. Yadi writes, "Teen novels seem so dark these days because as we grow and mature, the need to relate grows within us, and so we see ourselves in others."

Here's a fascinating article about teen fiction in India: Madhusree Chatterjee writes for Sify: India News Portal, "After decades of publishing books for adults and children, publishers are now targeting the young adults segment, which is through with its quota of Enid Blytons. On offer is a quaint mix ranging from thrillers to vampire romance."

Weekend Reviews

Welcome to the first Weekend Reviews of March. I hope spring has sprung where you live; We in Smalltown remain hopeful, as 30s and 40s with "wintry mix" isn't bad for this time of year.

For young teens (tweens): Karen MacPherson reviews Amy Ignatow's The Popularity Papers for Scripps Howard News Service (linked here to The Seattle Times).

Kelly Keaton's Darkness Becomes Her is reviewed in The Delta News Star. ("The setting is 13 years into the future, after devastating hurricanes strip New Orleans, and the federal government gives up on the city. A group of nine families within New Orleans 'buy' the Crescent City and develop the French Quarter for tourism, calling the city 'New 2'" But New Orleans remains outside the United States boundaries, what Ari and others call 'The Rim.')

Barbara Bell reviews Siobhan Vivian's Not That Kind of Girl for the San Jose Examiner. (I definitely want to read this one, having liked Vivian's work before and because of this article.)

Carolyn Lessard reviews Ally Condie's Matched for the Associated Press.

Susan Carpenter reviews Cris Beam's I am J for the "Not Just for Kids" column in the Los Angeles Times. ("Beam's deep understanding of the emotional truths of transsexualism is clear. She writes with such intimacy and affection for the subject that, on some levels, reading 'I Am J' feels voyeuristic.")

Judy Blundell's Strings Attached is getting good press. This is the third review I've linked to in as many weeks--this time in The Washington Post.

Weekend Reviews

Welcome to the final weekend reviews of February! (Crossing fingers for an early spring...)

I can't believe I'm linking to The Sun, but this week Natasha Harding recommends 6 of the Best...Books for Teenagers. (U.K. titles. Slideshow, not a review article.)

Nancy Gilson reviews Joan Bauer's new novel for tweens and teens, Close to Famous, for The Columbus Dispatch.

Karen MacPherson reviews Andrew Lane's Death Cloud (Young Sherlock Holmes) for Scripps Howard News Service, here linked from The Seattle Times.

Crossover Book Alert: Carol Memmott reviews Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches for USAToday. Memmott begins her review with the assertion, "Adults entranced by the kiddie witches and wizards in the Harry Potter series and the teen vampires in the Twilight Saga — you've earned this grown-up tale." Sounds to me like teens will be all over this one. (Nick Owchar also reviews A Discovery of Witches for The Los Angeles Times.)

Kris Kosaka considers Orchards, by Holly Thompson (illustrations by Grady McFerrin) for The Japan Times. ("An arresting and authentic novel in verse.")

Sarah Webb reviews an Irish YA novel And By the Way: A Butterfly Novel, by Denise Deegan for The Independent.

Mary Harris Russell reviews Phoebe Stone's The Romeo and Juliet Code, more a tween novel, than teen, for The Chicago Tribune.

Meghan Cox Gurden reviews Judy Blundell's Strings Attached for The Wall Street Journal and concludes the positive review with "Adult as well as older teen readers will appreciate the skill with which the author slowly separates the skeins of this tangled story to reveal the violent truth of what Billy once told Kit: "We pack away lies in [our] house like you pack away Christmas."

That's it for this week's reviews, unless I've missed something. Stay tuned for a new weekend link feature at Crossover--Weekend (YA/Crossover) News!

Weekend Reviews

I'm reinstating the Weekend Review posts I used to write at Big A little a. There will be a difference, however: I'll be focusing on Young Adult and potential crossover titles only.

First up this week? Charles McGrath's review of new (and older) teen dystopia for The New York Times. Selected Quote: "What distinguishes this kind of dystopian fiction from its adult counterpart — beyond its being less dire and apocalyptic — is a certain element of earnestness, even preachiness, and the moral is pretty transparent: be yourself. " Liz B. has written a fair-minded rebuttal over at A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy.

Susan Carpenter reviews Strings Attached, by Judy Blundell, in the Los Angeles Times."Told from the perspective of 17-year-old Kit Corrigan, the book opens in New York City. The year is 1950. Kit has just finished working her first big-city job in a second-rate Broadway play and is desperate to find a new stage production and living quarters. " Carpenter also reviews Death Cloud: A Novel, by Andrew Lane. Death Cloud is "the first in a young-adult series approved by Conan Doyle's estate, in which British author Andrew Lane casts Holmes as a sleuth-in-training."

One from last week that is not a review of a Young Adult novel. Instead, it's a review by Alan Cheuse for The San Francisco Chronicle of young-adult novelist David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary.

From The Guardian: Carrie O'Grady reviews Hannah Pittard's The Fates Will Find Their Way, an adult novel I'm reading now and that I think (so far) teens would love.

In the not-a-review category this week: Melanie Jackson talks about the blurry border between Young Adult and adult fiction in the The Vancouver Sun.

Seventeenth Summer and today's Readers

Some people argue that Maureen Daly's 1942 novel Seventeenth Summer was the first Young Adult novel published in the U.S. (I've also seen compelling arguments for The Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders.)

Of the books we've read so far in my Young Adult literature course, students have found Seventeenth Summer the least relatable. Many of them found Daly's protagonist and narrator, Angie Morrow, too passive, too unobservant, too wishy-washy when compared to today's young adult female narrators. I think the students are glad they read the novel (I hope!) for historical context, but I'm not sure it's one they'll reread in the future.

Have you read Seventeenth Summer? What do you think about the novel and today's readers? What causes a Young Adult novel to age out, to become no longer interesting to a new generation's readers?

-----------------------------------

Here's a great review of Seventeenth Summer from Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy.

And, here are a few discussions from my class blog:

Seventeenth Summer, Feminist Novel?

Who is Angie Morrow?

YA for the Feminist Reader

Here's a great resource from Bitch magazine: 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader. It's a really good list and a wonderful starting point for anyone working with or reading Young Adult fiction.

(And, yay! My friend Tanita S. Davis's book is singled out in the rave section. Mare's War is discussed in the company of Harriet the Spy and The Golden Compass, right where it belongs. Go, Tanita!)

-----------------
And, regarding a classic novel that would not make the 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader list, check out my students' posts on The Catcher in the Rye. They've posted on:

• Profanity in The Catcher in the Rye
  
• Holden's Reliability
• Accessibility of The Catcher in the Rye (Is The Catcher YA?)
  

The Class is Blogging...

My students in GLS/HUM 295: Theoretical Approaches to Children's and Young Adult Literature at Grinnell College have begun their blog. For the next 15 weeks, there will be 1-2 new posts each weekday and plenty of discussion.

The blog is open to the public, so please feel free to comment.

Kathryn W. has submitted the first post "Profanity in The Catcher in the Rye."

YA course

Well...I still have not posted my Crossover Books from 2010 entry. But, I will, on Tuesday.

In the meantime, here is the syllabus for the first 2/3rds of the Young Adult Literature course I will be teaching this semester. All comments are welcome, here or there.

Blogging in Higher Ed?

This semester I am fortunate enough to be teaching a course on Young Adult literature. This is a variable content course and we will be reading YA realistic fiction, starting with an eight-week survey of American YA and then spending six weeks on translated literature in order to understand how language, nation, culture, and history influence the presentation of "problem" to the teen reader.

Over the course of 14 weeks, the students will be reading 17 novels and 10 theoretical articles. That's a lot of varied material to cover in a semester and I'm not sure the material is suited to the six-eight short academic essay format I use in most of my literature courses. I am not fond of journals (too much "impression," too little analysis) or reader response assignments. And blackboard discussion lists have never worked well for me. I have decided to do a class blog for the first time in addition to three-four academic essays. There are approximately twenty five students in the course who will be responsible for 3 posts each and at least 10 comments over 15 weeks. This should make for an interesting blog as well as a good assignment!

(You can see the reading list and the blog address here.)

I have been thinking about how to make sure the blog is not an "add-on" component to the course, but rather an integral part of class discussion. And, in doing some research I ran across Denise Harrison's "Can Blogging Make a Difference?" on the Campus Technology blog. Harrison's article clearly identifies several ways blogs can enhance the classroom experience. Here are two points in Harrison's article that resonated with me:

1. A blog allows for "the exposure of their posts to meaningful audiences, including other students, and a potential global audience, encouraged careful reflection and articulation of the subject." (p. 4) This is especially true when we consider the close-knit world of the kidlitosphere.

2. You have to bring the blog into the classroom, and the classroom onto the blog. (p. 5)

Have any of you used a blog in the classroom? What suggestions do you have for a first-timer?