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Fluent in the language of vectors and the laws of physics, Rukhsana Ali dreams of one day working at NASA and plans to attend Caltech when she graduates from high school.  She also can’t wait to escape her home in Seattle where her Muslim parents believe that daughters and sons are not the same. In her mother’s mind, Rukshana’s worth in the marriage market is directly proportionate to her culinary prowess.  Therefore, she has to know how to prepare chai, goat vindaloo, and roti  in order to impress a potential mother-in-law.  But Rukshana isn’t a traditional Muslim, and she’s more interested in Ariana’s sweet-nothings whisperedRead More →

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Because of an extreme sensitivity to the sun, twelve-year-old Jess has to dress up in an outfit best suited to tending bees.  Feeling frustrated and alienated about a life that makes her different, she slips out at night to experience the outdoors and to explore the neighborhood like other children might. One night while searching for a normal life, Jess steps through a gap in a laurel hedge at the city park and discovers a world composed completely and entirely of ice.  Glittering white and brilliant silver, the ice garden could be the result of her imagination or her dreams.   Here she meets Owen, andRead More →

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For the past year, Stuart Mallory and Sophie Sawyer have lived and breathed Camelot’s Honor, an online multi-player game featuring King Arthur, Guinevere, Morgana, Merlin, and the many other characters from Arthurian Legend.  Slaving away on menial quests, gaining experience, and rising in levels, the two tweens are obsessed with gaming.  After all, life is so much easier inside the game where a person never has to worry about being cool or impressing anyone else.  Also unlike junior high, there are no surprises in the game, all the fight sequences can be researched online, and a person can look and act any way he orRead More →

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Readers looking for a thrilling, action-packed story from the future will find satisfaction in Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward, the first in what promises to be a series with a plotline similar to that used by Orson Scott Card in Ender’s Game. In Sanderson’s futuristic novel, seventeen-year-old Spensa Nightshade loves to explore and to hunt rats in the caverns of Igneous where no one lurks to mock, to stare, or to whisper insults about Chaser, the cowardly pilot, forcing her to defend her father and her family’s honor. Here, she also dreams of becoming a pilot and flying a starfighter for the Defiant League to fight mysteriousRead More →

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At age sixteen, Elle Zoellner is just a young adult, but the adults in her life want her to be understanding of their addictions and their shortcomings when all she wants is to be understood.  When her mother is consumed by the Beast of addiction to prescription drugs and gets sentenced to Jessup Correctional Institute in Maryland, Elle—whose absent father has only been sarcastically called Mr. Tokyo—ends up in the foster care system where she encounters lice, bedbugs, and overlords who restrict her showers to one per week.  Pairing those hygiene challenges with her initials and her mixed-race status makes Elle an EZ target forRead More →

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Four Three Two One by Courtney Stevens recounts the story of four young adults, all unique in their idiosyncrasies as they board Charter Bus 21 in New York City on June 15 bound for Ellis Island: Chandler Clayton is allergic to sudden changes but artistic with a sketch pad or a chain saw and logs; Golden Jennings is eager to explore the world beyond the towering oaks and billowing blue grass of Kentucky with her vintage No. 3 Kodak; Rudy Guthrie is a talented soccer athlete and a writer who has just won a scholarship to Emerson College in Boston; and Caroline Ascott from a wealthyRead More →

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At age seventeen, Lei is plucked from her family and taken to live in the Hidden Palace of Han to lead a privileged life of service to the Demon King as a Paper Girl.  Tien, Lei’s surrogate mother, has told her that some families see great honor in their daughters being chosen, but for Lei, “honor is in family, in hard work and care and love, in a small life well lived” (55). In the world of Ikhara, three castes coexist.  Those in the Paper caste are fully human, while the Steel caste consists of humans endowed with partial animal-demon qualities—both in physicality and abilities—andRead More →

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Combining humor, heartbreak, and hope, Canadian writer Susin Nielsen writes No Fixed Address.  In this story about people who suffer from a childhood trauma and subsequent depression, Nielsen also exposes some of the long-term consequences. Felix Knutsson, who is twelve and three quarters years old, calls his mom Astrid because she considers the title Mom to be too hierarchical.  The reader will discover several other peculiarities about Astrid, who spent some time as a child in the foster care system after she and her brother were abused by their father.  But, if nothing else, Astrid is a survivor and a prevaricator. Unlike his mother, FelixRead More →

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Set in Kyrria, where fairies, elves, ogres, unicorns, and giants live among nobles and commoners, Newbery honor author Gail Carson Levine’s newest book, Ogre Enchanted, tells the story of fifteen-year-old Evie.  Gifted in the arts of healing, Evie is the kind of healer that “knows when to just mention a remedy and when to pry open a jaw” (3).  She has also been accused by her best friend, Warwick—aka Wormy—as seeing people as patients and nothing more. When the sensitive, sweet, and trustworthy Wormy proposes marriage to Evie and the lively, intelligent, single-minded healer with a sense of humor declines, the fairy Lucinda promptly turnsRead More →