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Reality TV is everywhere; one can hardly think of an aspect of modern American life that hasn’t been manipulated, exposed, and hyped up by “reality” TV.  So it’s no surprise that the casualties of this epidemic are starting to find their way into other media, including books for teens and kids.  Last year I loved A.S. King’s Reality Boy and on Sunday I fell head over heels with Absolutely Almost by Lisa Graff.  Earlier this spring I got lost in the halls of Minneapolis’ Selwyn Academy, a fine arts high school that is at the center of For Art’s Sake – Fame, but for Real.  KateRead More →

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I’ve been thinking about vulnerability a lot lately.  Part of it is due to reading this; and what surprises me is once you start looking for authenticity and its root, vulnerability, you see it everywhere.  What you also see are the walls, suits of armor, and other shields our culture teaches a person to use to hide, protect, and deny this most human of all qualities.  Imagine how thrilled I was when, just a few pages into National Book Award Nominee Lisa Graff‘s forthcoming Absolutely Almost, I realized that I was holding a book deeply interwoven with vulnerability and authenticity.  And my excitement was not disappointed inRead More →

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If it weren’t for Vance the Bully, Teddy Fitzroy would have a pretty cool life:  he does OK in 7th grade (sure, he’d like more friends), but he gets to live at FunJungle, the world’s biggest zoo, where his world-renowned parents are live-in scientists.  Being around all the animals has its perks and Teddy enjoys his unusual living situation most of the time.  But Vance’s incessant bullying has gotten Teddy into some trouble, since none of the adults at school will help him ward off Vance’s assaults.  Having taken matters into his own hands, Teddy’s latest prank on Vance has gotten him into a no-winRead More →

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Diggy Lawson is not your typical eighth grader. Instead of spending his time playing video games and texting his friends, Diggy enjoys being a member of 4-H and raising cattle to compete in the Minnesota State Fair. 4-H is an organization for people to join in the areas of environmentalism, animal care, veterinary science, and many more. With this organization, members must pledge to a clearer thinking about their world by using the four H’s: Head, Heart, Hands, and Health. Diggy loves being a part of 4-H and has a crush on a girl named July, who has competed and won at the Minnesota StateRead More →

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Aspiring to be a female version of Walter Cronkite, thirteen-year-old Teresa (Tree) Taylor wants the freshman reporter position on the newspaper staff at Hamilton High School, despite her nemesis Wanda vying  for that same role with the “Blue and Gold.”  Her second goal for the summer is to kiss a boy, preferably Ray “with the eyes like two pieces of sky” (3), to collect a kiss worth writing about. Besides those two ambitions to move the plot forward, The Secrets of Tree Taylor by Dandi Daley Mackal, set in Hamilton, Missouri, in 1963, features a collection of quotations from famous writers and alludes to HarperRead More →

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Imagine that every time you closed your eyes—whether to blink or to sleep—you entered another world.  Such is the reality for Nolan’s life.  Nolan, who lives in Farview, Arizona, gets to watch and smell and feel what happens to Amara, who lives in the Dunelands.  Since his earliest memories, Nolan has experienced life from two bodies, but knowing it isn’t his body or his pain doesn’t make it hurt any less.  Distracted by the happenings in Amara’s world when he was seven years old and out riding his bike, Nolan now wears a prosthetic foot because both his left foot and his bike were crushedRead More →

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Laden with pain that she sometimes forgets to hide, pain from the loss of a brother on the day she was born, twelve-year-old Jewel Campbell wonders where joy goes when it leaves a family.  A Jamaican/White/Mexican mixed race girl living in Caledonia, Iowa, Jewel feels like a misfit.  In Caledonia, where folks think “that Jamaica is some country in Africa” (62), mixing doesn’t happen—except in Jewel’s family.  Outside of Caledonia, people ask Jewel what she is, a question that makes Jewel bristle: “Shouldn’t they ask who I am?  Why am I a what?” (62).   Jewel wonders what it would be like to have two parentsRead More →

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Separated from their parents while at sea, fourteen-year-old Molly McConnachie, an Irish immigrant escaping the famine in County Donegal, Ireland, has found herself in Cellar Hollow with her ten-year-old brother, Kip.  Along with their horse Galileo—who is as loyal as he is stubborn—the children make their way to Windsor Estate, where Molly has a job, but folks along the route warn them against the sourwoods.  Hester Kettle, a storyteller who plays the hurdy gurdy, is vehement about the foreboding that awaits: “They say the sourwoods changes folks. . . brings out somethin’ horrible in ‘em” (10).  Convinced this is all frightening nonsense, she and Kip,Read More →

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At twelve years old, Hannah Silver has idiosyncrasies: thinking out loud, using words from an invented Muffin Language, hearing the bossy voices of Nancy and Belinda in her head, and fearing that stairs are traps with hidden torture devices.  She soon discovers that her family belongs to a sect of Guardians who guard the door to the afterlife.  Hannah’s mother tells her the story, that the secret door in the lighthouse near their home leads to the city—temporary home to everyone who has lived and died in our world.  Beyond the city lies Ascension.  To ascend requires certain qualifications—Watchers enforce these rules. On a stormyRead More →