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A La Carte is a quick, enjoyable novel by Tanita Davis.  In it we get to know Lainey, a 17 year-old African American girl who aspires to be a professional chef.  She dreams of having her own cooking show and loves spending time in the kitchen of her mom’s restaurant and in her own home kitchen where she finds both solace and a creative outlet in the preparation of food.  She’s forced to confront real life issues and struggles when her childhood best-friend Sim, and secret crush, gets into some serious trouble and runs away, asking for Lainey’s help (both in money and secrecy) toRead More →

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   The Afterlife by Gary Soto grabs the reluctant reader in the first few pages with the story of Chuy who is stabbed, dies, and becomes the ghostly protagonist of this compelling story.  As Chuy struggles to find the significance of his life and watches his family come to terms with his violent end, he meets the lovely Crystal, also recently deceased.  I read this story with junior high students who “HATE to read” but they were quickly drawn into Chuy’s search for understanding and the question of whether his death would be avenged.  The author of this book, Gary Soto, is a favorite ofRead More →

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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is Sherman Alexie’s first novel for young adults.  It’s based in part on his own experiences growing up poor on the Spokane Indian Reservation.  It tells the story of Junior (known as Arnold to the white people in the world he inhabits on a part-time basis), an Indian teenager coming into adulthood.  When he decides to leave the run-down, dead-end reservation school to attend a rich, white farm town school, his mom tells him “you’ll be the first one to ever leave the rez this way.  The Indians around here are going to be angry with you.”Read More →

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In the Name of God by Paula Jolin is a moving and eye-opening depiction of the struggle to find one’s self and what one believes in. Nadia, the narrator of Jolin’s tale, is a seventeen-year-old girl in modern Damascus who is trying to figure out how to be the best Muslim she can be. Her quest is interrupted when her cousin Fowzi is arrested for speaking out against the government. As she watches her family and their varying degrees of faith deal with her cousin’s arrest, Nadia must figure out what she believes. Jolin’s compelling book provides a far-reaching look into a complex and controversialRead More →