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As a confirmed bibliophile who believes in the power of books, I didn’t need Suggested Reading by Dave Connis to convince me that a person can be undone by a book or that books serve like eyeglasses, giving us new insight by providing a perspective we didn’t realize we were missing. Similarly, Connis’ protagonist, Clara Evans has been built by books; they have shaped, changed, inspired, and guided her to her senior year at Lupton Academy (LA), a private school in Tennessee.  On the first day of her last year in high school, Clara learns about a school policy about “prohibited media”: LA’s librarian Mr.Read More →

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Those who have ever struggled with questions about family and tradition and what it means to respect the past while embracing the future will likely find themselves in the pages of We Walked the Sky by Lisa Fiedler.  This poignant and well-crafted novel engenders a range of emotions—from anger to exasperation and from sorrow to exhilaration!  It not only leads readers to their own popcorn-scented memories and emotional free-falls but reminds us of personal failures and triumphs, revealing that joy really can trump tragedy if we remember to absorb the losses and store them in our hearts, because when the sun comes up, the showRead More →

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Love and Other Curses by Michael Thomas Ford is a book filled with surprises, ironies, and truths—some dark, others lighter and more colorful.  Set in Midgeville, New York, Ford’s novel tells the story of sixteen-year-old Sam Weyward who is pretty sure he’s the only guy in his school “who can replace a faulty kick-down switch and also create the perfect smoky eye” (9).  Although readers might envy Sam’s 1965 Ford F100 cherry red stepside pickup that belonged to his great-grandfather, they will likely cringe at the family curse, loss, and death that Sam endures. According to the curse, if a Weyward falls in love beforeRead More →

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Observable Qualities Each chapter opens with field notes; Ben Phillippe’s protagonist reduces many of his observations to labels in order to make his world and the people in it easier to categorize and digest; readers can find themselves or their past social dilemmas in the pages of The Field Guide to the North American Teenager; Key Subjects Norris Kaplan: the son of French Canadian Haitian parents, Judith and Felix; transplant from Montreal to Austin, Texas; prone to snarky, spiteful, and other satirical remarks; to some people, he’s the “dickish Canadian guy with a chip on his shoulder” (136) because he focuses on other people’s insecurities.Read More →

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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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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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Hoping to be the next great foreign correspondent, Viola Wynne Li plans to attend New York University Abu Dhabi when she graduates from Liberty Prep School in Seattle.  Intent on being a voice for the powerless and the homeless, Viola envisions herself as a truth-teller in a conflict zone, one who covers “the forgotten issues, the ones more convenient to ignore” (117). Also passionate about comics, Viola especially loves Firefly, and considers her own super power to be researching.  Not only does knowledge empower, but data prepares a person to make a good decision in difficult circumstances.  She and her friends Aminta and Caresse areRead More →

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Dana L. Davis is an actress, a classical violinist, and now an author.  Her debut novel, Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now is a remarkable book about a sixteen-year-old young woman who has found herself in a tsunami of change after her mother dies from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Because Grams is an elderly resident in an assisted living facility, suddenly Tiffany is flying from low-income housing in Chicago to a mansion in Los Angeles to live with the doctor dad she didn’t even know existed.  Uprooted from her familiar neighborhood, school, and friends and suffering from anxiety disorder, Tiffany must find comfort with a stepmother, four sisters,Read More →