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The Forest and Hands and Teeth, Carrie Ryan’s debut novel, begins seven generations after the Return, an undead plague that has ended civilization as we know it. The novel’s heroine, Mary, lives in a village surrounded by one last vestige of industrial technology: a chain-link fence, beyond which is a vast forest full of shambling, eternally ravenous zombies –the forest of hands and teeth. No villager ever goes outside this fence, unless they want to die, or worse, be infected and become one of the undead. Mary’s world is bounded not only by the fence but by the archaic traditions of her people, which are dictated by aRead More →

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What is “home”? Is it a physical place we occupy? A memory? A group of people? A time?  In Pamela Todd’s Blind Faith Hotel, we search for home and find it in unexpected places. Fourteen-year-old Zoe feels like her whole world is going to pieces. Zoe’s mother takes her kids away from their father, a fisherman who ships out to Alaska, and moves them to a run-down farmhouse she’s inherited in the Midwest.  Surrounded by strangers and a sea of prairie grass, Zoe loses her bearings: she misses her father and the sea fiercely; she battles with her mother daily; and she’s searching for answers toRead More →

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Burn My Heart is another amazing book from Beverley Naidoo. In this story set in Kenya in 1951-1953, we meet Mathew – the white pre-teen son of a landownder and Mugo – the African son of the farm’s chief caretaker. They share a friendship that is beginning to show the strains caused by their places in the world they inhabit.  A worse threat is looming around them both however, with the growing Mau Mau rebellion led by the Kenyans to reclaim their ancestral land from the white British settlers.  Suspicion, accusations, brutality and betrayal escalate until everything in Mathew’s and Mugo’s world changes. The larger question in this bookRead More →

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Kristin Levine’s debut novel, The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had,  takes place in Moundville, AL in 1917.  12-year old Dit can’t wait for the new postmaster to arrive in his small town because he hopes the postmaster will have a son about his age.  Instead, 12-year old Emma arrives and even more of a surprise to the town is the family’s skin color.  At first Dit is disappointed and wants nothing to do with Emma, but his mama’s rule “be nice to everyone” soon helps himaccept Emma and her family, even if some in the town do not.  Their friendship makes Dit think about whyRead More →

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Kurtis Scaletta’s novel about a cursed Minnesota town and its youth baseball team is a home run.  Moundville has seen 22 years straight of rain – is it a curse or just freaky weather?   Roy McGuire knows he’s in for a dreary, wet summer.  Baseball camp is over but when he returns home, he finds a foster kid named Sturgis sprawled out on his couch. As if this isn’t weird enough, just a few days after Sturgis’s arrival, the sun comes out. No one can explain why the rain has finally stopped, but as far as Roy’s concerned, it’s time to play some baseball. It’s time toRead More →