Kelly Jensen's Blog, page 65

Book Club Roundup

I’ve been a librarian for seven years, but I had never been a member of a book club until I joined one late last year. The idea of being assigned a book to read – one that probably wouldn’t be a fantasy or romance novel – was just too much like school for my tastes. But in the past few years, I’ve been consciously trying to expand the range of my leisure reading, and I’ve discovered I like lots of different kinds of books I never would have picked up on my own. The books selected for this particular book club have been pretty eclectic, which I appreciate. They’ve also all been adult titles so far, so it gets me away from my steady diet of YA SFF, something I’ve found I really need.

Here are brief reviews of the first four books I’ve read as part of the club.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Though fiction, this book read a lot like a memoir to me. It’s not a traditional story in that it doesn’t build to a climax and a resolution – it’s more a straightforward relation of the events of a girl’s life up until around age 16. Elena narrates in the first person, and the friend of the title is Lila, a girl who seems more like what we’d call a frenemy nowadays for much of the book. Set in Naples, Italy, in the 1950s, this book is fascinating for its historical detail (the author herself is Italian) and the complicated relationship between Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s Naples in the 50s is unromanticized: it’s violent, misogynistic, poor, and overall a tough place to grow up. The mystery surrounding Ferrante’s identity adds another layer of interest to this novel.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

I love Atwood’s science fiction. Oryx and Crake, which I first read as an undergrad, is my favorite of hers. I hoped I would love this historical novel about a real-life teenage murderess in Canada in the 19th century almost as much. While Atwood’s layered writing is on full display here, I found the plot itself a bit plodding. The story centers on Grace Marks, a woman who was convicted many years ago, while still a teenager, for the murder of her boss and his housekeeper. Grace was a maid in Thomas Kinnear’s house and was sentenced to die alongside her alleged co-conspirator, but her sentence was commuted to life in prison. She served some time in a mental institution as part of her sentence as well. Now, she is considered a model prisoner, and a young doctor has come to speak with her to research her case. Atwood expertly gets us inside the head of this doctor, Simon Jordan, but deliberately keeps us at a distance from Grace, who narrates part of her own story. She is an unreliable narrator – or is she? Atwood explores mental illness and its historical treatment, the Canadian criminal justice system, and society’s perception of women (particularly violent women) in this novel which provides no real answer to the most pressing question – did Grace do it? Because of the plot’s ambiguity, this is a great book for discussion.

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

I’m a big fan of Wilson’s comic book series Ms. Marvel, so I was pretty happy when this was selected for January. It’s not a perfect novel by any means, but it’s fun and broad in scope and provides lots of fodder for discussion. Wilson, a white convert to Islam, writes in her author’s note that she wanted this book to speak to her three audiences who don’t always overlap: “comic book geeks, literary NPR types, and Muslims.” The plot of the story proves this goal, since it features a unique combination of computer hacking, genies from the Quran come to life, devout and non-devout Islamic characters, a white American convert, and a focus on the text and scholarship of the Quran that both Islamic and non-Islamic readers can understand. The pacing was slow at times, but overall this was a really fun, unique book.

The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

This was my pick, so it’s no surprise that it’s the one I’ve liked best so far. It’s science fiction set in the near future and follows two different characters. Meena, a young woman, is traveling from India to Ethiopia along something called the Trail, a futuristic piece of technology that harvests energy from the sun and the waves of the  Arabian Sea. It’s not meant for walking – it’s forbidden to walk along it, actually – but Meena travels it regardless. Mariama, a prepubescent girl, is also traveling to Ethiopia, but her reasons are very different from Meena’s. Their stories converge in a surprising and satisfying way at the end, and part of the fun of reading the book is puzzling out their relationship along the way. I loved reading about the Trail and how Meena survived on it (it’s not easy). I also loved that this was set entirely in Asia and Africa, two continents I don’t read much about in my fiction. Byrne is a white woman, but her details about the cultures and the landscapes appear well-researched, and the near-future setting is well-realized. Her characters are fascinating, if not truly likeable by the end. This is literary science fiction that also provides a lot to talk about.

 

Microtrends In YA Lit: The Odd and Not-So-Odd Coincidences Popping Up

There are trends, and then there are things that aren’t quite trends, but they’ve appeared in more than one place and stick out as being odd to show up that frequently. The things in that second category are what I like to call “microtrends.” They’re not full-blown trends, a la books with “Girl” in the title or mermaid reads from a few years back. Rather, they’re two or three or four books that have something in common with one another that isn’t itself entirely common.

Let’s take a look at a handful of recently-observed microtrends. Will any of these become bigger, full-blown trends? Have they been trends? Can you think of other recent examples of these microtrends (within the last year or so)?

Descriptions of books are all from Goodreads.

 

The Canterbury Tales

We can pretty quickly highlight the retellings and remixings of classics in YA lit. There are plenty of homages to Jane Eyre, to Shakespeare, and the Brontes, to name three. But how about this one: the retelling of Chaucer’s classic The Canterbury Tales?

I didn’t read The Canterbury Tales until my senior year of high school, and I believe only part of it was assigned reading. Instead of reading the entirety of the tales, we were put into small groups, assigned a character or group of characters, and then read and created presentations about their stories. I loved learning about the book that way, and it made me appreciate the format and creativity behind the tales. I haven’t read any of these spins on the tale, though I certainly plan on picking up at least one.

Worth noting that one of these titles is a Middle Grade read, too. Likely middle grade readers won’t know the inspiration, but that’s not going to be of any detriment to them enjoying the story.

 

 

Sometimes We Tell The Truth by Kim Zarins

In this contemporary retelling of The Canterbury Tales, a group of teens on a bus ride to Washington, DC, each tell a story—some fantastical, some realistic, some downright scandalous—in pursuit of the ultimate prize: a perfect score.

Jeff boards the bus for the Civics class trip to Washington, DC, with a few things on his mind:

-Six hours trapped with his classmates sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

-He somehow ended up sitting next to his ex-best friend, who he hasn’t spoken to in years.

-He still feels guilty for the major part he played in pranking his teacher, and the trip’s chaperone, Mr. Bailey.

-And his best friend Cannon, never one to be trusted and banned from the trip, has something “big” planned for DC.

But Mr. Bailey has an idea to keep everyone in line: each person on the bus is going to have the chance to tell a story. It can be fact or fiction, realistic or fantastical, dark or funny or sad. It doesn’t matter. Each person gets a story, and whoever tells the best one will get an automatic A in the class.

But in the middle of all the storytelling, with secrets and confessions coming out, Jeff only has one thing on his mind—can he live up to the super successful story published in the school newspaper weeks ago that convinced everyone that he was someone smart, someone special, and someone with something to say.

 

The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz

1242. On a dark night, travelers from across France cross paths at an inn and begin to tell stories of three children. Their adventures take them on a chase through France: they are taken captive by knights, sit alongside a king, and save the land from a farting dragon. On the run to escape prejudice and persecution and save precious and holy texts from being burned, their quest drives them forward to a final showdown at Mont Saint-Michel, where all will come to question if these children can perform the miracles of saints.

Join William, an oblate on a mission from his monastery; Jacob, a Jewish boy who has fled his burning village; and Jeanne, a peasant girl who hides her prophetic visions. They are accompanied by Jeanne’s loyal greyhound, Gwenforte . . . recently brought back from the dead. Told in multiple voices, in a style reminiscent of The Canterbury Tales, our narrator collects their stories and the saga of these three unlikely allies begins to come together.

 

Feral Youth by Shaun David Hutchinson (September 5)

At Zeppelin Bend, an outdoor education program designed to teach troubled youth the value of hard work, cooperation, and compassion, ten teens are left alone in the wild. The teens are a diverse group who come from all walks of life, and they were all sent to Zeppelin Bend as a last chance to get them to turn their lives around. They’ve just spent nearly two weeks learning to survive in the wilderness, and now their instructors have dropped them off eighteen miles from camp with no food, no water, and only their packs, and they’ll have to struggle to overcome their vast differences if they hope to survive.

Inspired by The Canterbury Tales, Feral Youth features characters, each complex and damaged in their own ways, who are enticed to tell a story (or two) with the promise of a cash prize. The stories range from noir-inspired revenge tales to mythological stories of fierce heroines and angry gods. And while few of the stories are claimed to be based in truth, they ultimately reveal more about the teller than the truth ever could.

 

 

 

“How To Disappear” Title

These are going to get confused quite easily, seeing their titles are the same or so close to similar. I can only imagine a teen coming to the reference desk or a bookstore asking for “that YA book about how to disappear” and being handed three different recent titles.

I guess the more interesting thing to note here is that they’re books about girls disappearing in some capacity. There’s an outstanding short story in Roxane Gay’s Difficult Women that ends on the note that the best women are the dead ones, and I can’t help but wonder if this is just a step before that final death (and that’s what makes them compelling enough). I don’t mean that, of course, on the individual story level; I mean it on the collective level of a society that dislikes women.

Two of these books are from the same publisher.

 

How To Disappear by Ann Redisch Stampler

Nicolette Holland is the girl everyone likes. Up for adventure. Loyal to a fault. And she’s pretty sure she can get away with anything…until a young woman is brutally murdered in the woods near Nicolette’s house. Which is why she has to disappear.

Jack Manx has always been the stand-up guy with the killer last name. But straight A’s and athletic trophies can’t make people forget that his father was a hit man and his brother is doing time for armed assault. Just when Jack is about to graduate from his Las Vegas high school and head east for college, his brother pulls him into the family business with inescapable instructions: find this ruthless Nicolette Holland and get rid of her. Or else Jack and everyone he loves will pay the price.

As Nicolette and Jack race to outsmart each other, tensions—and attractions—run high. Told in alternating voices, this tightly plotted mystery and tense love story challenges our assumptions about right and wrong, guilt and innocence, truth and lies.

 

How Not To Disappear by Clare Furniss

Our memories are what make us who we are. Some are real. Some are made up. But they are the stories that tell us who we are. Without them we are nobody.

Hattie’s summer isn’t going as planned. Her two best friends have abandoned her: Reuben has run off to Europe to ‘find himself” and Kat is in Edinburgh with her new girlfriend. Meanwhile Hattie is stuck babysitting her twin siblings and dealing with endless drama around her mum’s wedding. Oh, and she’s also just discovered that she’s pregnant with Reuben’s baby.

Then Gloria, Hattie’s great-aunt who no one even knew existed, comes crashing into her life. Gloria’s fiercely independent, rather too fond of a gin sling and is in the early stages of dementia. Together the two of them set out on a road trip of self-discovery — Gloria to finally confront the secrets of her past before they are erased from her memory forever and Hattie to face the hard choices that will determine her future.

 

How To Disappear by Sharon Huss Roat (August 15)

Vicky Decker has perfected the art of hiding in plain sight, quietly navigating the halls of her high school undetected except by her best (and only) friend, Jenna. But when Jenna moves away, Vicky’s isolation becomes unbearable.

So she decides to invent a social life by Photoshopping herself into other people’s pictures, posting them on Instagram under the screen name Vicurious. Instantly, she begins to get followers, so she adds herself to more photos from all over the world with all types of people. And as Vicurious’s online followers multiply, Vicky realizes she can make a whole life for herself without ever leaving her bedroom. But the more followers she finds online, the clearer it becomes that there are a lot of people out there who feel like her— #alone and #ignored in real life.

To help them, and herself, Vicky must find the courage to face her fear of being “seen,” because only then can she stop living vicariously and truly bring the magic of Vicurious to life.

 

 

 

 

 

Geeks and Cons

Last year, I pulled together a short reading list that highlighted fandom and fanfiction as a trend in YA. This isn’t quieting down by any means; if anything, it’s becoming bigger and much more loud and proud. Geeks are finding their way, and not only are we seeing more geeks, we’re seeing more and more fan-centric conventions (aka “cons”) popping up. The con setting is such a great one because the framing device offers so much tension, so much opportunity for drama, and a workable timeframe for a well-plotted, emotionally-infused story.

And just because it makes sense, I’ve included fandom-themed reads here, too. A really interesting thing I noticed in poking around on Goodreads is that about 10 years ago, “Geek” in the title or description of a book was a pejorative; that’s not so much the case in these now.

 

Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia (May 30)

In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless. Online, Eliza is LadyConstellation, anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves her digital community, and has no desire to try.

Then Wallace Warland, Monstrous Sea‘s biggest fanfiction writer, transfers to her school. Wallace thinks Eliza is just another fan, and Eliza begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile. But when Eliza’s secret is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart.

With illustrations from Eliza’s webcomic, as well as screenshots from Eliza’s online forums and snippets of Wallace’s fanfiction.

 

Follow Me Back by AV Geiger (June 6; first in a series)

Tessa Hart’s world feels very small. Confined to her bedroom with agoraphobia, her one escape is the online fandom for pop sensation Eric Thorn. When he tweets to his fans, it’s like his speaking directly to her…

Eric Thorn is frightened by his obsessive fans. They take their devotion way too far. It doesn’t help that his PR team keeps posting to encourage their fantasies.

When a fellow pop star is murdered at the hands of a fan, Eric knows he has to do something to shatter his online image fast—like take down one of his top Twitter followers. But Eric’s plan to troll @TessaHeartsEric unexpectedly evolves into an online relationship deeper than either could have imagined. And when the two arrange to meet IRL, what should have made for the world’s best episode of Catfish takes a deadly turn…

Told through tweets, direct messages, and police transcripts.

 

Geekerella by Ashley Poston (April 4)

Geek girl Elle Wittimer lives and breathes Starfield, the classic sci-fi series she grew up watching with her late father. So when she sees a cosplay contest for a new Starfield movie, she has to enter. The prize? An invitation to the ExcelsiCon Cosplay Ball, and a meet-and-greet with the actor slated to play Federation Prince Carmindor in the reboot. With savings from her gig at the Magic Pumpkin food truck (and her dad’s old costume), Elle’s determined to win…unless her stepsisters get there first.

Teen actor Darien Freeman used to live for cons—before he was famous. Now they’re nothing but autographs and awkward meet-and-greets. Playing Carmindor is all he’s ever wanted, but Starfield fandom has written him off as just another dumb heartthrob. As ExcelsiCon draws near, Darien feels more and more like a fake—until he meets a girl who shows him otherwise. But when she disappears at midnight, will he ever be able to find her again?

Part romance, part love letter to nerd culture.

 

 

 

Grace and The Fever by Zan Romanoff (May 16)

In middle school, everyone was a Fever Dream fan. Now, a few weeks after her high school graduation, Grace Thomas sometimes feels like the only one who never moved on. She can’t imagine what she’d do without the community of online fans that share her obsession. Or what her IRL friends would say if they ever found out about it.

Then, one summer night, the unthinkable happens: Grace meets her idol, Jes. What starts out as an elusive glimpse of Fever Dream’s world turns into an unlikely romance, and leads her to confront dark, complex truths about herself and the realities of stardom.

 

Kat and Meg Conquer The World by Anna Priemaza (November 7; for some reason, it won’t let me load the cover, which you can see here)

Kat and Meg couldn’t be more different.

Kat’s anxiety makes it hard for her to talk to new people. The only place she feels safe is in front of her computer, playing her favorite video game.

Meg hates being alone, but her ADHD keeps pushing people away. Friends. Her boyfriend. Even the stepfather who raised her.

But when the two girls are thrown together for a year-long science project, they discover they do have one thing in common: their obsession with the online gaming star LumberLegs and his hilarious videos.

Meg’s pretty sure this is fate. Kat doesn’t know how to deal with someone who talks faster than she thinks. But if they can stick together and stay out of their heads, they might figure out how to help each other—and build the kind of friendship Kat never knew she wanted and Meg never believed she’d find.

 

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde (March 14)

When BFFs Charlie, Taylor and Jamie go to SupaCon, they know it’s going to be a blast. What they don’t expect is for it to change their lives forever.

Charlie likes to stand out. SupaCon is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star, Jason Ryan. When Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought.

While Charlie dodges questions about her personal life, Taylor starts asking questions about her own.

Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about the Queen Firestone SupaFan Contest, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe.

 

Internet Famous by Danika Stone (June 6)

High school senior and internet sensation Madison Nakama seems to have it all: a happy family, good grades, and a massive online following for her pop-culture blog. But when her mother suddenly abandons the family, Madi finds herself struggling to keep up with all of her commitments.

Fandom to the rescue! As her online fans band together to help, an online/offline flirtation sparks with Laurent, a French exchange student. Their internet romance—played out in the comments section of her MadLibs blog—attracts the attention of an internet troll who threatens the separation of Madi’s real and online personas. With her carefully constructed life unraveling, Madi must uncover the hacker’s identity before he can do any more damage, or risk losing the people she loves the most… Laurent included.

 

 

Shoes on Covers

It’s been a few years since we’ve seen shoes taking up some real estate on YA book covers in a way that makes it clear those shoes have meaning in some way. In the cases of these books, that meaning comes in a black boot. Serious business.

 

 

16 Ways to Break A Heart by Lauren Strasnick (July 25)

Natalie and Dan were electric from the moment they met. Witty banter and sizzling chemistry made falling in love easy—even inevitable. He was in awe of her subversive art and contagious zest for life; she was drawn to his good-guy charm and drive to succeed as a documentary filmmaker.

But that was before. Before hot tempers turned to blowout fights. Before a few little lies turned to broken trust. Before a hundred tiny slights broke them open and exposed the ugly truth of their relationship.

And now Natalie wants Dan to know just how much he broke her.

Over the course of one fateful day, Dan reads sixteen letters that Natalie has secretly, brilliantly hidden in places only he will find. And as he pieces together her version of their love story, he realizes that she has one final message for him. One that might just send his carefully constructed life tumbling down.

Unfolding through letters, texts, and chats, Lauren Strasnick’s smart, sexy, page-turning new novel is the ultimate he said/she said breakdown of a relationship gone wrong.

 

Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney Stevens (August 29)

The year I was seventeen, I had five best friends…and I was in love with all of them for different reasons.

Billie McCaffrey is always starting things. Like couches constructed of newspapers and two-by-fours. Like costumes made of aluminum cans and Starburst wrappers. Like trouble.

This year, however, trouble comes looking for her.

Her best friends, a group she calls the Hexagon, have always been schemers. They scheme for kicks and giggles. What happens when you microwave a sock? They scheme to change their small town of Otters Holt, Kentucky, for the better. Why not campaign to save the annual Harvest Festival we love so much? They scheme because they need to scheme. How can we get the most unlikely candidate elected to the town’s highest honor?

But when they start scheming about love, things go sideways.

In Otters Holt, love has been defined only one way—girl and boy fall in love, get married, and buy a Buick, and there’s sex in there somewhere. For Billie—a box-defying dynamo—it’s not that simple.

Can the Hexagon, her parents, and the town she calls home handle the real Billie McCaffrey?

 

In Some Other Life by Jessica Brody (August 29)

Kennedy Rhodes turns down an acceptance to an elite private school, instead choosing to stay at her high school and jump at the opportunity to date the boy of her dreams. Three years later, Kennedy walks in on that same boyfriend cheating with her best friend—and wishes she had made a different choice. But when Kennedy hits her head and wakes up in the version of her life where she chose to attend the private school, she finds that maybe it’s not as perfect of a world as she once thought.

 

 

Wedding Bells 

I remember a conversation a few years back — back when Erin McCahan’s I Now Pronounce You Someone Else came out — about how there aren’t many weddings or marriage stories in YA fiction. I’ve thought about that a lot, seeing that I have known many who’ve gotten married in their late teens or given it some serious thought (and I got married in my very early 20s). Whenever I see a book that has something to do with marriage in YA, it lands on my radar for this reason, and this year, it looks like we have a few. These don’t necessarily have to do with wedding bells ringing, but they do explore some aspect of wedding culture.

You might, of course, recall that Jenny Han, whose book is featured below, does explore this in her previous solo trilogy, too, if this is a topic that fascinates you.

 

 

Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han (May 2)

Lara Jean is having the best senior year a girl could ever hope for. She is head over heels in love with her boyfriend, Peter; her dad’s finally getting remarried to their next door neighbor, Ms. Rothschild; and Margot’s coming home for the summer just in time for the wedding.

But change is looming on the horizon. And while Lara Jean is having fun and keeping busy helping plan her father’s wedding, she can’t ignore the big life decisions she has to make. Most pressingly, where she wants to go to college and what that means for her relationship with Peter. She watched her sister Margot go through these growing pains. Now Lara Jean’s the one who’ll be graduating high school and leaving for college and leaving her family—and possibly the boy she loves—behind.

When your heart and your head are saying two different things, which one should you listen to?

 

Prince in Disguise by Stephanie Kate Strohm (Fall 2017)

A romantic comedy in which a Mississippi teen finds herself in front of the cameras as her beauty-queen big sister prepares for a reality-TV wedding to a Scottish aristocrat.

 

Once and For All by Sarah Dessen (June 6)

Louna, daughter of famed wedding planner Natalie Barrett, has seen every sort of wedding: on the beach, at historic mansions, in fancy hotels and clubs. Perhaps that’s why she’s cynical about happily-ever-after endings, especially since her own first love ended tragically. When Louna meets charming, happy-go-lucky serial dater Ambrose, she holds him at arm’s length. But Ambrose isn’t about to be discouraged, now that he’s met the one girl he really wants.

 

 

Color Split Covers

This one is a pretty self-explanatory cover trend. I know there are more than the ones below. Book covers that are split in half into two colors (I keep thinking that The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli fits this, but it doesn’t, since it’s the arrows on the cover which are in different colors and not the background color itself).

 

 

History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

When Griffin’s first love and ex-boyfriend, Theo, dies in a drowning accident, his universe implodes. Even though Theo had moved to California for college and started seeing Jackson, Griffin never doubted Theo would come back to him when the time was right. But now, the future he’s been imagining for himself has gone far off course.

To make things worse, the only person who truly understands his heartache is Jackson. But no matter how much they open up to each other, Griffin’s downward spiral continues. He’s losing himself in his obsessive compulsions and destructive choices, and the secrets he’s been keeping are tearing him apart.

If Griffin is ever to rebuild his future, he must first confront his history, every last heartbreaking piece in the puzzle of his life.

 

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (March 28)

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around— and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance to lose his dream forever.

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?

The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? and if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

 

Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham (February 21)

Some bodies won’t stay buried.

Some stories need to be told.

When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family’s property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the past… and the present.

Nearly one hundred years earlier, a misguided violent encounter propels seventeen-year-old Will Tillman into a racial firestorm. In a country rife with violence against blacks and a hometown segregated by Jim Crow, Will must make hard choices on a painful journey towards self discovery and face his inner demons in order to do what’s right the night Tulsa burns.

Through intricately interwoven alternating perspectives, Jennifer Latham’s lightning-paced page-turner brings the Tulsa race riot of 1921 to blazing life and raises important question about the complex state of US race relations – both yesterday and today.

 

The Places Between Breaths by An Na (September 5)

Sixteen-year-old Grace is in a race against time—and in a race for her life—even if she doesn’t realize it yet…

She is smart, responsible, and contending with more than what most teens ever have to. Her mother struggled with schizophrenia for years until, one day, she simply disappeared—fleeing in fear that she was going to hurt herself or those she cared about. Ever since, Grace’s father has worked as a recruiter at one of the leading labs dedicated to studying the disease, trying to lure the world’s top scientists to the faculty to find a cure, hoping against hope it can happen in time to help his wife if she is ever found. But this makes him distant. Consumed.

Grace, in turn, does her part, interning at the lab in the gene sequencing department in hopes that one day they might make a breakthrough…and one day they do. Grace stumbles upon a string of code that could be the key. But something inside of Grace has started to unravel. Could her discovery just be a cruel side effect of the schizophrenia finally taking hold? Can she even tell the difference between what is real and what isn’t?

 

 

Immaculate Conception

If it’s two books, and it’s one from 2015 and one from 2017, I don’t know if it technically qualifies under my own made-up rules of what a microtrend is. Alas, there are two recentish books about the immaculate conception, and I couldn’t help highlighting them because what a topic. Again, the bigger picture of what books like this and books about dead girls and missing girls say about our culture’s beliefs and interest in teen girls.

 

 

Immaculate by Katelyn Detweiler

Mina is seventeen. A virgin. And pregnant.

Mina is top of her class, girlfriend to the most ambitious guy in school, able to reason and study her way through anything. But when she suddenly finds herself pregnant—despite having never had sex—her orderly world collapses. Almost nobody believes Mina’s claims of virginity. Her father assumes that her boyfriend is responsible; her boyfriend believes she must have cheated on him. As news of Mina’s story spreads, there are those who brand her a liar. There are those who brand her a heretic. And there are those who believe that miracles are possible—and that Mina’s unborn child could be the greatest miracle of all.

 

The Inconceivable Life of Quinn by Marianna Baer (April 4)

Quinn Cutler is sixteen and the daughter of a high-profile Brooklyn politician. She’s also pregnant, a crisis made infinitely more shocking by the fact that she has no memory of ever having sex. Before Quinn can solve this deeply troubling mystery, her story becomes public. Rumors spread, jeopardizing her reputation, her relationship with a boyfriend she adores, and her father’s campaign for Congress. Religious fanatics gather at the Cutlers’ home, believing Quinn is a virgin, pregnant with the next messiah. Quinn’s desperate search for answers uncovers lies and family secrets—strange, possibly supernatural ones. Might she, in fact, be a virgin?

 

 

Fathers Own Stores

This would be one of those microtrends you only discover because you’ve read the books. In this case, both girls are the daughters of independent grocery stores. In both cases, the girls are closely linked to those stores, as well as their fathers, and both are set in the boroughs of New York City. These are excellent examples of highlighting class, too.

Another interesting connection between these two books: the main characters go to fancy high schools outside their own neighborhoods.

 

 

The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lilliam Rivera (February 21)

THINGS/PEOPLE MARGOT HATES:

Mami, for destroying my social life

Papi, for allowing Junior to become a Neanderthal

Junior, for becoming a Neanderthal

This supermarket

Everyone else

After “borrowing” her father’s credit card to finance a more stylish wardrobe, Margot

Sanchez suddenly finds herself grounded. And by grounded, she means working as an indentured servant in her family’s struggling grocery store to pay off her debts.

With each order of deli meat she slices, Margot can feel her carefully cultivated prep school reputation slipping through her fingers, and she’s willing to do anything to get out of this punishment. Lie, cheat, and maybe even steal…

Margot’s invitation to the ultimate beach party is within reach and she has no intention of letting her family’s drama or Moises—the admittedly good looking but outspoken boy from the neighborhood—keep her from her goal.

 

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (February 28)

Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl’s struggle for justice.

 

 

The F-Word Titles

Here’s a little known fact: my book was originally proposed with the title F* It Up: Feminism for the Real World. That dropped pretty quickly, and even when we began brainstorming new titles, I realized how frequently the little wink-nudge of the “F-Word” was being used for book titles.

It’s still a wink-nudge, but at least in YA, it’s not only being used for books about Feminism. There are a few other “F” words, too.

 

 

The F-Word by Kiley Roache (June 27)

For Cassandra Davis, the F-word is fraternity—specifically Delta Tau Chi, a house on probation and on the verge of being banned from campus. Accused of offensive, sexist behavior, they have one year to clean up their act. For the DTC brothers, the F-word is feminist—the type of person who writes articles in the school paper about why they should lose their home.

With one shot at a scholarship to attend the university of her dreams, Cassie pitches a research project: to pledge Delta Tau Chi and provide proof of their misogynistic behavior. They’re frat boys. She knows exactly what to expect once she gets there. Exposing them should be a piece of cake.

But the boys of Delta Tau Chi have their own agenda, and fellow pledge Jordan Louis is certainly more than the tank top wearing “bro” Cassie expected to find. With her heart and her future tangled in the web of her own making, Cassie is forced to realize that the F-word might not be as simple as she thought after all.

 

The Other F-Word by Natasha Friend (March 7)

A fresh, humorous, and timely YA novel about two teens conceived via in vitro fertilization who go in search for answers about their donor.

Milo has two great moms, but he’s never known what it’s like to have a dad. When Milo’s doctor suggests asking his biological father to undergo genetic testing to shed some light on Milo’s extreme allergies, he realizes this is a golden opportunity to find the man he’s always wondered about.

Hollis’s mom Leigh hasn’t been the same since her other mom, Pam, passed away seven years ago. But suddenly, Leigh seems happy—giddy, even—by the thought of reconnecting with Hollis’s half-brother Milo. Hollis and Milo were conceived using the same sperm donor. They met once, years ago, before Pam died.

Now Milo has reached out to Hollis to help him find their donor. Along the way, they locate three other donor siblings, and they discover the true meaning of the other F-word: family.

 

The Big F by Maggie Ann Martin (August 29)

Danielle effed up. Big time.

Danielle’s plans for the future were pretty easy to figure out… until she failed senior English and her single college application was denied. Suddenly she’s in hot water with very few options, because honestly who applies to a safety school when their mom is a semi-famous “college psychic”?!

Determined to get her life back on track, Danielle enrolls in her hometown community college with a plan: pass her English class and get back into Ohio State and her mother’s good graces. Romance isn’t on her radar… until she reconnects with her childhood crush and golden-boy-next-door, Luke.

Between family drama, first love and finding her own way, Danielle can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed. Thankfully she has her friendship with the snarky and frustratingly attractive Porter, her coworker at the campus bookstore, to push her to experience new things and help keep her afloat.

 

Feminism: Reinventing the F Word by Nadia Abushanab Higgins

While most people say they believe in equal rights, the word feminism—America’s new F-word—makes people uncomfortable. Explore the history of US feminism through pioneers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and Gloria Steinem. Meet modern leaders such as Rebecca Walker and Julie Zeilinger, who are striving to empower women at work, in government, at home—and in cultural and personal arenas. Learn from interviews with movement leaders, scholars, pop stars, and average women, what it means to be a feminist—or to reject it altogether. After reading this book, readers will be able to respond to “Am I a feminist?” with a confident, informed voice.

This Week at Book Riot & Around The Web

 

What a week, y’all. I’ve been fighting off a cold and trying to both nurse that and not fall down into full-on sickness because I’ve got so much I need to get done. But that said, I managed to get quite a bit of writing done and tackle the to-do (including writing and scheduling out a ton of posts here!). Over on Book Riot this week…

 

A round-up of middle grade and young adult books by/about/set in the countries impacted by the president’s travel ban.

 

30 pairs of excellent bookish earrings.

 

This week’s “3 On A YA Theme” explored YA books with bipolar disorder (which are well-done).

 

Elsewhere around the web:

 

At The Book Smugglers, I wrote about my influences and inspirations behind Here We Are, and there’s a giveaway of a finished copy to US residents. There’s a comment that I absolutely love down there, about how this helped a reader better understand where I’m coming from in the other venues where I write. That was really nice to hear.

 

The New York Public Library called Here We Are one of the hottest YA books of 2017 so far.

 

Foreward Reviews interviewed me about Here We Are. 

 

If you’re in the Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, Tucson, New York City, Providence, Manchester (VT), Rhinebeck, Austin, or San Antonio areas, you should come see me and fellow contributors!

Persuasion by Jane Austen

I’ve only ever read one other Jane Austen book (Pride and Prejudice, unsurprisingly). I chose Persuasion next based pretty much on the age of the main character: 27, older than all of Austen’s other heroines. I liked the idea of the two leads reconnecting after several years apart, of how a very young love could have developed, changed, and strengthened over those years. Persuasion is a story about a mistake made while young that is rectified later on; it’s about how we change, but there are some parts of us that remain the same.

Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth fell in love when Anne was nineteen and Frederick was a 20-something naval officer. Anne is persuaded by one of her mentor-friends Lady Russell that a match with Frederick is not suitable for a person in her station, and she breaks it off. She regrets it for the next eight years, when Frederick reappears, now a captain. They reconnect because Frederick’s sister is a tenant at Kellynch Hall, Anne’s family’s home, which is being rented out in order to save the Elliots from financial ruin.

Like Pride and Prejudice, much is communicated between Anne and Frederick without words. There are looks and gestures, each subject to interpretation and misinterpretation, and each is unsure whether the other feels the same as they did eight years ago. Frederick is still smarting from Anne’s rejection, wondering if she is weak of character, to be persuaded so easily. Of course, as he becomes reacquainted with her, he finds himself just as much in love with her as before. Anne, too, harbors her doubts – could Frederick forgive her for her mistake? Could he still love her?

We as readers are never in doubt of the happy ending, but getting there is a treat. Austen’s ancillary characters are hilarious here. I loved all of their conversations about what type of person makes the best tenant, whether being in the navy (or any profession) ages men prematurely, and how men and women each think of romantic love. Anne’s sister Mary is particularly funny, unintentionally on her part, as she is somewhat of a hypochondriac and a complainer and no one is particularly happy to spend much time with her. She always seems to be around, though, because not inviting her along would be rude, even if she wouldn’t enjoy the occasion anyway. We all know this person.

What really makes this book, though, is a letter from Frederick to Anne near the end. It beats any letter or speech in Pride and Prejudice and whenever I want a pick me up, I re-read it and place my hand over my heart and sigh. Quite literally. I’ve reproduced it for you below so you can do the same if you so desire.

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.

Is there anything more romantic than “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope”? I am hopeless sometimes.

On The Radar: February 2017 YA Titles

 

“On The Radar” is a monthly series meant to highlight between 9 and 12 books per month to fit a budget of roughly $300 or less. These lists are curated from a larger spreadsheet I keep with a running list of titles hitting shelves and are meant to reflect not only the big books coming out from authors readers know and love, but it’s also meant to showcase some of the titles that have hit my radar through review copies, publicity blasts, or because they’re titles that might otherwise not be readily seen or picked up through those traditional avenues. It’s part science and part art.

This month, I’ve pulled 11 titles, a few from well-known authors and/or popular series, and a few that are debut authors whose books are making a splash already. I’ve also deliberately selected inclusive YA titles, since February is a month where we’re seeing quite a few; hopefully, this is a thing we’ll continue to see the rest of the year.

Book descriptions come from Goodreads and reasons for putting on your radar are mine and mine alone! Titles are alphabetical, with pub dates beside them.

 

American Street by Ibi Zoboi (February 14)

On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie—a good life.

But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola’s mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit’s west side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own.

Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola soon realizes that freedom comes at a cost. Trapped at the crossroads of an impossible choice, will she pay the price for the American dream?

 

Why it should be on your radar: This is an immigrant story with a gritty urban setting. It’s a timely (and timeless!) story.

 

At The Edge of the Universe by Shaun David Hutchinson (February 7)

Tommy and Ozzie have been best friends since second grade, and boyfriends since eighth. They spent countless days dreaming of escaping their small town—and then Tommy vanished.

More accurately, he ceased to exist, erased from the minds and memories of everyone who knew him. Everyone except Ozzie.

Ozzie doesn’t know how to navigate life without Tommy, and soon suspects that something else is going on: that the universe is shrinking.

When Ozzie is paired up with new student Calvin on a physics project, he begins to wonder if Calvin could somehow be involved. But the more time they spend together, the harder it is for him to deny the feelings developing between them, even if he still loves Tommy.

But Ozzie knows there isn’t much time left to find Tommy–that once the door closes, it can’t be opened again. And he’s determined to keep it open as long as possible.

 

Why it should be on your radar: Hutchinson continues to blossom as a staple in YA lit, and even more specifically, a staple author to know for books featuring queer characters whose stories explore the edges past the “coming out” narrative.

 

The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lilliam Rivera (February 21)

Pretty in Pink comes to the South Bronx in this bold and romantic coming-of-age novel about dysfunctional families, good and bad choices, and finding the courage to question everything you ever thought you wanted—from debut author Lilliam Rivera.

THINGS/PEOPLE MARGOT HATES:

Mami, for destroying my social life

Papi, for allowing Junior to become a Neanderthal

Junior, for becoming a Neanderthal

This supermarket

Everyone else

After “borrowing” her father’s credit card to finance a more stylish wardrobe, Margot

Sanchez suddenly finds herself grounded. And by grounded, she means working as an indentured servant in her family’s struggling grocery store to pay off her debts.

With each order of deli meat she slices, Margot can feel her carefully cultivated prep school reputation slipping through her fingers, and she’s willing to do anything to get out of this punishment. Lie, cheat, and maybe even steal…

Margot’s invitation to the ultimate beach party is within reach and she has no intention of letting her family’s drama or Moises—the admittedly good looking but outspoken boy from the neighborhood—keep her from her goal.

 

Why it should be on your radar: Another urban-set story featuring characters of color — we don’t have enough of these sorts of books, and we certainly always have room for more. This debut sounds excellent and has been receiving quite a bit of buzz.

 

Frogkisser by Garth Nix (February 28)

Poor Princess Anya. Forced to live with her evil stepmother’s new husband, her evil stepstepfather. Plagued with an unfortunate ability to break curses with a magic-assisted kiss. And forced to go on the run when her stepstepfather decides to make the kingdom entirely his own.

Aided by a loyal talking dog, a boy thief trapped in the body of a newt, and some extraordinarily mischievous wizards, Anya sets off on a Quest that, if she plays it right, will ultimately free her land-and teach her a thing or two about the use of power, the effectiveness of a well-placed pucker, and the finding of friends in places both high and low.

 

Why it should be on your radar: Besides being by Garth Nix, this light-hearted fantasy sounds like the kind of book that will fill in some of the gaps in YA collections that need titles on the lower end of the age range. Plus, it sounds fun.

 

 

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (February 28)

Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl’s struggle for justice.

 

Why it should be on your radar: This book went to a heated auction among different publishing houses for a reason. This contemporary read explores the Black Lives Matter and has already been optioned for film. It’s going to mean a lot of things to a lot of teen readers, particularly those who have an interest and passion for social justice. Excellent characters, realistic teen dialog, and continued buzz mean this one will be passed from teen to teen. No question.

 

 

King’s Cage by Victoria Aveyard (February 7)

Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother’s web in an attempt to maintain control over his country—and his prisoner.

As Mare bears the weight of Silent Stone in the palace, her once-ragtag band of newbloods and Reds continue organizing, training, and expanding. They prepare for war, no longer able to linger in the shadows. And Cal, the exiled prince with his own claim on Mare’s heart, will stop at nothing to bring her back.

When blood turns on blood, and ability on ability, there may be no one left to put out the fire—leaving Norta as Mare knows it to burn all the way down.

 

Why it should be on your radar: It’s the third book in the tremendously popular “Red Queen” series. If you haven’t acquired the first two, they should be available in paperback for you to fill in.

 

 

The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro (February 14)

Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes are looking for a winter break reprieve in Sussex after a fall semester that almost got them killed. But nothing about their time off is proving simple, including Holmes and Watson’s growing feelings for each other. When Charlotte’s beloved uncle Leander goes missing from the Holmes estate—after being oddly private about his latest assignment in a German art forgery ring—the game is afoot once again, and Charlotte throws herself into a search for answers.

So begins a dangerous race through the gritty underground scene in Berlin and glittering art houses in Prague, where Holmes and Watson discover that this complicated case might change everything they know about their families, themselves, and each other.

 

Why it should be on your radar: The first book in this series, A Study in Charlotte, earned a lot of buzz and positive reviews. It’s likely book two will do the same thing. A female-twist on the Sherlock Holmes story.

 

 

Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson (February 14)

Jade believes she must get out of her neighborhood if she’s ever going to succeed. Her mother says she has to take every opportunity. She has. She accepted a scholarship to a mostly-white private school and even Saturday morning test prep opportunities. But some opportunities feel more demeaning than helpful. Like an invitation to join Women to Women, a mentorship program for “at-risk” girls. Except really, it’s for black girls. From “bad” neighborhoods.

But Jade doesn’t need support. And just because her mentor is black doesn’t mean she understands Jade. And maybe there are some things Jade could show these successful women about the real world and finding ways to make a real difference.

Friendships, race, privilege, identity—this compelling and thoughtful story explores the issues young women face.

 

Why it should be on your radar: Watson’s capacity to explore social class, among other topics, makes her work necessary and important in YA collections. These are stories we don’t see enough of. Bonus for an incredible cover on this book, too.

 

 

A Season of Daring Greatly by Ellen Emerson White (February 14)

Eighteen-year-old Jill Cafferty just made history. Her high school’s star pitcher, she is now the first woman drafted by a major league baseball team. Only days after her high school graduation, she’ll join the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Class A Short Season team . . . but not everyone is happy to have her there.

On top of the pressure heaped on every pitcher, Jill must deal with defying conventions and living up to impossible expectations, all while living away from home for the first time. She’ll go head-to-head against those who are determined to keep baseball an all-male sport. Despite the reassurance of coaches and managers alike, a few of her teammates are giving her trouble. The media presence following her at each game is inescapable. And to top it all off, Jill is struggling with the responsibilities of being a national hero and a role model for young women everywhere. How can she be a role model when she’s not even sure she made the right choice for herself? Didn’t baseball used to be fun?

 

Why it should be on your radar: Ellen Emerson White! Girls in sports! The comps for this one are Friday Night Lights and Laurie Halse Anderson, so it’ll go. And if popularity of Miranda Kennelly is any indication, readers are itching for girls playing sports and loving athleticism in their YA reads.

 

 

 

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour (February 14)

“You go through life thinking there’s so much you need. . . . Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother.”

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

 

Why it should be on your radar: Nina LaCour is an award winning writer, and her work continues to be getting better and better. This’ll certainly go over with your more literary-minded YA readers.

 

 

Wintersong by S Jae Jones (February 7)

All her life, nineteen-year-old Liesl has heard tales of the beautiful, mysterious Goblin King. He is the Lord of Mischief, the Ruler Underground, and the muse around which her music is composed. Yet, as Liesl helps shoulder the burden of running her family’s inn, her dreams of composition and childish fancies about the Goblin King must be set aside in favor of more practical concerns.

But when her sister Käthe is taken by the goblins, Liesl journeys to their realm to rescue her sister and return her to the world above. The Goblin King agrees to let Käthe go—for a price. The life of a maiden must be given to the land, in accordance with the old laws. A life for a life, he says. Without sacrifice, nothing good can grow. Without death, there can be no rebirth. In exchange for her sister’s freedom, Liesl offers her hand in marriage to the Goblin King. He accepts.

Down in the Underground, Liesl discovers that the Goblin King still inspires her—musically, physically, emotionally. Yet even as her talent blossoms, Liesl’s life is slowly fading away, the price she paid for becoming the Goblin King’s bride. As the two of them grow closer, they must learn just what it is they are each willing to sacrifice: her life, her music, or the end of the world.

 

Why it should be on your radar: This debut is a stand-alone fantasy story with tremendous appeal.

 

 

This Week Around The Web

 

Over on Book Riot this week:

 

Recommended recent and upcoming books that feature stories and lives of fat girls. Fiction and non-fiction, prose and comic form. These three books are so different and so wonderful.

 

A look at YA authors who have adapted their own books into comics.

 

Feel like taking part in a low-pressure Instagram/Bookstagram challenge? I set one up at Book Riot and it’s so nice to have an entire social media feed filled with nothing but happy pictures of books. Join in whenever you want to this month.

 

 

More things from around the web, this time having to do with Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World:

 

The last two posts at Teen Librarian Toolbox for their Social Justice in YA Lit project went up. You can check out interviews with Sarah McCarry and Daniel José Older. You can catch up on the whole series of interviews here.

 

Jim Higgins at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote an excellent review of the anthology (& it was so neat to pick this up in print and hold!).

 

Shelf Awareness awarded Here We Are its FIFTH starred review.

 

Jen Doll at New York Magazine (!!) called Here We Are one of the 11 great books for “stoking the feminist fire” in young readers. I’m on a list with The Baby-Sitters Club, y’all.

 

I’m going to make this plea regularly, but if you read and love my book, would you drop a short review on Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble? Algorithms on consumer sites are set up such that more reviews lead to better findability for readers. I’ve set my own goal of copying over reviews to those sites once a month, so I can put my own money where my mouth is.

Snag a Feminist T-Shirt, Mug, or Sticker & Support Good Causes

As part of the promotion for Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World at ALA Midwinter, Algonquin gave out out some excellent t-shirts that looked like this (with a standard collar, unlike my DIY boatneck):

 

A number of people asked if they could buy one of those shirts, since they weren’t able to attend ALA. So, with permission of Algonquin, they’re available.

You can pick up a standard crewneck t-shirt, a mug, or a sticker from teespring through Friday, February 3, end of the day — and if there’s more interest, I am happy to extend the sale longer. All of the proceeds from the sales will be split between two excellent causes: Girls Write Now and We Need Diverse Books.

As of this post, about $200 will be split and donated. I’d love to be able to hit $500. I think that’s totally possible.

 

Monthly Giving: Council on American-Islamic Relations

Today, February 1, is World Hijab Day. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), today is the day “set aside to reaffirm a Muslim’s woman’s right to wear the religious garb.” Yesterday was also Texas Muslim Capitol Day, a day for Muslim Texans to visit the Capitol to learn about the Texas political process and to advocate for themselves. This day is usually met with protests; this year, the small protests were drowned out by a human shield of mostly non-Muslim supporters. It’s in that spirit of celebration that I donated to CAIR this month.

Of course, those aren’t the only reasons. Not only must Muslim women in this country fight for the basic right to wear what they want, Muslims (and others caught in the cross-hairs of the executive order) are now faced with a fight to simply be in the United States – green card holders, refugees, brothers and sisters and parents and children. The ACLU has a powerful piece covering “some of the human misery” that has occurred as a result of this unlawful, unconstitutional executive order.

Perhaps more than anything else that has happened since inauguration day, this feels most like a betrayal of American principles. Things like this have happened before, but we always, always hope that they will never happen again. We hope that we will be ones to stop it from happening again. To live in such times where they do is heartbreaking – and a call to action.

CAIR has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the executive order. I hope my donation goes a small way toward helping them to victory. If you have the means and haven’t yet made a donation for February, I urge you to donate to CAIR.

Below are a few recommended books featuring Muslim kids and teens. Now would be a great time for a display. Kelly’s piece on refugees from 2015 is also worth revisiting. Descriptions are from WorldCat and links lead to our reviews or Goodreads.

Picture Books

Deep in the Sahara by Kelly Cunnane

Lailah’s Lunchbox by Reem Faruqi

Moon Watchers: Shirin’s Ramadan Miracle by Reza Jalali

Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns by Hena Khan

The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Saved Jews During the Holocaust by Karen Gray Ruelle

The World is Not a Rectangle: A Portrait of Architect Zaha Hadid by Jeanette Winter (forthcoming August 2017)

Middle Grade

Amina’s Voice by Hena Khan (forthcoming March 2017)

Beneath My Mother’s Feet by Amjed Qamar

The Gauntlet by Karuna Riazi (forthcoming March 2017)

Ticket to India by N. H. Senzai

The Garden of My Imaan by Farhana Zia

Young Adult

The Secret Sky by Atia Abawi

Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Watched by Marina Budhos

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

That Thing We Call a Heart by Sheba Karim

Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed

I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister by Amelie Sarn

Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson (graphic novel)

I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World by Malala Yousafzai with Patricia McCormick

Integrity, Climate Change, Social Justice, and Other Necessary Facts: A Reading List

Something I’ve been wanting to do more of is round-up links of interest for older posts we’ve written here at Stacked, as well as older posts you might be interested that Kimberly and I have written elsewhere. Being that we’re on year eight at STACKED, there are so many things we’ve touched upon and dug into, and much of it is perennially interesting.

In the spirit of a US administration bent on the idea of “alternative facts,” denial of climate change, the closing of the investigation into the Flint Water Crisis, and bills meant to restrict access to affordable health care, reproductive choice, and more, it’s hard to want to keep on fighting. It feels like every day is a set of new laws, new proposals, and new stories.

The one place that has been a light — teenagers.

 

 

We’re all aware that Teen Vogue is one of the best journalism sources out there right now, and that’s because they know their audience is smart, savvy, social justice minded teenagers. Teens have been at the forefront of leading marches and protests, and it’s teens who we keep seeing show up again and again to do the work.

I keep trying to find a way to build a booklist that adequately captures what it is teens are thinking and doing, and I realized that we’ve covered so many of these topics here on STACKED That it made a lot more sense to do a big round-up. So here, find yourself big book lists of YA reads covering topics of reproductive rights, social justice, climate change, doing what’s right, truth telling, journalism, and more.

Because the kids? They’re all right. Even in fiction.

And it might be that fiction is where we find the answers that allow us to fight on another day.

Please note: when we changed blog hosting services last summer, some of our older posts got a little weird in their formatting. We’re working on updating those where possible. They’re entirely readable and usable; just sometimes, the images look funny or uneven. Also note that this isn’t comprehensive, but an over

 

 

On Science and Climate Change 

 

Genre guide and book list to YA climate fiction (Cli-Fi).

 

Monthly giving ideas and a book list for young eco lovers and conservationists.

 

Book reviews of recent non-fiction for middle grade and young adult readers with a focus on the environment, climate change, and science history.

 

Genre guide and book list to YA dystopia fiction (from 2013, when it was really big).

 

 

On Women’s Rights and Feminism

 

Monthly giving ideas and a book list to YA featuring characters choosing abortion.

 

Abortion in YA lit from Book Riot.

 

Abortion, Choice, and Agency: A guest post and reading list for our “About The Girls” series from Tess Sharpe.

 

In a guest post, Brandy Colbert talks about the importance of intersectional female friendships in YA lit.

 

The challenges of being female with an opinion. You don’t have to be “nice.”

 

Excellent nonfiction about girls and women for tween and teen readers.

 

 

On Journalism, Censorship, and Integrity

 

Book list and discussion: Young journalists in YA fiction.

 

Book list and discussion: Censorship, challenges, and protest in YA fiction.

 

A guide to talking about tough books with teens. While this focuses on books relating to sexuality, violence, drugs, and more, the same principles are applicable to talking about the current media and political climate (and women’s/queer rights). This might be a post we revisit, with a focus specifically on those arenas.

 

Defining “censorship” and differentiating it from criticism.

 

 

On Inclusivity/Race & Diversity 

 

A round-up of kid lit featuring black girls, from the money raised to help Marley Dias create a library of #1000BlackGirlBooks.

 

Making a commitment to diversity when you’re white.

 

Book list and discussion: Refugees in YA lit. At Book Riot, 3 non-fiction titles that explore the refugee experience.

 

 

 

On Inclusivity/Queer & LGBTQ Rights and Issues

 

Monthly giving ideas and a book list of middle grade and YA lit featuring trans and non-gender conforming teens.

 

The minds behind The Gay YA website talk about their inspirations and why having a space to talk about queer issues in life and in books for teens matters.

 

LGBTQIA+ books for middle grade readers: Discussion and book list.

 

YA queer stories that aren’t tragic.

 

LGBTQIA+ library and school book displays from around the world in honor of Pride month.

 

On micraggressions and queer phobia in the public library.

 

 

Disability

 

Solid disability stories in YA lit, along with a note of how important Disability in Kid Lit is.

 

 

Socioeconomic Class 

 

Librarian Faythe Arrendondo wonders where are the poor kids in YA lit?

 

How “free e-books” don’t help poor kids.

This Week Around The Web

 

Over on Book Riot this week…

 

I wrote about growing up as a library kid and the fond memories of being a kid of the library.

 

This week’s not-so “3 On A YA Theme” looked at YA spy stories.

 

And a round-up of 28 awesome bookish coffee mugs (including the Poe one I own and never can get enough of!).

 

 

With release week, there’s been a ton of other stuff around the web I’ve been a part of. Here’s a round-up of those pieces (note how patient the bunny is being in the above photo — usually he’s game with photos but he was not interested that night!):

 

At the Teen Librarian Toolbox blog, I’ve done a week-long series for their Social Justice in YA Lit project, which has included interviewing four of the contributors of Here We Are about their essays and about feminism and social justice more broadly. They also all include a tiny excerpt from the finished pieces. Since I’m writing this post pre-Thursday, not all are up yet, so I’ll share the rest next week. But you can read my take on how I’m an activist, Alida Nugent on using humor to do good work, and Brandy Colbert on finding her voice in feminism and on social justice. Amanda MacGregor also posted a really thoughtful, wonderful review of the anthology.

 

I was interviewed by Nadya Sarah Domingo for Teen Vogue and you can read her take on the book and our conversation here. That was such a delight, I can’t even explain. Great questions, great conversation, and what an honor to be featured on the leading source of actual news in the US right now.

 

Kayla Whaley, one of the contributors to Here We Are, wrote an unbelievably thoughtful post for the B&N teen blog about the anthology.

 

There’s more to come, some that I know about, and some that I don’t. Thanks for being along for the ride. I will ask this frequently, in part because it’s a thing I am resolving to be better at myself, but if you read and loved the book, can you drop a quick review on Amazon? Consumer reviews help the book land in the site’s algorithm, making it easier for other readers to discover the title. It doesn’t need to be long or intense. I appreciate it so, so much.