Category: Books for Young Adults

Guy Langman wasn’t really good at anything — quite the opposite of his dad who seemed to be amazing at everything without even trying.  Guy was rather thrown when his dad died (even though his dad was technically old enough to be his grandfather), and became suddenly intrigued by all things having to do with death.  So, it wasn’t exactly a stretch for him to accept an invitation from his best friend, Anoop, to join Mr. Zant’s Forensics Club.  (Especially since it provided a chance to impress some cute girls!)  For once in his life, Guy really cared about something and was actually good at it.  Which worked out rather nicely as some mysteries popped up in his own life…

American military personnel found Parvana in a bombed-out school building, so they brought her back to their base as a suspected terrorist.  Because she refused to speak, the interrogations continued day after day.  During that time, Parvana escaped into her memories — her flashbacks serving to provide readers with further information about her past.  With the information gleaned through those flashbacks, it was easy to see why Parvana didn’t feel comfortable talking to the soldiers who were interrogating her.  Between her experiences under the oppressive Taliban regime and the further struggles her family faced in the time after the Taliban was ousted, she learned that people in power didn’t always tell the truth and that speaking freely often made things worse.  Definitely an eye-opening book about what it means to grow up female in the Afghanistan and how the American military presence has both helped and hindered Afghanistan’s progress.

There are a lot of fairy tale retellings out there, but I was especially impressed by the fact that Cinder was both evocative of Cinderella and a major departure from the original story.  In this story, Cinder is a 16-year-old cyborg who constantly works to support and care for her evil stepmother and her two stepsisters.  She rarely has time for herself, but does her best not to complain because she knows her stepmother could easily “volunteer” her to be a test subject for letumosis [plague] vaccines instead.  While working in her booth at the market place one afternoon, she finds herself face-to-face with Prince Kai.  As it turns out, Cinder’s reputation as the best mechanic in New Beijing led Prince Kai to disguise himself so he could meet her and ask whether she would be willing and able to fix his droid, Nainsi, who suddenly stopped working.

Immediately after this clandestine meeting, though, Cinder’s entire life is turned upside-down because her stepsister Peony contracts letumosis and is put into quarantine.  Not only is Cinder worried about losing one of the only people in the world who actually cares about her, but her stepmother is blaming her for Peony’s illness!  Trying to balance her regular responsibilities, her promise to help Prince Kai, and her desire to help Peony, nevertheless, proves extremely difficult.  And while many girls in New Beijing would give anything to dance with Prince Kai at the upcoming ball, Cinder couldn’t care less about attending…  She has too many other things to worry about.  Yeah — this is definitely *not* your typical Cinderella story.

If I didn’t know the horrible truth, I might have thought McCormick had gone overboard with the horror and tragedy in this story. I sometimes find myself asking, as I read, “How much can possibly happen to one character?”   In this case, though, I knew that the novel was based on the true life story of a boy named Arn Chorn-Pond. This novel was only fictional inasmuch as Arn couldn’t possibly recall every detail of every day and every conversation he had over the course of 4 years. The sad reality is that the general timeline and events of this story truly happened to him, to his family, and to his country.

It still boggles my mind to think of how much devastation the Khmer Rouge wrought on Cambodia, especially since people rarely speak of it. How does a militant political group wipe out nearly 2 million people in just under 4 years without getting more than a footnote in many high school world history classes? People talk about the Holocaust and vow to never let something like that ever happen again, but they make no mention of Pol Pot’s reign of terror or the many genocides [some still taking place!] in African countries since the 1940s. It’s disgusting how often these events will go unmentioned just because it’s easier *not* to talk about it, and I applaud Patricia McCormick for writing this book.

I hope this story will help bring more attention to both the unfortunate history of Cambodia and to the subsequent efforts Arn Chorn-Pond has made to help other “children of war” and to keep Cambodian culture alive. For a historical overview of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, check out the Historical Overview of the Khmer Rouge at the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor. To learn more about the humanitarian organizations Arn Chorn-Pond founded in response to his experiences as a child in war-torn Cambodia, visit the websites for Children of War and the Cambodian Livings Arts.

Being the new kid at school can be really tough.  But being the new, fat, deaf kid in a school without an interpreter or a captioning system?  I can’t even imagine!  Luckily, Will Halpin has an uncanny ability to lipread and doesn’t much care what the “cool kids” think.  He has surmised, though, that everyone else is practically willing to kill each other for an invite to the upcoming birthday party of an über-popular jock named Pat.  This story isn’t just about the difficulties Will faced with main-streaming and making friends, though.  The real story is about how Will and Devon Smiley forged their new friendship while trying to figure out how Pat ended up dead during a field trip to the Happy Memory Coal Mine.

I enjoyed this story for a number of reasons, but first and foremost is the fact that there a good mix of humor and mystery.  It was definitely more Castle than CSI, if you know what I mean.  The fact that Josh Berk even managed to include a lot of information about deaf culture in a way that was neither clunky nor didactic was also awesome.  The original book cover is honestly the only thing I didn’t like about this book.  Luckily, it has been re-released with a new cover that is more likely to appeal to teens and also hints at the mystery within.

When I read The Giver, Gathering Blue, and Messenger, I thought it was a trilogy.  I had thought the story to be pretty well wrapped up at the end of Messenger, to be honest.  I was more than happy, nevertheless, to find out I was wrong.  Not only am I a big fan of Lois Lowry, but I have a major weakness for dystopias!

This story begins in the same society as The Giver, but Jonah is not the main character.  Instead, we see the society through the eyes of a young girl named Clair.  We are with Clair as she gets her work assignment — to be a birthmother — and also when the delivery of the “product” she was carrying goes wrong and results in a Caesarean.  Although she is made to wear a mask and can’t see the baby, she manages to find out that her baby, #36, was a boy.  A son.  Her love and longing for her son is unheard of in that society, so she has to pretend not to think about him and can never admit that she dreams about being able to raise him as her own.  I can’t say much more without major spoilers, but rest assured that this tale will reunite characters from all of the books in the series while demonstrating the lengths to which a mother will go for her child.

Maggie is suffering from memory loss, but she isn’t really sure whether she wants to get back those missing memories.  Why?  Because those memories would fill in the details of exactly what happened immediately before and after her boyfriend, Joey, accidentally fell to his death.  The story her friends gave her [and the police] is that Joey died as the result of a cliff dive gone wrong… but Maggie is afraid there might be more to it than a mere slip.  Could it have been something *she* did wrong?  After all, Joey had jumped from that cliff countless times, and he was supposed to be helping her with her first jump.  Her best friends — Adam, Shannon, and Tanna — are doing the best they can to support her, but they’re having a hard time even managing with their own grief in this tragic time.  A perfect blend of mystery and contemporary realistic fiction, especially if you’re in need of a good cry.

In this alternate history of World War I, the German forces [called Clankers] used steam-powered war machines like tanks and the Allied forces [called Darwinists] utilized living creatures as war machines.  The Leviathan, for example, was an airship made from a living whale-like creature.  Though it looked much like a Zeppelin, it was MUCH cooler because it depended on a complex ecosystem in which the waste-products of smaller organisms [living inside]  provided the helium-like substance that made it float.  Add that to the fact that people were walking around inside the beast/ship, and it’s not hard to understand why a science geek like me was just as enthralled by the Darwinists’ creations as I was with the whole rest of the story!  If you like action and adventure, and you’re not opposed to possibly learning something about world history, this is a book you should probably read.  (Just be sure to check out the author’s note in which Westerfeld explains which events/facts were true to history and which he created for the sake of his story.)

Verity was a passenger in British spy plane that was shot down over Nazi-occupied France.  When she looked the wrong way before crossing the street, and almost got hit by a van, she was picked up by the Gestapo.  In order to get Verity to reveal her mission and any other pertinent information about the British war effort, the Gestapo subjected her to a wide variety of tortures.  Verity’s confession gives an account of both what she endured and what she told the Gestapo, but it never explains whether it is completely truthful or if it contains any lies.  Compounding this confusion, of course, is the inclusion of this quote in the beginning of the book:

‘Passive resisters must understand that they are as important as saboteurs.’
SOE Secret Operations Manual
‘Methods of Passive Resistance’

Only by reading the second half of the book, told from the perspective of Verity’s pilot friend Maddie, can readers ascertain the truth.  This would be a good story for you if you want to learn more about some of the lesser-known facets of WWII, enjoy suspenseful stories, and appreciate heart-wrenching tales of friendship and devotion.

Sometimes I go into a book knowing pretty much what is going to happen but just curious about how the whole thing plays out.  This book, on the other hand, was one of those “everyone says it’s great, so I’m going to read it even though I don’t remember what the reviewer said about it back when I decided to order it” kind of books.  I put myself on the waiting list and then, when it showed up, I started reading without so much as a glance at the summary.

I usually like going into a book completely blind because I can enjoy the story better if my experience is not tainted by another person’s opinion.  When I first started reading this book, I thought the story was going to be a healthy serving of “coming-of-age in a small town” with a side order of “gay older brother.”  Boy, was I wrong!  When the tragic twist happened somewhere near the middle of the book, I felt like someone had punched me in the gut.  I immediately flipped to the back of the book and then looked inside the front cover to see if there had been any kind of indication or warning about it in the summary.  Yup…  I guess there was.  Part of me is glad that I wasn’t able to steel myself against the shock, so I could react more naturally to the story, but part of me wishes I had known something was going to happen so I didn’t have to fight so hard not to cry while I was reading in the middle of the pediatrician’s waiting room before my son’s check up!  I refuse to give anything away, but I will say this much — read this book somewhere you can feel free to let the tears flow and be sure to have a hanky or a tissue handy.

Dystopian sci-fi is a genre that I can’t seem to get enough of…  But this book was a bit too realistic and definitely freaked me out!  I actually had plans to go to the mall and told my husband that we’re just going to shop online for a while!  The blurb on the back of the book may very well be one of the shortest blurbs I’ve ever read, but it summed it up very well:

“It’s just another Saturday in a busy suburban mall. But not for long.”

When a kid named Marco stumbles upon a small device with a red, blinking LED, he just knows it’s a bomb.  When the bomb squad gets called in, things take a turn for the worse.  The entire mall ends up on lock-down because the bomb was in the HVAC [heating, ventilation, and air conditioning] control room and it may or may not have spread some form of contagion through the mall.  Alternating perspectives between two guys and two girls, this book lays out the details of a terrifying possibility — being quarantined in a mall, with limited supplies, for an indeterminate amount of time.  [shudder]  The worst part for me, though, was finding out that this is only book one and I have to wait to see how it all ends!

Kyra is 13 years old and has never known life outside of the compound.  Her family belongs to a strict, polygamous, religious cult where the men take on many wives, and the women are considered property — first of their fathers, and then of their husbands.  Kyra’s father has three wives and 21 children (soon to be 23), and Kyra is of an age where she is about to be promised to a man.  Back when the group first settled in this location, the girls were matched with boys only a few years older.  Now, it seems like all of the girls are being given to the older men — and Kyra is horrified to find out that the Prophet has matched her with her own uncle, who already has six wives.  She has accepted most of what she has been told her whole life, but things are getting less and less palatable by the day.  Will she be able to change the Prophet’s mind?  Will she run away?  Or will she have to marry her uncle, an awful prospect even if he wasn’t so closely related, and obey his every command? If you find this book interesting, you might also want to read Sister Wife by Shelley Hrdlitschka.