Danger, romance, suspense, and laughter abound in this harvest of young adult novels, cast with complex characters facing pivotal choices. From reality to fantasy, these titles were penned by master storytellers and feature gripping plots and plenty of thought-provoking hooks. Choose them for class discussions and independent reading lists.
Out of This World Jacob Reckless, his younger brother Will, and Will's girlfriend Clara are caught in Mirrorworld, in Cornelia Funke's fantasy Reckless (Little, Brown, Sept. 2010; Gr. 7-10). Full of dwarfs, predatory fairies, witches, unicorns, and a host of magical creatures, Mirrorworld is torn apart by war as King Kami'en and his army of fellow Goyls, stone-skinned and ruthlessly violent warriors, are defeating the human Empress and her forces. The wicked sorcery of the Dark Fairy, Kami'en's mistress, causes Will's skin to petrify, turning him into the fabled Jade Goyl, and Jacob and Clara embark on a perilous journey to save him, Jacob's shape-shifter companion Fox in tow.
Stories from The Brothers Grimm are woven into Funke's narrative, including Sleeping Beauty and Hansel and Gretel, and the epic nature of the story with its imaginative cast of characters locked in desperate struggle will hold readers' attention captive. Family responsibilities, true love, adventure, and desperation are packed into the pages, engaging students on multiple levels and making this a great choice for literature and art classes.
Matters of Life and Death Needing money at any cost, volatile teen brothers Milton and Bruce fumble their way through a bank robbery, in Michael Cadnum's Flash (Farrar, 2010; Gr. 9 up). When the booby-trapped moneybag explodes with green paint, they bury the evidence, but are overheard by neighbor teen Terrence, who is kindhearted and severely visually impaired. Terrence relates what he's heard to his girlfriend Nina and her brother Carraway, newly home from Iraq, wounded and in need of money himself. The tension builds swiftly as Milton and Bruce take deadly steps to eliminate their witness, Carraway goes in pursuit of the money with a gun, and Nina tries to protect both her brother and her boyfriend.
Moral dilemmas pile up as the lives of these five well-drawn characters collide in the space of a day in their California town. "Milton took his time. He was edging toward a plan that he held as plausible necessity. He felt no malice for anyone, and he was not considering acting out of anger, or petty vengeance. He was not sad or resigned, either. He felt keen, while retaining the usual mental habits of caution and circumspection. The plan was still in its sketchy stages, but the intention was clear, and could be carried out that very night. He was planning murder, in the first degree." Quick action and crisp dialogue will keep students riveted, and class discussions about violence, motives, war, and physical and economic security are sure to be lively.
Angry Pancho, 17, lands in a Catholic home for boys in Las Cruces, New Mexico, intent on avenging the murder of his mentally disabled sister Rosa, in Francisco X. Stork's The Last Summer of the Death Warriors (Scholastic, 2010; Gr. 8 up). Fellow resident D.Q. is dying of a rare brain cancer, and Pancho agrees to accompany him to experimental chemotherapy treatments in Albuquerque, where Rosa's killer resides. D.Q. talks to Pancho about the "Death Warrior Manifesto" he is writing, an embrace of life contrasting sharply to Pancho's way of slugging through relationships, a gun hidden in his backpack.
"How can anyone possibly think that I don't want to be cured? Just because I don't want to be caught with my pants down when death comes doesn't mean I don't want to live. That's what a Death Warrior does—he accepts death and gets prepared for death and yet he wants to live with all his soul, with all that is in him. It's not a contradiction." Deep questions are woven through this compelling tale of life and death, love, and faith. Fully drawn characters evoke reader empathy as intelligently engaging dialogue laced with humor reveals their inner turmoil against mounting tension and a ticking clock. Questions of race, family, romance, responsibility, and justice echo through the story, with a nod to Don Quixote.
Questions of the Heart "Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large," says Will Grayson of his best friend, in John Green and David Levithan's Will Grayson, Will Grayson (Dutton, 2010; Gr. 9 up). Obsessed with staging "Tiny Dancer," an outrageously flamboyant, autobiographical high school musical, Tiny flits from crush to crush, seeking true love. Will, who's straight, consoles Tiny through serial heartbreaks while keeping his own emotions in a straitjacket.
Meanwhile, in a neighboring Chicago suburb, another Will Grayson slouches sardonically under a cloud of depression, hating everyone and everything except his nightly chats with an online boyfriend. When the two Will Graysons and Tiny Cooper collide in a Chicago porn store, lives are changed in a string of hilariously over-the-top events.
Green and Levithan tell their story in alternating Will Grayson chapters, giving each character a strong, candid voice as he faces hard truths about himself. Readers will go crazy for Tiny's ebullient passion for life and love, laughing as he romps through the pages with the grace of a linebacker, and cheering as both Will Graysons find true love in surprising places. Gay/straight relationships, romance, honesty, communication, identity, and self-acceptance are explored against the song-and-dance motif of the musical. Consider this nugget for discussion: "If you don't say the honest thing, it never comes true."
"Most of all I want to believe—in him, in God, in our family—the way I used to. It used to be that there was always one of them I could count on. If Dad was lost in his work, Mom and I had each other, even if it wasn't perfect. If Mom was lost in her drinking, Dad would pull us together and get us back on track. And I was always sure God hovered around there among us, somehow. Right now, it's like we're three islands, and nothing but oceans between us."
Her mom in alcohol rehab and her popular pastor dad preoccupied with work, Samara Taylor, 15, finds herself alone and adrift in her California town, in Sara Zarr's Once Was Lost (Little, Brown, 2010; Gr. 7-10). When 13-year-old Jody from her church youth group disappears, Sam joins the search even as she struggles with her own withering faith and explores a relationship with Jody's older brother Nick, a suspect in the abduction. With an oppressive heat wave as its backdrop, Once Was Lost pairs multilayered characters with gripping storytelling, shot through with honest doubts and glimmers of hope. Themes of addictions, honesty, friendship, fidelity, and faith offer readers plenty to think and talk about.
Spread this feast of young adult novels before teen readers, and invite them to dig in. There's truly something for everyone!
This looks like a good crop of books, and not a vampire or post-apocalyptic scenario among them! I like Funke's subversion of the fantasy genre that weaves through the Inkheart books and seems to continue here, in which the act of reading fantasy is woven into the fantasy book with fantasy characters. And she makes it readable. Let's hope the translator for Reckless is as good as hear earlier one(s).
Flash sounds like a great read, and the sample is kind of gripping, despite the dominance of the narrator's voice. I write and edit controlled-vocabulary fiction for this age group, and I'm sensitive to the word choices here. I can imagine motivated readers in the grade 9+ group struggling here, and less-motivated readers losing steam.
Francisco X. Stork and The Last Summer of the Death Warriors win out for names - both book and author. The plot sounds familiar, like a classic Western movie or some now-obscure Kurosawa plot. Both of these are recommendations for me!
It's encouraging to me that Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Once Was Lost take on two areas in which we adults are probably too sure of what's right, and values the exploration teens are experiencing. One of the things of which I, an adult, am sure is that I detest musicals, so I'm not sure I'll enjoy that part of WG, WG, but the rest of the plot sounds like Philip K. Dick meets teen angst.
Once Was Lost seems about to descent into trite. Maybe by the fifth plot summary, the writer and this reader were getting tired. Still, "multilayered" and "gripping" sound good. I hope what I write gets described similarly!
If I can shove aside enough other books (I'm currently halfway through Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series, and rereading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which I loved in college), I'll review some or all of these at whatsteveread.blogspot.com.
Posted by Steve Shea on September 10, 2010 01:29:21PM
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