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Teen literature

I love Twit­ter because yes­ter­day after­noon, I learned some­thing great. I just learned from @Shayera that Megan Whalen Turner has a new book com­ing out called, A CONSPIRACY OF KINGS, that is ten­ta­tively sched­uled for March 23, 2010. Fans of Eugenides can now rejoice! We have another book in the saga. You can click here to see a screencap […]

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Real (2008) by Take­hiko Inoue, man­gaka of Vagabond and Slam Dunk. Real has been trans­lated & licensed in the US and pub­lished by Viz Media. The sub­ject mat­ter: wheel­chair bas­ket­ball. Rated T+ (older teens).
Now here is a grat­i­fy­ing read and a story with some sub­stance. The story fol­lows three teens who find them­selves grap­pling with life chang­ing events […]

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Kin (The Good Neighbors):Book One writ­ten by Holly Black and Illus­trated by Ted Naifeh (2008).
Holly Black, the author of YA fan­tasy nov­els such as Tithe and Iron­side, pens her first graphic novel about what else, faeries. Sur­prised? I was. I didn’t real­ize this was a graphic novel.
Rue Silver’s mother, Nia, is a faerie. She fell in love with a mor­tal who […]

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Water Baby (2008) is writ­ten and illus­trated by Ross Camp­bell . In it, he tells the story of a young teen-age girl name Brody, who sur­vives a shark attack. My reac­tion to the story is kind of mix bag of emo­tions that ranged from baf­fle­ment to dis­in­ter­est. I’m not sure that I “get” what it is the […]

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The Soci­ety of S by Susan Hub­bard reads like a mod­ern day vam­pire story and a com­ing of age story with 13 year-old Ariella Mon­tero nar­rat­ing. Is there such a thing as a lit­er­ary vam­pire novel? Ms. Hub­bard cer­tainly writes her tale in a schol­arly fash­ion but her vam­pire tale really doesn’t add any­thing “new” to a genre sat­u­rated with vampire […]

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Left­overs by Laura Wiess pub­lished Jan 2008, by MTV books. Dys­func­tion seems to be the pre­vail­ing theme of Ms. Wiess’s sec­ond book. I read her first book, Such a Pretty Girl, when it first came out in 2007. The theme of that story was about sur­viv­ing sex­ual abuse. Left­overs spot­light teens in cri­sis. The author describes […]

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Friends Unlikely by Susan Smith Alvis is a YA novel that is yet another grip­ping story about teens hav­ing to deal with some seri­ous social issues. In this book it is drug addic­tion and HIV.  As the title sug­gests, it is a story about a group of kids who on the sur­face appear to have noth­ing in common […]

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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sher­man Alexie is a young-adult novel whose pre­vail­ing themes are about courage and determination. It’s also a story about self-identity and friend­ship. Race and poverty. The nar­ra­tor of the story is Arnold Spirit aka “Junior”, who is a four­teen year old bud­ding car­toon­ist who lives on the Indian reser­va­tion.  Juniors jour­ney is one that starts off with […]

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Adiós to My Old Life by Cari­dad Fer­rer, copy­right 2006, 256 pages and avail­able in ebook as well as paper­back, pub­lisher is MTV. Adiós to My Old Life is a apt title for a book about a young girl whose life changes because of a  life-long dream to be a per­former comes true.  As the story opens, we are […]

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Crown Duel (1997) Book 1 by Sher­wood Smith is pub­lished by Puf­fin and is cat­e­go­rized as YA fan­tasy. Crown Duel (Book 1) is nar­rated by the young Count­ess Meliara, a hero­ine more com­fort­able in rid­ing gear than a dress. She and her brother, Bra­naric are revolt­ing against their King. At the begin­ning of the story, the two […]

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Such a Pretty Girl deals with an unpleas­ant sub­ject mat­ter: rape. Let me explain some­thing or give you a lit­tle his­tory about me. I’m a fan of crime shows like Cold Case Files ‚The First 48 Hours and Amer­i­can Jus­tice on A&E. I picked up Such a Pretty Girl off of an rec­om­men­da­tion by a book­seller. She had already warned me […]

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