Ruth Graham, writing in Slate, says, “You should feel embarrassed when what you’re reading was written for children.” How sad. If anyone should feel embarrassed, it’s Graham. She apparently writes…
I’m sure many of you have read The Book Thief, Markus Zusak’s youth novel about a German girl and her (non-biological) family during World War II. If you haven’t yet…
I thought readers’ advisory was the best part of my job, but that was before I began running our library’s teen book club. Once a month, I spend an evening…
If you enjoy youth novels of the realistic (non-fantasy) variety, Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell, is just about as good as it gets. Who else might enjoy Eleanor &…
It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That’s the first line of Ned Vizzini’s excellent 2006 youth novel, It’s Kind of a Funny Story. By the…
Flight is a thought-provoking short novel by one of my favourite youth writers, Sherman Alexie. The main character in Flight, a Native American boy who goes by the derisive nickname…
Today I break one of my own rules, and write about a book I didn’t enjoy. Not only that, but I trash the author, too. But perhaps author is the…
Revolutionary thought of the day: …something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences. Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
Looking for Alaska, John Green (2005) Some months back I blogged about The Fault in our Stars, by John Green. I absolutely loved this book. I went in search of…
The children’s library where I work services a huge age-range of young people and their caregivers, from birth up to around age 12. I enjoy the full range – helping…
There’s a subgenre of youth books in which young people are cast into an alien and dangerous world, where they must struggle to understand their purpose, struggle to survive. If…
I am in the middle of reading The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, a book almost too painful to read but impossible to put down. It’s achingly funny,…
There is so much truly excellent youth fiction out these days, and it’s not all vampires and zombies. Here are two wonderful teen novels in two totally different veins. There…
Revolutionary thought of the day: I can’t stop looking at Rue, smaller than ever, a baby animal curled up in a nest of netting. I can’t bring myself to leave…
This is the first in a series of reviews of youth (formerly called YA, or young-adult) novels, which I will be reading in no particular order and with no particular…
