Books for Teenagers and Young Adults: Featured Novel

The Winter Palace became a bestseller in Eve Stachniak’s native Canada during its first week of publication. Stachniak believes that is partly because, as far as she knows, it is the only historical novel about Catherine the Great in any language. How is that possible?! Stachniak has long been fascinated by Imperial Russia, has the multilingual chops to do the research, and is already working on a sequel. And Catherine is hot right now. Robert Massie’s tome (Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, Random House) is in its 12th week on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. Give this one to teen readers of Philippa Gregory and Michelle Moran who might be looking to expand their horizons. It has appeal — two Read more…

Working through barriers of language, culture and gender, American Katherine Boo spent over three years in the Mumbai slum of Annawadi. Her extraordinary book reveals the truth of life in urban India. Again and again, reviews mention her novelistic writing, the uncovering of Dickensian depths of corruption, and the detail with which she brings to life the families who live in Annawadi.  Boo accomplishes all of this by focusing her account on a few families, and particularly 16-year-old Abdul, a boy who supports his entire family by reselling garbage. As the New York Times review reveals, the author “used written notes, video recordings, audiotapes and photographs; some of the children of the book used her Flip video camera to Read more…

In this rather extraordinary memoir, Jamal Joseph recounts his journey from Black Panther to prison to professor at Columbia University. Joseph gave the Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture at ALA Midwinter in Dallas last month, which was followed by this interview with American Libraries Associate Editor Pamela A. Goodes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzKLO2fdXiU Goodes begins by asking, “So many lessons to be learned, especially for the youth today. Is that why you decided to tell your story?” Joseph answers, “Yes, it actually is. I work with young people in New York. I travel the country speaking to high school students and college students. And every one of them has a similar question, and it’s What was it Like? Read more…

William Landay’s new legal thriller is one of the big buzz books of the season. Comparisons to Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, arguably one of the best and most popular courtroom dramas ever, are ubiquitous, as are comparisons to John Grisham. Why for teens? This one involves two 14-year-old boys. One murdered, the other accused. Start reading on Scridb. LANDAY, William. Defending Jacob. 421p. Delacorte. 2012. Tr $26. ISBN 978-0-385-34422-7. LC 2011011623.   Adult/High School–Fourteen-year-old Benjamin Rifkin was stabbed on his way to school and pushed down an embankment to die alone. Assistant DA Andy Barber recognizes this as a high-profile case and is ready to prosecute any suspects. Then he discovers that his eighth grade son Read more…

Ernie Colón’s transformation of a quartet of horror tales from the essentially aural to equally essentially visual suggests some interesting questions about how our minds meet and work with elements of story. Inner Sanctum was among the radio-broadcast “theaters” through which audiences could get doses of pleasing thrills in pre-television days—about 500 tales of “mystery, horror and suspense” were brought to life by actors using voices and sound effects between 1941 and 1952. Altering the support of sounds for the support of pictures is only part of Colón’s work here: his choices of panels and perspectives come to the fore to create a new—but loyal—way of experiencing what started as actor’s voices. By maintaining Read more…

Looking for some good old-fashioned story-telling? Look no further. I had a chance to hear Alex George talk about A Good American at ALA Midwinter. He is British — not what I was expecting given that this is a big traditional American novel. He was inspired by his own family and his own experiences. His ancestors moved from England to New Zealand; his mother moved back to the U.K., and he himself emigrated to the United States as an adult. So he decided to write about the experience of making a life in an unfamiliar country. Hear about his trip to Dallas from the man himself in this blog post. He has a sense of humor! Music, from opera to jazz, is an important element of the book from the first page, which begins “Always, Read more…

Jane Eyre is the perfect coming-of-age novel, if you ask me. To read a 20th century retelling is a joy. And this is not just any retelling, but a beautifully written one that dovetails back and forth with the original, sometimes staying close, sometimes wandering farther afield. The Flight of Gemma Hardy is a great book in its own right, but it also offers the opportunity to ponder the author’s choices and what they say about women’s lives and independence in the 1960s compared to the mid-1800s. There is also great pleasure to be had in the correspondence between the title and the text. As a young girl, Gemma would “fly away into the pictures” of her uncle’s birding book. She is attuned to the natural world, and birds in Read more…