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…

Arthur and Kel are both isolated and lonely, and that is about all their stories seem to have in common for much of this novel. Arthur is a morbidly obese adult; Kel is a teenager whose life is just not going very well. Kel’s story doesn’t launch until about 80 pages into the novel, which may test the patience of some readers. On the other hand, Arthur is a great narrator of his own story, and teens may find themselves drawn in by his condition. Liz Moore is both a writer and a musician; her debut novel The Words of Every Song (Broadway Books, 2007) was based on her experiences in the music business. You can read excerpts of Heft on her blog (scroll down to find them). San Francisco Chronicle reviewer Katie Crouch expounds on Kel’s Read more…

Shannon Hale’s first adult novel, Austenland (Bloomsbury, 2007) is a fast, fun romantic comedy, well-reviewed in SLJ’s Adult Books for High School Students column. In the sequel, we’re back in Pembrook Park resort with a new heroine, hoping for romance Darcy-style. Shannon Hale is well-known by younger readers for The Goose Girl, Princess Academy, and Book of a Thousand Days. Teen fans of both Hale and Jane Austen looking for a different kind of Austen experience will enjoy this romp. They may be aware of it already, thanks to an interview with Hale published on Twilight Lexicon over the weekend. A movie version of Austenland is in post-production, scheduled for release this year. In fact, Hale came up with the inspiration Read more…

Drusilla Campbell writes fiction around contemporary issues, including post partum depression (The Good Sister), surviving the loss of a child (Blood Orange) and losing a family member to a drunk driver (The Edge of the Sky). Although teen characters appear in these novels, Campbell’s latest has full-blown appeal for teen readers, echoing stories of abduction in the news (a là Jaycee Dugard, and her memoir A Stolen Life) or popular fiction (think of Emma Donoghue’s Alex Award-winning Room). The first 6 chapters of Little Girl Gone are available on the author’s website. By the end of chapter one, teen rebellion, losing her father, drugs, and the wrong friends have lead Madora to make some scary choices. Five years later, Madora Read more…