by Nancy Pearl
A visit from their father’s very odd sister,Aunt Sally, gives the three Anderson siblings—ten-year-old Melissa, eight-year-old Amanda, and six-year-old Frank—a chance to learn some surprising family history in Polly Horvath’s The Trolls, which is one of those books that teaches an important truth without hitting the child over the head with it. Horvath is also the author of the wild and wonderful The Canning Season. Ratchet Clark is sent by her uncaring mother to stay with her ninety-one-year-old twin great-aunts, Penpen and Tilly, in their big old house in the woods of Maine. There, Ratchet, along with Harper, another teenager summarily dumped on the twins’ doorstep grows up hearing tales both gory and amusing of Penpen’s and Tilly’s lives. And just what is that deformity on Ratchet’s shoulder that so disgusts her mother?
When twelve-year-old Hattie’s mentally ill uncle Adam comes home to small town Millerton to live with his mother and father, she learns that some people help you grow up in unexpected, not always happy ways, in Ann M. Martin’s moving A Corner of the Universe.
Eleven-year-old Angel has to be the adult in the family—her father’s in jail for murder and robbery, and her alcoholic mother has proven herself unfit to take care of Angel and her younger brother, Bernie, in The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson.
Albert Rosegarden (who, according to the principal of his school, is on his way to becoming a career criminal) really, really wants an adventure that will take him away from his badly misnamed Mountain View, Idaho, home—and he gets his wish when his eccentric (and ex-con) grandfather Wendell involves him in an elaborate plot to scam a scammer in The Bamboozlers by Michael de Guzman.
SCIENCE FICTION: FUTURE POSSIBILITIES
Science fiction—as opposed to fantasy—is set within the realm of possibility. However improbable they seem, the events in these books might happen.They’re set in a world we know—technologically advanced, perhaps, but quite familiar nonetheless. There are, in general, no dragons, quests, or magical rings to be found here.The plots often revolve around the theme of humanity vs. technology, or extrapolations of current issues becoming major problems (e.g., population growth or global warming).These stories are exciting and fast moving, so they’re good for reluctant readers. The majority of them (especially those written more than a decade ago) feature male heroes, but that’s changed a bit in recent years.
Although I’ve chosen to put this section in Part II, most of these books will also be enjoyed by young teens. Older teens will want to move into the whole adult science fiction genre, where they’ll find outstanding writers like Isaac Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson, Dan Simmons, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Greg Bear.
It’s still the case, after all these many years, that when someone asks me to suggest books for boys twelve to fourteen, the first ones that come to mind are the great space adventure tales by Robert A. Heinlein. Really, you don’t want readers to miss Red Planet, Time for the Stars, Between Planets, The Star Beast, Space Cadet, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, or Podkayne of Mars (the main character is a girl, which is unusual for books in this category).
Here are some other goodies:
John Christopher’s The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire (known collectively as The Tripods Trilogy) are about a group of boys who try to escape being “capped,” a form of mind control practiced by the otherworldly Masters who have taken control of humanity. Christopher is also the author of The Guardians, set in a society where being discontented is forbidden.
More choices include Eleanor Cameron’s The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and Ellen MacGregor’s Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, which have delighted the eight- to ten-year-old set since the 1950s, when they were first published; The Random House Book of Science Fiction Stories, edited by Mike Ashley; Mel Gilden’s Pumpkins of Time; Space Race and Earthborn by Sylvia Waugh; T. A. Barron’s Heartlight; H. M. Hoover’s The Winds of Mars and Another Heaven, Another Earth; Kathy Mackel’s Can of Worms (is thirteen-year-old Mike an alien, or just an alienated kid?); Louis Slobodkin’s The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree; Bill Brittain’s Shape-Changer; and Aliens in the Family by Margaret Mahy. Don’t forget Jules Verne’s classic, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, as well.
SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR
There’s often a school assignment for fourth- to eighth-graders on one aspect or another of the black experience, beginning with the Middle Passage (when the slaves were brought to the United States from Africa) and continuing through the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The assignment often involves reading one of the classic (and still best) stories about the Civil War for kids this age, Irene Hunt’s Across Five Aprils, but make sure your readers don’t miss these lesser-known titles:
Shelley Pearsall’s Trouble Don’t Last begins this way: “Truth is, trouble follows me like a shadow. To begin with, I was born a slave when other folks is born white.”What follows is the story of an eleven-year-old boy’s escape from slavery via the Underground Railroad in 1859.
The first battle of the Civil War is brought to vivid Technicolor life through the alternating viewpoints of sixteen characters from different backgrounds in Paul Fleischman’s not-soon-forgotten novel Bull Run.
Julius Lester has written sensitively about the black experience over his long career, using both fiction and nonfiction to help kids this age get a sense of what slavery was really like. His powerfully moving first book, To Be a Slave, uses the chronologically arranged reminiscences of slaves and then ex-slaves to tell their experiences from their early years in Africa, to their lives under the yoke of slavery, on through the Civil War and Reconstruction years, concluding with their experiences in the early twentieth century.
Lester’s novel Day of Tears begins with a documented event, an 1859 slave auction in Georgia (the largest in history). Then, using both real people and imagined characters, employing dialogue and monologues only, he shows the repercussions of the sale on a large cast of characters.
In Under the Quilt of Night, author Deborah Hopkinson collaborated with illustrator James E. Ransome to produce a moving story of a young girl’s escape from slavery via the Underground Railroad. Even adults will be interested in the information here about the use of quilts to signal a house that’s willing to hide fleeing slaves. And if your children enjoy that story, give them Hopkinson and Ransome’s Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, another poignant tale of quilting and slavery.
THE WITCH TRIALS—SALEM AND BEYOND
One of the most frightening and tragic times in American history was the last decade of the seventeenth century, when the Puritan residents of Salem, Massachusetts, were caught up in a frenzy of hunting down suspected witches among the women of the town.The novels described here all make for entertaining and educational reading; each offers a slightly different look at the events that culminated in the Witch Trials of 1692. (These trials are the inspiration for Arthur Miller’s great play The Crucible, which older teen readers may want to check out as well.)
Ann Petry’s Tituba of Salem Village, Elizabeth George Speare’s Newbery Award-winning novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and Kathryn Lasky’s Beyond the Burning Time all present a chilling picture of the witch hunts. In the first two, the main characters are themselves accused of being witches, while in Lasky’s novel Mary Chase’s mother is accused of witchcraft.
The Minister’s Daughter by Julie Hearn broadens the canvas a bit by including the experiences of three girls growing up in a small village in Puritan England in the 1640s, where a belief in the power of witches to do harm is played out in an accusation that Nell, granddaughter of the village’s midwife, is a witch, and continues across the ocean, into the Salem of the witch trials, where one of the girls, now an adult, offers testimony on recent events.
Ann Rinaldi’s historical novels are always worth reading, and A Break with Charity is no exception—weaving the tragic events in Salem with a young teen’s desire to be accepted by her peers, and the horror that results.
Ten-year-old
Abigail Faulkner, who’s always been in trouble for her unladylike behavior, relates what it’s like to be accused of working with witches and forced to stand trial in Kathleen Benner Duble’s gut-wrenching The Sacrifice. In the process she must decide whether or not she should accuse her mother of witchcraft in order to save herself and her sister from certain death at the hands of the witch-hunters.
If, after reading these books, your child wants to find out what really happened, give him or her Marc Aronson’s Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials.
PART III
TEEN READERS
AGES 13-18
AFTER SAM SPADE AND KINSEY MILLHONE
There are plenty of mysteries shelved in the adult section of the library that are perfectly wonderful for older teens: Ross Macdonald’s books featuring Lew Archer (especially The Instant Enemy and The Galton Case); Sue Grafton’s alphabet series (A Is for Alibi, etc.); Susan Wittig Albert’s cozy English mysteries based on the life of beloved children’s author Beatrix Potter (the first is The Tale of Hill Top Farm); of course, Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes; Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple books (the Marple books tend to be slower paced); and Dashiell Hammett’s whodunits featuring Sam Spade. (You can find many more good mysteries for teens in the “I Love a Mystery” section in Book Lust and “Ms. Mystery” in More Book Lust.) Given so many choices, a teenage reader might wonder why there’s any reason to browse the young adult shelves to find a gripping mystery.Well, here’s why—you don’t want to miss these:
In Finding Lubchenko by Michael Simmons, wealthy teenage slacker Evan Macalister has to change his ways—sort of—when his father is arrested for murder and Evan realizes that he can prove his dad innocent, but only by confessing that he’s been stealing computer equipment from his father’s business and then selling it on the Internet.The only solution? Find the guilty party himself.
Philip Pullman is best known for his fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, made up of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, but if you’re looking for mysteries featuring strong, brave (not to say foolhardy) young women, you can’t go wrong with his series set in Victorian England. Everyone’s favorite (and I agree) is the first, The Ruby in the Smoke, in which Sally Lockhart investigates—at great personal peril—the mysterious death of her father. The sequels, equally atmospheric and high on entertainment value, are The Shadow in the North and The Tiger in the Well.
Other marvelous mysteries for teens include Marsha Qualey’s Close to a Killer (a group of female ex-cons all work at a beauty shop called Killer Cuts, run by Barrie’s mother—they’ve all killed once, but are any of them responsible for two recent murders?); and Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams, a veteran adult thriller writer, which takes place in Echo Falls, “home of a thousand secrets.” The second secret Echo Falls is hiding is revealed in Behind the Curtain, another taut, page-turning story. I can’t wait for the third in the series....
ALWAYS SHORT AND SOMETIMES (BUT USUALLY NOT) SWEET
The stories in these collections have one thing in common: they’re short. Beyond that, however, they range wildly from humorous to serious, from realistic to fantastical. And, of course, they’re all good reading.
Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Bauer (includes contributions by M. E. Kerr, Bruce Coville, and Jane Yolen, all on the topic of homosexuality)
Baseball in April and Other Stories by Gary Soto
Being Dead: Stories by Vivian Vande Velde (there’s a ghost in each one)
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan (evocative and unsettling short stories—many almost science fiction-y—that linger in the mind long after the last words are read)
Girl Goddess #9 by Francesca Lia Block (marvelous tales about love in all its many guises)
An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio by Judith Ortiz Cofer (teen life in a mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood in Patterson, New Jersey is explored with gusto, grit, and great writing)
Necking with Louise by Rick Book (a collection of bitter-sweet tales about growing up in the middle of the 1960s in a small town in Saskatchewan, Canada)
Past Perfect, Present Tense: New and Collected Stories by Richard Peck
13: Thirteen Stories That Capture the Agony and Ecstasy of Being Thirteen, edited by James Howe (includes stories by some of the most talented contemporary writers in the young adult pantheon, including Bruce Coville, Alex Sanchez, and Carolyn Mackler)
Visions: Nineteen Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults, edited by Donald R. Gallo
A Walk in My World: International Short Stories About Youth, edited by Anne Mazer (includes such outstanding writers as Germany’s Heinrich Böll, India’s Anita Desai, Egypt’s Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, and Chile’s Antonio Skarmeta, among many others)
Who Am I Without Him? Short Stories About Girls and the Boys in Their Lives by Sharon G. Flake (often tragic and always thought-provoking stories encompass universal themes, told from the point of view and in the vernacular of African American teens)
Highly regarded teen librarian Michael Cart asked some of the best writers around to contribute original stories for three outstanding anthologies for older teens. And did they ever rise to the occasion! Writers in one or more of the collections include Joyce Carol Thomas, Michael Lowenthal, Sonya Sones, Lois Lowry, Joan Bauer, Jon Scieszka, Chris Lynch, and Emma Donoghue, among others. (Teens will likely find their favorite authors represented in one or more of these collections.) You can’t really go wrong with any of them, so give all of them a try. They include Necessary Noise: Stories About Our Families As They Really Are; Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future; and Love & Sex: 10 Stories of Truth.
CHICKLET LIT: FOR GIRLS ONLY
There are some books that seem to be written expressly for teenage girls—it’s hard to imagine any boys warming to them (unless they’re sucked in by the covers). But girls—well, it’s pretty safe to say that they’ll love them. Many of these novels are clearly influenced by the Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary phenomenon, which produced countless numbers of humorous novels about single, hip, frequently overweight, self-absorbed and -aware women in their thirties, and spawned a new genre of women’s fiction called “Chick Lit.” The phenomennon ricocheted into the teen fiction market as well, bringing us humorous novels with teen heroines looking for boyfriends, worrying about their weight and their acne, trying to deal with difficult parents and difficult schoolwork, and suffering from teenage angst. Here are some can’t-misses:
You can usually tell a chicklet lit book by its title—take a look at Louise Rennison’s Angus,Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson; On the Bright Side I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God; Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas: Further, Further Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, and the others in the series, which are the über-books of this genre; fans of Rennison (and they are legion) will also delight in Girl, 15, Charming but Insane and Girl, Nearly 16, Absolute Torture by Sue Limb, as well as Katie Maxwell’s The Year My Life Went Down the Loo and They Wear What Under Their Kilts?
After Ginny’s wannabe artist Aunt Peg dies of cancer, Ginny gets a mysterious letter from her—the first of thirteen letters that Ginny is told to open one at a time, after she fulfills the instructions contained in each letter. These letters take Ginny from New York to London to Scotland to Greece, a trip of a lifetime that allows Ginny not only to learn more about her aunt and her life, but also to understand herself better, in 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson.
A pair of secondhand jeans that seem to magically change their size and shape with each new wearer helps Bridget, Lena, Tibby, and Carmen, four fifteen-year-old closer-than-close friends, stay in touch over a summer separated from one another, in Ann Brashares’s The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It’s followed by The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, Girls in Pants, and Forever in Blue.
In The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round
Things by Carolyn Mackler, fifteen-year-old Virginia struggles with self-esteem, loneliness, her weight, and surviving an essentially dysfunctional family. While adults may find the characters crudely cast (Virginia’s hypocritical, emotionally distant mother is a psychiatrist specializing in troubled adolescents), teens have no trouble relating to Virginia’s life battles and cheer her on as she learns to stand up for herself in a sometimes unfair world.
Ashley’s totally uninterested in her senior prom—she’s concentrating on finishing her senior year and moving in with her loser boyfriend TJ—but when it appears that the prom will be cancelled (because a teacher at school embezzled the money that was to pay for it) and her best friend Natalia is heartbroken by the prospect of no senior prom, Ashley swings into action, in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Prom. (This is a much lighter book, both in tone and subject matter, than Anderson’s well-regarded Speak, but the characters here are also three-dimensional and the situations are realistic.)
Can Sari and Jess’s long friendship survive ninth grade at a new school, especially when Sari’s fallen head over heels in love with a senior boy? Mariah Fredericks explores the consequences in The True Meaning of Cleavage. (Note:The title and the cover art are the raciest parts of this good-hearted novel.)
