by Nancy Pearl
Joan Bauer’s Rules of the Road, which introduces Jenna, a high school sophomore who works after school selling shoes and always worries about her father’s alcoholism, always leaves teens wanting to know more about Jenna’s life; so give them Best Foot Forward, which focuses on Jenna’s junior year.
CRY ME A RIVER
For sad and ultimately satisfying (if not entirely cheering) novels, try these:
In Alison McGhee’s novel All Rivers Flow to the Sea, Rose tries to figure out how to live with the aftereffects of the car accident that put her sister Lily into an irreversible coma.
In 1955, Lyric, her older sister Summer, and Poppy, her father, leave the hills ofVirginia for Flint, Michigan, where Poppy hopes to get work in the automobile industry. Summer can’t seem to adjust to the changes, and her behavior, which Lyric thought once was only quirky, deteriorates into serious mental illness, in Ruth White’s sad and evocative Memories of Summer.
You might want to have a handkerchief handy when you begin Jacqueline Woodson’s If You Come Softly, a novel that realistically explores first love, racial prejudice, lost opportunities, and tragic outcomes as they’re played out in the relationship between Jeremiah and Elisha, two students at a tony private school.There’s a sequel, Behind You, too.
Private Peaceful by Michael Mor purgo is the story of Thomas Peaceful, who lies about his age to follow his older brother, Charlie, into the British Army during World War I. His experiences on the battlefields in France illuminate a little-known practice the Army followed: men (and a great many were just boys, like Tommo and his brother) who fell asleep on sentry duty were executed as traitors.
Other books that are practically guaranteed to bring at least a tear or two include Alice Hoffman’s lyrical Green Angel; Bruce Brooks’s collection of three stories about teens dealing with different aspects of grief and loss, All That Remains; True Confessions of a Heartless Girl by Martha Brooks; Freewill, a thought-provoking novel (one of many) by Chris Lynch about a teenage boy who believes that he may be responsible for the suicides of his classmates; Rockbuster by Gloria Skurzynski (a really interesting novel about a boy coming of age during the early years of the labor movement); and Gary Paulsen’s Nightjohn, the story of a slave who risked his life to teach other slaves to read—a true testimony to the possibility of grace in a period of the nation’s shame.
DRAGOONED BY DRAGONS
It’s interesting that despite the plethora of dragon tales available for younger readers, there’s still no dearth of them for teens, too. If jewel-hoarding, fire-breathing horrors sound good to your older readers, give them these:
Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly is a dark fantasy that pits average heroes against both the wily dragon Morkeleb and a wicked (but beautiful) sorceress. In a similar vein, The Hunting of the Last Dragon by Sherryl Jordan features a peace-loving English boy named Jude, who must rid the countryside of the ill-tempered fire-breather that incinerated his village.
Perhaps even more frightening than a possible violent death is the prospect of becoming a dragon, which is the fate that awaits Gavril, the new Lord Drakhaon of Azhkendir in Lord of Snow and Shadows, the first in the Tears of Artamon series by Sarah Ash.
The queen of dragon lore, Anne McCaffrey, created the world called Pern, in which humans and dragons work together to protect civilization from a natural phenomenon called Thread. In the first of the series, Dragonflight, Lessa escapes slavery to take part in a ceremony of “impressing” and bonds with the dragon hatchling, Ramoth. Her next task is to save the endangered clan of dragon riders, and, of course, the world.There are twenty-one Pern books in the series (as I write this); the latest is Dragonsblood by Todd McCaffrey, Anne’s son. Within the larger series is a mini-series composed of Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums. They’re known as the HarperHall-Pern trilogy.
No list of recommended dragon fantasy stories would be complete without mentioning Christopher Paolini’s Eragon and its sequel, Eldest. In the first adventure, Eragon, a poor farm boy, finds a dragon egg, loses his family, and embarks on a quest to become a dragon rider. In Eldest, Eragon must seek a deeper knowledge of magic. Great stuff!
For some shivery fun, try Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde, which places Giannine in a virtual reality game called Heir Apparent where she must beat impossible odds (and a dragon) to win the crown. But a glitch in the game makes winning more than a game—it becomes a matter of life and death.
In the first of the Pit Dragon series, fifteen-year-old Jakkin realizes that his only route to escape from thralldom in Master Sarkhan’s dragon barns is to steal a baby dragon and train him to be a champion, in Dragon’s Blood, another of Jane Yolen’s top-notch novels. It’s followed by Heart’s Blood and A Sending of Dragons.
FANTASTIC FANTASIES
It’s a crowded marketplace for teen fantasies, and hard to figure out from a cover, a jacket blurb, or a title what’s good, bad, or indifferent. Here are some suggestions to get you started with the best.
In Water Mirror, the first in the Dark Reflections trilogy by Kai Meyer, readers are introduced to a medieval Venice where magic is part of the real world—police riding stone lions patrol the streets, mermaids inhabit the many canals, and Merle, one of the two main characters, has a magic mirror. How Merle and Serafin, her friend who was once a skilled thief, help to find the Flowing Queen and defeat the Egyptian invaders (with their mummy warriors) makes for a thrilling read.
Murkmere by Patricia Elliott (isn’t the title evocative?) takes place in a country ruled by a puritanical government (some adult readers may recognize the setting as more or less England under Oliver Cromwell). The main character is teenage orphan Agnes, who has been brought to Murkmere as companion to the lord’s daughter, Leah, whom people suspect as being one of the feared avia—half bird, half human, and outlawed by the government. But is she?
Other outstanding fantasies for teens include Peter Dickinson’s The Ropemaker; The Naming by Alison Croggon, the first volume in the Pellinor series; Firegold by Dia Calhoun; Robin McKinley’s first (of many, I’m so happy to report) novel, Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast; Donna Jo Napoli uses the same fairy tale as the basis for her novel, Beast; Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori, all set in a recognizable feudal Japan, but clearly fantasy, beginning with Across the Nightingale Floor and continuing with Grass for His Pillow and Brilliance of the Moon; Sabriel (and sequels) by Garth Nix (how do you destroy Death, the greatest of enemies?); Ursula K. Le Guin’s Gifts; Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood by Meredith Ann Pierce; Catherine Fisher’s The Oracle Betrayed; The Truth-Teller’s Tale and The Safe-Keeper’s Secret by Sharon Shinn; Vivian Vande Velde’s slightly humorous and slightly gruesome Never Trust a Dead Man; Clive Barker’s Abarat; and The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman (one of the few books ever that became an almost equally good film).
GETTING TO KNOW ME : MEMOIRS
What I especially like about these memoirs, many of which are about the authors’ teenage years, is that they encourage healthy self-reflection. Several of the books recount painful periods in the lives of the writers, so that teens (and adult readers, looking back at adolescence) may finish reading them feeling like “thank goodness that’s not my life.” But hey, it’s not always an easy world out there. I found all of these books to be honest, compelling, and well worth sharing with teen readers. Many of them are not shelved in the teen section of libraries or bookstores, but rather with the adult nonfiction. Some deal with sensitive subjects, such a rape or abuse, so if you’re at all concerned, do read the books before you hand them over to a teen.
Rick Bragg’s All Over But the Shoutin’
Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors
Chelsea Cain’s Dharma Girl: A Road Trip Across the American Generations
Hillary Carlip’s Queen of the Oddballs: And Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan
Esmé Raji Codell’s Educating Esm�
�: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year
Edward Conlon’s Blue Blood
Pat Conroy’s My Losing Season
Lynne Cox’s Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer
Chris Crutcher’s King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography
Andie Dominick’s Needles (not drugs—diabetes)
Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Zlata Filipović’s Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo (these are the diary entries the author kept from age eleven to thirteen)
Jack Gantos’s Hole in My Life (about the year he spent in prison for drug smuggling—it’s hard to believe that kid grew up to write Rotten Ralph, the Joey Pigza books, and other children’s favorites)
Lori Gottlieb’s Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self
Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face
Linda Greenlaw’s The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain’s Journey
Julie Gregory’s Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood
Elva Trevino Hart’s Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child
Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Francisco Jiménez’s The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child and its sequal, Breaking Through
Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club
Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted
Jesse Lee Kercheval’s Space
Anita Lobel’s No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War (growing up during the Holocaust)
Hans J. Massaquoi’s Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy
J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar: A Memoir
Walter Dean Myers’s Bad Boy: A Memoir
Dawn Prince-Hughes’s Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism
Brent Runyon’s The Burn Journals
Mark Salzman’s Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia and True Notebooks: A Writer’s Year at Juvenile Hall
Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Persepolis II
Julia Scheeres’s Jesus Land: A Memoir
Alice Sebold’s Lucky: A Memoir (an account of the author’s rape when she was a freshman in college)
Lauralee Summer’s Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars
Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
Jeanette Walls’s The Glass Castle: A Memoir
Ma Yan’s Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl
GHOSTS I HAVE LOVED
Adolescent love is tough enough without adding the supernatural to the volatile mixture of hormones, identity crises, and the shame of not having a date on Saturday night. Nonetheless, these books do add the magical to the mundane, to great effect. So for those interested in supernatural (but not really horror-filled) novels, try these:Eve Bunting’s The Presence
Louise Hawes’s Rosey in the Present Tense
Sollace Hotze’s Acquainted with the Night (set in Maine, just after the Vietnam War ends)
Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Sherwood Ring (a girl, a suitor, several ghosts, a wicked uncle, and some unfinished Revolutionary War doings)
Gary Soto’s The Afterlife
Elswyth Thane’s Tryst (a totally romantic novel with no graphic sex at all—in fact, there’s barely any sex to speak of)
Laura Whitcomb’s A Certain Slant of Light (teenage ghosts whose desire for one another leads them into a complex situation involving two real teens)
GIRLS KICK BUTT
Somehow, in recent years especially, girls seem more likely to kick butt in fantasy fiction, rather than in the more realistic sort, which, it seems to me, makes for a pretty sad state of affairs. Still, these novels are awfully entertaining reading, and the main characters provide strong role models for young women in the real world, as well.
If you want an example of the sort of heroine who figures in this category, look no further than the words of Thirrin Freer Strong in the Arm Lindenshield, heir to the throne of the Icemark, in The Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill. As she faces death at the hands of a werewolf, Thirrin says, “Make it quick, wolfman, and make sure all the wounds are in front. I don’t want anyone saying I died running away.” Wow! Who wouldn’t want to read about a young woman like that? Who wouldn’t want to be a young woman like that?
In Shannon Hale’s fantasy The Goose Girl, Princess Anidori, faced with a series of betrayals, is forced to disguise her identity until she can make her real self known and reclaim her crown. It’s followed by Enna Burning and River Secrets.
Life during the reign of King Arthur is the setting for Patricia Malone’s The Legend of Lady Ilena and Lady Ilena: Way of the Warrior, both fast-moving, action-filled adventure novels with a well-drawn setting and a brave and passionate heroine.
Louis A. Meyer introduces a brave (although she believes she’s a coward) and ready-for-anything adventurer in Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy. Thirteen-year-old Mary, orphaned and living hand to mouth on the streets of eighteenth-century London, disguises herself as a boy and joins the Royal Navy, encountering high seas, friends and enemies among the crew, a true love, and pirates. Her adventures continue in Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (the powers that be actually try to turn her into a proper lady) and Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber.You won’t find better historical adventures than these, except for Celia Rees’s Pirates!: The True and Remarkable Adventures of Minerva Sharpe and Nancy Kington, Female Pirates. After reading these, girls will want to take to the seas immediately.
Following her mother’s unexpected death in India in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle is sent to a stuffy boarding school in England, where her education on the mores of high society is complicated when she discovers that she is the link between the world she lives in and other, magical (and possibly dangerous) realms, in Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty. Gemma’s adventures are continued in Rebel Angels.
The coming of a great woman warrior is prophesied among the followers of the Great Alta, and it slowly becomes clear to Jenna that she is the Anna, the one who was foreseen to both save and destroy, in Jane Yolen’s superior fantasy Sister Light, Sister Dark (followed by White Jenna and concluding with The One-Armed Queen).
Other great fiction featuring unstoppable young women includes Sylvia Engdahl’s Enchantress from the Stars; Betsy James’s The Seeker Chronicles (which includes Long Night Dance, Dark Heart, and Listening at the Gate); Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre; Jenna Starborn, Sharon Shinn’s retelling of Jane Eyre (as science fiction); Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; and Jane Austen’s Emma.
GLBTQ
GLBTQ, as many people know, is shorthand for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,Transsexual, and Questioning; this section is filled with excellent fiction for teens on these topics. With a few notable exceptions (such as Rosa Guy’s Ruby; The Man Without a Face by Isabelle Holland; and Sandra Scoppettone’s Trying Hard to Hear You, all published in the 1970s; Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind, which [warning: pun to follow] came out in 1982; and Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat, published in 1989 and still going strong), there weren’t many YA novels with gay and lesbian characters written before the last years of the twentieth century. A gay or lesbian teen who wanted to “find” him- or herself in a book was pretty much out of luck. Even today, the number of books with gay and lesbian protagonists is relatively small. Books with bisexual or transgender characters are even fewer, although older teens will probably enjoy Carol Anshaw’s Lucky in the Corner, Chris Bohjalian’s Trans-Sister Radio, and Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex.
Here are some of the very best teen novels featuring gay, lesbian, transsexual, or bisexual characters:Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Garret Freymann-Weyr’s My
Heartbeat
Jack Gantos’s Desire Lines
Brent Hartinger’s Geography Club
A. M. Homes’s Jack
James Howe’s The Misfits and its sequel Totally Joe (this one written in the form of twenty-six diary entries, one for each letter of the alphabet)
Maureen Johnson’s The Bermudez Triangle
M. E. Kerr’s Deliver Us from Evie, “Hello,” I Lied, and Night Kites, published in 1995 and the first young adult novel I’m aware of that deals with AIDS
David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy
