The Darkest Part of the Forest (Little Brown Books for Young Readers) by Holly Black, $18.00 In the woods is a glass coffin. It rests on the ground, and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and…
Author: annangel
How can we make sense of our violent culture?
Scowler (Delacorte Books for Young Readers) by Daniel Kraus, $16.99 Rarely does a book try to make sense of our violent culture, but there is one brilliant author who has succeeded in helping young adults make sense of the raw and…
Author Elizabeth Fixmer takes on religion, spirituality and cults in her newest work
Down from the Mountain (Albert Whitman Teen) by Elizabeth Fixmer, $16.99 An interview with author Elizabeth Fixmer — Down from the Mountain is a contemporary YA novel about Eva, a girl who has grown up in a religious cult, and begins to…
Author Miranda Paul talks about how the environment and poetry merge for create picture books to enlighten
Recently blogger Peter Marino reviewed Miranda Paul’s One Plastic Bag, a picture book story of one woman’s creative efforts to clean up her environment while also creating a livelihood for women in her village. Miranda’s interest in the environment…
What would you give up to save the world?
The Here and Now (Delacorte) by Ann Brashares, $18.99 “Follow the rules. Remember what happened. Never fall in love.” On the surface, Ann Brashares’ novel, The Here and Now, is a mystery layered with a sweet romance. It the story of seventeen-year-old…
When a sibling’s secrets change everything
We Are the Goldens (Wendy Lamb Books) by Dana Reinhardt, $16.99. Author Dana Reinhardt moves writing about perilous and illicit human relationships into the story of a sisters and consequences of sibling idolization with her most recent novel, We Are…
The Poetic Voice of Jacqueline Woodson
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy Paulson Books) $16.99 Sometimes we pick up a book because we know the voice will be poetry. That’s always the case with novels written by Jacqueline Woodson. Through poetic snapshots in Brown Girl…
Inside the family of a Tyrant
The Tyrant’s Daughter (Knopf Books for Young Readers) by J.C. Carleson $17.99 Former CIA officer, J.C. Carleson, brings readers a compelling novel of a royal Middle Eastern family exiled to the American suburbs. Through the voice of 15-year-old Laila…
One generation’s choices takes two teens on a journey of connection
The Encounter (ABP)Rita Wirkala $15ABP When paths cross even briefly, our lives can change in surprising and important ways. For Ernesto, a mestizo youth adopted by a Spanish couple living in San Diego, and Rosa, a Huaorani girl from…
Love and mystery stay with you in We Were Liars
We Were Liars (Delacorte Press) by E. Lockhart, $17.99 This achingly lovely novel unveils a life of privilege and its inherent loss through events that occur during Cadence Sinclair Eastman’s summers on her family’s private island. The novel opens with Cadence,…