My first Manson girl was Leslie Van Houten, the homecoming princess with the movie-star smile. She was on death row at nineteen for putting a knife into the already-dead body of some poor, random woman for the lamest reason that…
Category: personal growth
Bullying Across Cultures: A Review of Falling into the Dragon’s Mouth
Despite efforts to eradicate it, bullying remains a problem in schools, communities, workplaces, and online. Holly Thompson’s debut middle grade novel in verse, Orchards, portrays a seventh grader whose bullying of a former friend contributed to that girl’s suicide, an…
Wandering Wild written by Jessica Taylor, Skyhorse Publishing, 2016
Wandering Wild Written by Jessica Taylor Reviewed by Linda Boyden “Good night, you thief, you vagabond…” is the way narrator Talia and younger brother, Wen, have always said good night. Not Gypsies, the two belong to a caravan of…
Review: All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (Atheneum, 2015) takes place over the span of one week – the week after a white police officer brutally beats an African American teen boy. It’s told in alternating points of…
The Shark Curtain by Chris Scofield
I was enormously privileged to be the editor for Chris Scofield’s The Shark Curtain, which came out on the Akashic YA imprint Black Sheep earlier this year. The moment I read this book, I understood that Scofield was doing something…
What Will Your Beautiful Hands Do Today?
The first few times I opened up Kathryn Otoshi and Bret Baumgarten’s recent picture book for kids, Beautiful Hands, and read the opening line, “What will your beautiful hands do today?” I literally shivered with delight….and got goosepimples all over…
Interview with Pat Schmatz About Lizard Radio
“I do not believe.” So begins Pat Schmatz’s new YA novel Lizard Radio (September 8, 2015, Candlewick Press). It is a perfect first line for a book largely about belief – belief in one’s self, belief in a government and…
On Family, Friendship, and Finding Yourself: A Review of Show and Prove
With the increasing gentrification of New York City, it’s sometimes hard to imagine the early 1980s in the city, when public officials, both local and national, wrote off huge swaths of the city populated by people of color. News and…
Jessica’s Box by Peter Carnavas
Jessica’s starting school in a new place. She takes a box with her. It has something special in it. Will the kids like her surprise? Will she make friends? This is an absolutely delightful picture book about a young girl…
A Handful of Stars: Cindy Lord Gives a Community a Story
This is a story about blueberries, and migrant workers, and writing, and my friend, author Cynthia Lord. So it’s not so much a review. I saw her middle grade novel, A Handful of Stars, unfold over the months of Cindy’s…