Did you ever notice how serious, somber, and edgy so many YA books are, with all those screwed up teens, life and death dystopian situations, not to mention never-ending angst and alienation? When's the last time you laughed out loud while reading a YA novel? Oh, right, Sherman Alexie's  Read More

The story begins at the end, with a letter addressed to the headmaster and Board of Directors at Alabaster Preparatory Academy, one of the country's most elite private boarding schools. It begins:"I, Frankie Landau-Banks, hereby confess that I was the sole mastermind behind the mal-doings of the Loyal Order of... Read More

"The summer of 1972, the year I turned nine, danger began knocking on doors all over China." Ling is the narrator, but the events that follow mirror the life of the author, whose parents were also doctors in the city of Wuhan at the time of the Cultural Revolution. Ling's... Read More

Born into a prosperous ranching family in Mexico, Esperanza lives a life of privilege and plenty with her parents and her grandmother, Abuelita, until the eve of her fourteenth birthday in 1930, when her adored Papa is murdered by bandits. Esperanza's mother is now faced with the prospect of being... Read More

On the inside, there are the Socs (Socials). They’ve got money, nuclear families, and exclusionary, angry attitudes toward those not like them—kids like Ponyboy. With dead parents and a home with his two older brothers, he’s on the outside of the Socs’ world—a Greaser. So is his best friend Johnny.It... Read More

Ninth grader, Anthony "Antsy" Bonano, whom you may already know from his first venture, The Schwa Was Here, provides a teaser on the front flap about his latest escapade: "It was a dumb idea, but one of those dumb ideas that accidentally turns out to be brilliant-which, I've... Read More

Terra Rose Cooper can't seem to escape. A permanent port-wine stain birthmarks her face, which causes stares from any and everyone she meets. Friends and family are no help. "Why not fix your face?" her own boyfriend, Eric, asks her. Her map-maker father discourages her from any surgery, but also... Read More

If you still idolize Wild West men like Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp, and Kit Carson, author Gary Paulsen will soon set you straight. In his Foreword, he smokes out all of these icons as racist, thieving, shiftless cowards, chronic alcoholics, and outright thugs. In their place he... Read More

Bryce Loski describes how he has scrambled, ever since second grade when his family moved to the neighborhood, to avoid all contact with his pesty, oddball neighbor, Julianna Baker; while Juli recalls the past six years of being smitten with and pursuing blue-eyed Bryce, hoping he would kiss her. I... Read More

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.” Holden Caulfield takes the reader from... Read More

As Shawn McDaniel explains it, "My life's one of those good news-bad news jokes. Like, 'I've got some good news and some bad news-which do you wanna hear first?'" The good news is that he lives with his family in Seattle, a very cool place to be. He even likes... Read More

“I was born with water on the brain.” So begins the digressive and loquacious narrative and cartoon drawings of 14-year-old Arnold Spirit, better known as Junior. He lays out his limitations straight off: too much cerebral spinal fluid at birth has left him nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in... Read More

In 1935, when Moose Flanagan's father gets a job as electrician and guard at Alcatraz prison, the family moves to the twelve-acre rock island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, joining the other families and kids who live there, not to mention the prisoners, including gangster Al Capone. Moose... Read More

"Looking back, I would say everything in my life changed the summer I turned thirteen and my dad turned into Elvis." Isn't that a killer first sentence? Josh Greenwood is already what he calls a “shared kid,” having spent the last eight years shuttling between his mother's place in Boston... Read More

First there was the uproariously kinetic book, Technically It's Not My Fault: Concrete Poems narrated by Robert, who, in 28 concrete or shape poems, spends a fair amount of time complaining about his annoying big sister, Jessie. Now it's Jessie's turn to snipe. She's in ninth grade, so... Read More

Baltimore school librarian, storyteller, and playwright Laura Amy Schlitz has a passion for history. When her fifth grade students were studying the Middle Ages, she set to writing 17 short monologues to stage so each child could have a decent part to memorize. It evolved into this powerful 2008 Newbery... Read More

Reading this biographical novel, narrated by Anne Sullivan and based on her many letters, I was reminded once again why I, like so many others, have always been captivated by the story of Anne and Helen Keller, the little girl whose life she transformed. It starts in 1887 with 20-year-old... Read More

Because he's just flunked sixth-grade English, Stanford Wong, who thinks of himself as "the only stupid Chinese kid in America," won't be able to go to basketball camp this summer. Instead, he'll be taking a summer school English class with Mr. Glick, AKA Teacher Torturer. If he fails it, he'll... Read More

Harper Lee's only novel, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, is one of the most taught pieces of literature in the U.S., and as such, students will read it in school and see the Academy Award winning film with the memorable Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. It’s... Read More

"Of all the kids in the seventh grade at Camillo Junior High School, there was one kid that Mrs. Baker hated with heat whiter than the sun. Me." So starts the sometimes slapstick, sometimes serious account by Holling Hoodhood about the Wednesday afternoons he is forced to spend with his... Read More