The day after her fifteenth birthday, Willowjean “Will” Parker runs away from home and ends up joining the circus. Life is not easy for her on the road as she learns the ins and outs of carny life, but it… Read More ›
Dysfunctional Relationships
Miss Meteor
This is a Throw-Everything-at-the-Reader-and-See-What-Sticks sort of book, with a little Wizard of Oz and X-Files thrown in for good measure. Every societal issue at play today is covered, including gender fluidity and discrimination, unequal wealth distribution, economic discrimination, political posturing,… Read More ›
Rick
About to start his first year of middle school, Rick is both nervous and excited. He looks forward to the new system of changing classes and teachers each period, but he is nervous about making new friends. Up to this… Read More ›
Cloud Hopper
Named after the famous French balloonist Sophie Blanchard who, in 1804, was the first female to take to the skies in her own balloon and who remained a sensation until her death in 1819, the fourteen-year-old heroine of this novel… Read More ›
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager
Norris Kaplan arrives in Austin TX on a blazing hot day with his mother, a Creole/Patois linguist who has just accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Texas after months and months of applying for jobs all over the… Read More ›
Hearts Unbroken
When Native American Lou relocates from Texas to Kansas in January of her junior year, she quickly captures the attention of star jock Cam Ryan and pretty much makes a seamless transition into the new high school. As the months… Read More ›
Dress Coded
Transition from elementary school to middle school has got to be one of the hardest changes a person’s got to endure–boys and girls maturing at different rates, childhood friendships evolving or ending and new ones being formed, and new anxieties… Read More ›
The Voting Booth
Too bad I didn’t discover this book sooner (its publication date was July 2020) so that I could have pushed it as a voter’s primer for YA readers and in particular for senior students voting for their first time. It… Read More ›
burn our bodies down
Seventeen-year-old Margot Nielsen lives with one crazy mother in a sparsely-furnished upstairs apartment over an abandoned storefront in tiny Calhoun, Nebraska. Life is dreary. She has no friends and her relationship with her mother is fraught with emotional booby-traps that… Read More ›
Not So Pure and Simple
High-school junior Del Rainey can’t get back from family vacation fast enough, having heard from his best friend Qwan that Kiera Westing is now a free woman since she broke up with her boyfriend Colossus. Del has been secretly in… Read More ›
Before You Buy YA 