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 ›
Grief
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 ›
We Are Not From Here
Chico, Pulga and Pequena are three teenagers living in the small village of Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. They are not related but are close enough in friendship to be so. Chico lives with Pulga, having been orphaned when his mother died… Read More ›
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
So here’s the long-anticipated prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy. Coriolanus Snow is in his final year at the elitist Academy, training ground for future leaders of Panem. He is fortunate to be there because although he is charming, intelligent… Read More ›
They Went Left
In August 1942 Zofia Lederman and her family, who are among the remaining Jews in the Polish town of Sosnowiec, report to the local soccer stadium, where they are sorted into two groups, one headed for death camps and the… Read More ›
The Kingdom of Back
In 18th-century Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Woferl) lives with his parents, older sister Maria Anna (Nannerl), and their family manservant Sebastian in respectable but slightly shabby quarters while their father Leopold serves as musician in residence to the Archbishop…. Read More ›
we speak in storms
Three high school students who barely know each other are wrestling with problems: Joshua, who defines himself as queer, at home lives with a religious stepfather who won’t accept it and at school goes from being bullied by classmates to… Read More ›
Every Stolen Breath
Lia (short for Amelia) Finch is the surviving asthmatic twin of a sister who died in very early infancy. She lives in comfortable circumstances with her widowed mother in Chicago. Her father, a successful prosecuting attorney, was murdered in a… Read More ›
The Best Lies
Katherine Remy Tsai is a 16-year-old with battling professional parents who love her perfect older brother better, so much so that his schoolmates don’t even realize he has a sister. Things have been mighty stressful at home for many years,… Read More ›
Reverie
Kane Montgomery was the last person at his school to find out he was gay. As other students at school gradually became aware of it (before he did), the sleepover and party invitations stopped coming and friends dropped off the… Read More ›
Before You Buy YA 