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 ›
Religion
Agnes at the End of the World
Agnes is a teenager living with her younger sister Beth and other even-younger siblings in a crowded mobile home in Red Creek, a fundamentalist Christian settlement in the desert Southwest modeled somewhat after that described in Carolyn Jessop’s memoir ESCAPED…. Read More ›
The Children’s Bible: A Novel
The bare bones of this story: Eve/Evie is a high school girl with a 9-year-old brother, Jack. Her family goes in with several other families of long-friendship-duration to rent a large, historic estate on the East Coast for a summer… 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 ›
What I Like About You
Halle Levitt is spending her senior year with her brother at her grandfather’s home in Middleton, Connecticut instead of traveling abroad with her documentary-producing parents, who, after six previous Academy Award nominations but no win, are still pursuing the prize…. Read More ›
Dragon Hoops
Award-winning comics artist and graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang spent seventeen years teaching at Bishop O’Dowd High School in California. Near the end of his tenure there, as he was casting about for the topic of his next book, he… Read More ›
Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation
Twelve-year-old Charlotte (Charlie) Thorne is a wunderkind. Her IQ is almost as high as was Einstein’s, she speaks twelve languages fluently and is amazingly dexterous in mathematics, the sciences, coding and all things technological. She’s not always wise in the… Read More ›
All-American Muslim Girl
Allie Abraham is the almost-16-year-old daughter of an academic father and a psychologist mom. Her dad is of Muslim heritage but not practicing; her mom was raised Catholic but converted to Islam when she married. As Allie’s father has pursued… Read More ›
Let’s Call It A Doomsday
Ellis is a 16.5-year-old growing up in a Mormon family in Berkeley CA. She has one younger sister and a regular home life, though as with all imperfect people everywhere her parents, especially her mother, have made some missteps with… Read More ›
Virtually Yours
NYU freshman Mariam Vakilian is finding it hard to adjust to her breakup with her high-school boyfriend Caleb, who is attending college in California. Although they had dated for three glorious and happy years, Caleb decided that a long-distance relationship… Read More ›