With so many fantastical stories about wizards, vampires, fairies, and other beings written for the pre-YA Children’s Fiction market today, we sometimes forget that it is the simple, everyday stories that can have the ability to inspire kids more than the mystical. Sometimes reading a story based in reality- about their dreams and aspirations- is a way for them to understand the challenge can be worked past, and that their dream may be attainable. The onslaught of fantasy stories may teach morals and decision-making, but it does not allow a child to connect the characters to their life in way that says “Maybe I can do that.”
At 15, Cathy Quinn is an intelligent misfit living in 1980s Dublin. As the book opens she discovers that her charming older brother Stevie, who’s gay, is falling in love with the one boy in school whom she likes. Over her last two years of school, Cathy struggles with her dysfunctional family, coming to terms with her powerful attraction to her best friend Jeanette, and leaving Ireland. The Leaving is a realistic, yet lyrical, look at adolescence and first love.
The House in Windward Leaves by Katherine L. Holmes is a perfect Halloween tale for kids who love to dress up or who have lively imaginations.
When Cody Everett and his graffiti artist friends get caught by the Portland police, it’s the last straw for the boy’s father who puts two choices to his son: military school or live with his mother’s brother, Race Morgan, in a trailer park in Eugene. Cody’s uncle is a race car driver so the choice seems obvious. Running Wide Open by Lisa Nowak is Cody’s story about that episode in his life in 1989.
Remember those humiliating moments during childhood and adolescence when making a public mistake? Or when someone outside the family has been subjected to the dorkiness that is your parents? If so, you’ll have an idea of what it’s like to be Darla McKendrick…
The Raven Girl Kathy Cecala ISBN 978 146 106 6378 CreateSpace Copyright © April 2011 236 Pages Paperback $12.00 Kindle $2.99 You might look at the words “Historical Fiction” and “Young Adult” and decide to pass on The Raven Girl by Kathy Cecala. I almost did, there are other reviewers who typically review the young [...]
It’s not often I have the pleasure of reviewing a book prior to release, so I’m especially honored to have the opportunity to review Born To Be A Dragon the day before it launches.
I took a chance on Cindy C. Bennett’s Geek Girl mostly for two reasons. It didn’t have any vampires. And it seemed like a book that teaches acceptance among teen peers, and I think that’s an important subject these days after all of the school bullying we’ve seen in the headlines. Our narrator is Jen Jones, a seventeen year old “goth” girl who is a foster child living with the Clarks.
When Lee, a Vietnamese sixth grade student, falls in the cafeteria and drops his lunch, a beautiful green-eyed girl named Autumn helps him up when everyone else is laughing. Neither know that they will eventually change each others’ lives forever. Lee is a geek, a smart skinny boy who gets bullied a lot by a meat head named Jay.
I happened to run across this book last year at the Orange County Kids Book Festival. As a girl, I loved ghost stories, and the premise for the book intrigued me, and I knew I had to give it a read.
