Lily and Dunkin, by Donna Gephart

Lily (or Tim, as Dad insists on calling her) wants desperately to start taking hormone blockers before it’s too late and puberty sets in.  Her sister, mother, and best friend Dare accept that she is a girl.  But her father is afraid that she’ll be subject to harassment (or worse) at school if she comes out.  And there is some justification for that fear.

Dunkin is new in town.  Big and tall, he’s still not used to his size or the way people treat him.  When some bullies recruit him for the basketball team, he appreciates being accepted into their group.  But he is torn between wanting to belong and not joining in their petty cruelty to others.  Most of all, he is afraid that they will find out about his mental illness.

Lily and Dunkin is a fairly busy middle reader that tackles not only transgender and mental illness issues, but also conservation.  It means well, but the field of books about transgendered pre-adolescents has become crowded.  While this is not a bad story, it doesn’t add much to the Canon.  It also suffers from being repetitive.  In contrast, the part of the novel dealing with Dunkin’s mental illness seemed fresh and insightful (and much more heartfelt).  As Gephart explains in the afterward, she has some skin in that game and it shows.  I would have put the focus on Dunkin rather than bringing in Lily’s story in the first place.

All in Pieces, by Suzanne Young

When Savannah's (ex-)boyfriend calls her little brother a "retard," she impales his hand with a pencil and gets sent to an alternative school.  That same fierce reaction drives her to expend any effort to take care of her little brother, who her alcoholic father has long since written off.  It's a losing battle.  Savannah's almost a child herself and juggling school, her brother, her friends' various issues, and her disintegrating life is too much.  But into that world strides Cameron, a boy with a silver spoon in his mouth and a burning desire to break through Savannah's hard exterior, with perhaps enough persistence to outlast her.

A love story in a terribly depressing setting.  One bad thing after another happens to Savannah.  At first, it annoyed me that so many of her tragedy's were self-inflicted (or at least made worse) by her unwillingness to seek or accept help.  After a while, I began to understand how central her pride was to her ability to survive.  But in the end, when she throws away that pride as well, I returned to my disgust with her ego and her arrogance.  We're told in the last chapter that she fixed up her life by accepting the help she had rejected throughout the novel, all of which seemed like a cop out.  It was, in fact, that story of learning humility, finding inner peace, and learning to trust that was the interesting part of the story...but it simply wasn't there.  It all happened off stage! 

So, if you want to read a story about a girl that hits rock bottom and then -- after a big flash forward -- fixes her life, this would be a good story for you.

The Boomerang Effect, by Gordon Jack

Lawrence lives in the crosshairs of his principal.  And to escape from potential deportation to an alternative school (or a military academy), Lawrence agrees to mentor a young foreign student from Norway named Spencer.  Seeing how socially awkward Spencer is, Lawrence has his work cut out for him.  But even if he succeeds in making Spencer socially acceptable, it seems unlikely that this small piece of good will can help rescue Lawrence.  That's because of the Boomerang Effect:  no good deed goes unpunished.

There's a vandal disguised in the school's mascot viking costume, going around and destroying Homecoming, and everyone assumes it's Lawrence who's the culprit.  But with some help from some LARPers, a wise squirrel guide, and Spencer, Lawrence will fight ninjas, climb towers, and tussle with rabid chickens to clear his name.

Every male YA author seems to wants to be John Green these days, or at least have his wit.  This usually gets manifested through snarky (and sometimes crude) writing. In Jack's case, he adds a quirky sense of the world through creating a very busy story.  In addition to the squirrels and chickens, there's Lawrence's oddball parents, his inarticulate best friend, Spencer and his possible autism, pot smoking, Lawrence's origami hobby, and numerous other characters.  Some of these matter and some just serve to entertain or distract.  Among the most interesting threads is Lawrence's inability to be comfortable in his own skin, but this is maddeningly underdeveloped.  Amidst this chaos, the story itself struggles to emerge.

Every Exquisite Thing, by Matthew Quick

Nanette's favorite teacher gives her a copy of the out-of-print cult classic The Bubblegum Reaper.  Reading it, she becomes obsessed with its Catcher in the Rye-like story of non-conformity.  Her own life is on a pathway to success (popularity, sports acumen, good grades, etc.) but the book opens her eyes to the way that her life has been missing authenticity and meaning.  She tracks down the novel's reclusive writer and makes contact with other fans.  And she and these young fans seek the answers to their lives which have been missing.  Along the way, there a variety of successes and mistakes.

An interesting story that will resonate with outsiders and introverts (i.e., the vast majority of bookish teens), although Nanette's ability to move among both popular cliques and outsiders will be alien.  The search for greater meaning is universally adolescent.  Surprisingly, while the topic is well-trod, there's room for Quick to have a few fresh things to say.

As a result, the story has a timelessness to it that will give it some legs, but is there really room for a new classic about the shallowness of modern civilization?  Do we need more rejection of the  cynical adult world?  Or are we too attached to media spin-offs and stories about superheroes?  For those who are looking for relief from mass-commercialism, this is the book!

Summer Days and Summer Nights, ed by Stephanie Perkins

Summer.  Long days.  No school.  Lots of time to explore new friendships.  Beaches.  Summer camps.  Plenty of decent material to utilize in writing a short story, right?  So, what do you get when you ask twelve YA writers to attack the subject?  Sea monsters, carnival demons, funiculars, and time paradoxes!  That's because Perkins’s anthology is the weirdest collection of summer romance stories ever!  Highlights include Francesca Lia Black’s nostalgic look at romance in the early 80s (a favorite for personal reasons, but one which will probably just seem quaint to the young whippersnappers!), Jon Skovron’s comedy of manners and riff on Jane Austen, Lev Grossman’s tip of the hat to Groundhog Day, and Perkins’s own story of love lost and rediscovered on the highest mountain east of the Mississippi.

In between, there are a bunch of largely forgettable pieces and more than a few (that I’d just as soon skip) going for the gore factor.  The overall challenge that each author faced (to mixed levels of success) was developing a character that was engaging and meaningful in just thirty pages.  Creating a story that was worth reading and had something to say in that short space was also a trial.  I found this collection a mixed bag.

Spare and Found Parts, by Sarah Maria Griffin

In a post-apocalyptic world, destroyed when the world became so overrun with the lust for data that people no longer spoke to each other, technology is both worshiped and feared.  Since the Turn, three rules now hold sway:

1)  The sick in the Pale, the healed in the Pasture.
2)  Contribute, at all cost.
3)  All code is blasphemy.

Nell is the pride of her father's Contribution: part human girl, part machine.  It is her father's prosthetics and machinery that allow her to live.  And in the world after the Turn, where people are frequently born without all of their parts, his particular technology is tolerated.  Still, she is shunned and feared.

In addition to her loneliness, Nell is under pressure to make her own Contribution (alternatively, she could join her Nan and her followers in the Pasture to pray against technology but this holds no appeal).  But until she comes across a mannequin boy's hand one day, she doesn't know what she can do.  Now she does:  she will build a companion, a friend, someone she can talk to, someone who isn't afraid of her machine parts.  But her contribution will offer much more to the world than Nell can even imagine!

A moody and often hard-to-track story that owes some gratitude to Mary Shelley, but seems just as inspired by Johnny Mnemonic and cyberpunk.  The result is original and very very strange.  When your heroine's life-altering kiss is delivered by an android with a tea pot for its head, you know you aren't dealing with typical YA tropes!

It is so rare (and so special) to find an author of science fiction with something to say and an original way to say it.  And it doesn't hurt that she's a good writer!  The writing is fluid and oft times quite beautiful and the characters strong and vibrant -- all of which makes the weirdness of the settings and events all the more strange.  Beautiful and haunting!

What Light, by Jay Asher

Every year, Sierra and her family spend the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas selling trees in California.  It's something that Sierra both dreads and enjoys.  She'll miss her friends back in Oregon, but she has a Californian BFF as well that she looks forward to seeing each year.  This year, however, may be the last time she gets to go -- her parents are thinking of switching to wholesaling their Christmas trees and foregoing the trip.

This year is also special in another way:  Sierra meets a new boy named Caleb and falls in love for the first time.  But Caleb has a dark history and just about everyone wants to break them apart.  Will their relationship be able to withstand the pressure (as well as the fact that the two lovers only have a few weeks together)?

You can probably guess what will happen.  And if you know Asher's writing you'll also know that a great deal of winding up of the tension will be met with a fizzling climax (why anyone likes his works is incomprehensible to me -- I'll consider this my last attempt to understand his success).  For example, the parental disapproval (based upon the rather smothering desire to protect their daughter from the heartbreak of a relationship doomed to fall apart more than concern over Caleb's dark past) is diffused shockingly uneventfully.  And conflicts with friends and other peers never fully solidify.  The most interesting subplot (an estrangement between Caleb and her friend Jeremiah) is resolved bizarrely.  The writing is pretty but the action of the story really goes nowhere and often makes no sense.

Asking for It, by Louise O'Neill

Emma is beautiful and tough.  Her girlfriends have her back and with boys she’s fearless.  So, as the summer begins, Emma is on the prowl.  She knows the guy she wants and she’ll be certain to have him.

But after a night of which she has no memory, she is found bleeding and beaten on the porch of her home.  Shortly afterwards, the pictures start to appear on the Internet.  Her instinct is to put up a tough front and claim that it is all good.  But when Emma realizes that her nightmare isn’t going to go away, she is convinced to accuse her attackers.  In doing so she learns a hard truth:  things will only get worse.

It's an indictment of public attitudes towards rape (set in more conservative Ireland but not much different from the States).  And O’Neill sets up a difficult scenario, making Emma reckless, promiscuous, and unreliable, but sticking nonetheless to the narrative that no one “asks” to be raped.  I’d like to believe that even as flawed as person as Emma would be believed by the reader, but the story is ambiguous enough that I could see some readers doubting her version of what happened.

As a story (rather than as a polemic), it’s a drab, depressing read, with a very ambivalent (albeit authentic) ending.  That makes the story a difficult read.  But O’Neill has a good feeling for dialog and for characters.  The various players felt quite real and vivid, regardless of age or background.

Love Bomb, by Jenny McLachlan

OK, here's something silly from the UK in honor of V-Day coming up...

Betty has got it bad for Toby.  She can't do anything else but obsess about kissing him.  And she knows he likes her back because he's even asked her to sing in his band.  But why is that the more she learns about him the more what she learns bothers her?  Why can't his hot body be attached to someone nicer like her best friend Bill?  If only she could ask her Mum for advice, but she passed away when Betty was two.  And now all she has left are letters her mother wrote to her -- letters, in which she finds wisdom and solace.

Oh, it's so so filled of cliches.  From the bad boy who's no good for the girl and the nice boy she overlooks.  From the squealing gossip and the loud crazy unchaperoned party.  There's the clueless Dad with the new (threatening, but really quite nice) girlfriend.  The awkward first kiss and the perfect one that concludes the book.  And, of course, there's the dead mother.  Do tween readers really don't care that they've read this story a hundred times before (probably not!).  In any case, there's not much new under the sun here.  The kids are fun to spend some time with, but this is light young love.

Finally, there's the awkward question of targeted age.  The kids here are so innocent about sex and romance, that I'm prone to plug this as a middle reader, but the drugs, alcohol, and criminal content definitely puts it into the adolescent category.  Is there something between tween and teen?

Ask Me How I Got Here, by Christine Heppermann

Addie's story of terminating her unwanted pregnancy and the aftermath of her decision gains that certain pathos through verse that could only have been achieved in prose with lots of ellipses.  Verse is the perfect way to tell a story where the heroine doesn't really know what she feels and grows easily anxious over that reluctance.

The most original part of this story, is the way that Heppermann explores not just abortion, but the way that other people try to oversimplify the experience. She does an excellent job of exposing this through both the meddling boyfriend (and potential father) and the well-meaning (but clueless) student-activist.  Messing the waters a bit are the matters of Addie's changing tastes in pastimes and her evolving sexual orientation.  Catholicism, as usual, does not come off particularly well.

With verse novels, the temptation to grow overly precious is a major risk.  And rather than allow myself to be sucked in by the easy final poignant phrase, I focus on the quality of the verse itself (in particular, if any of the pieces can stand on its own) and on the originality of the thoughts.  While there are a few standout pieces, for the most part the verse is high-school notebook-level stuff -- pretty, but not terribly deep.  On the idea front, Heppermann does better.  I particularly enjoyed Addie's snarky comments about the Bible (guaranteed to offend religious people with thin skins, they are just the sort of doubt that I always find vital for faith).

It was a fast read.  Combined with a decent subject, some good ideas, and competent writing, this is enjoyable stuff.  Not a classic, but certainly not bad.

Unscripted Joss Byrd, by Lygia Day Penaflor

Joss Byrd is the hottest young actress in America, but she can't help but feel like that she's a fake.  She's got talent, but she struggles to even read her scripts.  And as much as she owes her success to her mother's drive, she also fears her Mom's penchant for sabotaging her successes.  During a shoot of a movie in Montauk, Joss faces some hard cold realities about the movie business, including the cost of fame and success.

Told with sensitivity and insight by a woman who actually works in the film business as a tutor for child actors, the novel exposes an entire world that few of us know much about (even if we think we know the people so well!).  But the characters themselves are hard to relate with.  From her experiences, Joss has to be wise beyond her years and Penaflor does a decent job of capturing that, but it's hard to connect with her.  The relationships around her are also naturally superficial.

Lacking much in characters, what we really have is the story and that tends to drift from idea to idea.  The story is full of unresolved issues (the director's infidelities, the relationship with the director's sister, her mother's exploitation of Joss and the jealousy she feels for Joss's success, and Joss's feelings for her co-star) that largely just fade away.  The wrap of the film (and the story) comes so suddenly that I didn't even realize it was over until we were told that it was.

On the separate subject of marketing this story, there are different challenges.  The thematic material is probably a bit mature for a middle reader, but since Joss is per-pubescent, it's unlike that young adult readers will be interested in her.  The ideal reader would be a ten year-old with a good foundation!  And finally, what's with the cover? Couldn't they have picked a younger model?  The one depicted is obviously too old to be Joss!

Nice Girls Endure, by Chris Struyk-Bonn

Chelsea is very self-conscious about her weight.  She's always been a big girl (and developing a bust in third grade didn't help matters).  The story pretty much traces her daily humiliations.  These take a small turn to the better as she befriends the energetic and upbeat Melody and a turn for the worse when she is assaulted and humiliated by a class bully.  Thanks to some pep talk from her friends and some chemical intervention, she pulls through her challenges.

The story has lots of lovely details (vignettes and observations that make or break a YA novel) but I was frustrated by the limp plotting.  I wanted a climactic moment and imagined what it would contain (a film premier, winning a spot on the choir, dealing with the brats next door, confronting the bully, telling off her mother, etc.) and none of that happened.  It is so frustrating to be set up for a moment of redemption that never really comes!  In fairness, Chelsea has some minor inner growth, but it wasn't enough for me. I needed to see it resolve some of her issues.

Mosquitoland, by David Arnold

Mim misses her mother and when she finds out that her father and stepmother are apparently keeping them apart on purpose, Mim decides to bolt.  Stealing a stash of money from her stepmother, she hops on a Greyhound bus in Mississippi and heads 950 miles to Cleveland.  Along the way, she befriends a motley crew of companions and has adventures.

As tired as that plot is, what rescues this novel is its unusual heroine.  She’s schizophrenic, blind in one eye, and prone to uncontrolled and sudden nausea.  And the people she befriends are similarly quirky.  It's the crazy personalities that make this story work.

 

Arnold’s debut novel is a fascinating and original work, written with all the color and grit of a hipster creating the Great American Novel.  The dialog is fast and witty, but there’s not much emotional introspection (since Mim tends to barf whenever the going gets emotional).  Instead, there's a lot of philosophical navel-gazing.  It’s a little too self-aware of its pretensions and falls more into the adult-literature-about-teens category than actual YA, but kids will find it enjoyable nonetheless.