Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!

When sixteen year old Gretchen Yee casually wishes to be a fly on the wall of the boys’ locker room in order to see if they really are as moronic as they seem, she never expects the powers that be to take her up on it. But lo and behold, suddenly Gretchen (who loves Spiderman and has been reading The Metamorphasis by Kafka) has sprouted multiple legs, wings, and antennae. She has become exactly what she wished for, and in the week she calls the boys’ locker room home, when she’s not fighting the overwhelming fear that she may never be human again, she learns some very interesting facts about the opposite sex. Gretchen sees all their faults, flaws, and surprising strengths; sees her crush Titus stand up to bully Shane, sees boys get beat up as they shower up, and finds out first hand that they are as obsessed with their “gerkins” as girls are with their “biscuits.” Speaking of which, will Gretchen ever get her own “biscuits” back, and finally be able to tell Titus how much she digs him? It’s great to watch life from the wall, but when it’s time to come down, you have to act on what you’ve learned. Jewish/Chinese-American Gretchen, compulsive cartooner and artificial redhead, is a breath of fresh punk air in a pinky blush world of chickety-chick lit. I would totally love this bad-ass little pink book, even if it wasn’t lovingly set in my adopted hometown of NYC, and didn’t mention one of my favorite places of all time, The Angelika Film Center.

Forget bad day, Logan’s having a bad year. It all started when he saw something at his best friend Zyler’s house. What he saw was so terrifying that he couldn’t do anything but run. Now Zyler’s gone, and Logan has moved, but the memory of that night still makes his head ache and his stomach churn. What’s worse is that rumors of what happened that night have spread everywhere–even the kids at Logan’s new school have heard about it. Hardly anyone will even speak to him, and the guys in his Scout troop call him a pervert or worse. Only Logan knows the truth about what really happened that night. But it will take a therapist’s patient questions, the kindness of a girl named Laurel who loves palindromes and the safety of becoming someone else in the school play that will finally allow Logan to stand up and say to himself and everyone else, “This is what I did.” Powerful beyond words, this debut novel from Ann Dee Ellis reminded me of the equally amazing Perks of Being a Wallflower. Part screenplay and part verse novel, this compelling read will keep you turning pages to find out the secret of Logan’s private pain and the steps he takes to heal.

Angela is just your everyday, average teenager. She enjoys hanging out with her BFF Eve, taking care of her aunt Gail’s newborn baby, and shooting videos for the school’s closed circuit cable network. Except Angela’s known forever that the body she was born with isn’t the body she was meant to have. And the time has come to let everyone know that she’s not a lesbian, but a trans-gendered person, a boy named Grady who just happens to be wearing a girl’s body. Angela’s sudden transformation into Grady turns out to be difficult for everyone except Grady. He just can’t understand why his mother is so upset, why his friend Eve can barely stand to say his new name, why all the kids at school, except for the odd but funny Sebastian, make fun of him. Why should they care if he wants his outside to match his inside? What does it have to do with them? It’s only after Grady falls for Kita, one of the coolest girls at school that he understands just how difficult it is for a parrot to change its feathers. Or rather, a parrotfish. Named after the fish that can switch genders, Parrotfish is the kind of novel I have been waiting for since Luna (which, in all honesty, was not my favorite, although I know a lot of my teenage peeps loved it). Ellen Wittlinger, author of the now classic Hard Love has penned a revolutionary novel about what it really means to be a transgendered teen, and folks, I have to tell you, it ROCKS! Especially the hilarious subplot concerning Grady’s dad, an old school kind of guy who just can’t let go of his out of control Christmas decorations.

Even though fourteen-year-old Enola Holmes has grown up in Victorian England, where submission to the male patriachy and painful whalebone corsets are the norm, she is not your typical Victorian shrinking violet. For one thing, her older brother is the famed sleuth Sherlock Holmes, and Enola is determined to follow in his footsteps, even if she has to run away from home to do it! Using secret funds left to her by her eccentric mother, Enola starts her own detective agency in London, which she operates using a combination of subterfuge, a variety of disguises, and her own good common sense. Her first official case comes courtesy of a grieving upper-class mother, who’s well-heeled daughter seems to have run away with a scheming merchant’s son. But nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon Enola is knee-deep in a conspiracy that includes brainwashing, kidnapping, and a garrote-(a nasty weapon made of wire and wood, used to strangle unsuspecting victims from behind) wielding villain who makes Jack the Ripper seem like a pussycat! She’s also busy staying one step ahead of her relentless brother, who won’t be happy until Enola has been found and safely ensconced in a respectable, if incredibly tedious, boarding school. This second volume in the highly entertaining Enola Holmes series is one of the best mysteries I’ve read in a good long while. Enola is plucky and smart, and though she sometimes seems like a twenty-first century girl tooling around in a nineteenth century world, her ocassional bouts of insecurity keep her all-too real. Don’t be fooled by the small format and somewhat young cover–this is one read that is grittier than it looks. If you end up loving Enola as much as I do, make sure you investigate her first adventure, The Case of the Missing Marquess.