Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!

Dewey Kerrigan is an eleven-year-old budding Einstein. The other girls in her class, with their giggling and boy talk, don’t interest her half as much as the experiments she reads about in The Boy Mechanic. Now her scientist dad has taken a top-secret job in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Dewey is going to join him. She has no idea what he’s working on, all she knows is that her father and his colleagues are developing a “gadget” that is supposed to end the WWII. No one knows the details, but anything that will end the war has got to be good, right? Even if you think you know how this story goes, Klages’ creative, thought-provoking ending will haunt you. And I wasn’t the only one who was impressed! Klages scored the 2007 Scott O’Dell award for best historical youth fiction.

Mena can’t believe it. In one fell swoop, she’s lost all her friends, been banned for life from her church youth group, and forever grounded by her parents. Why? Because she dared to do the RIGHT THING (more on that later). Only two things are getting her through her miserable days at school: her new hot lab partner, Casey (he of the swoon-y eyes and curly dark hair) and her radical science teacher, Ms. Shepard (she of the rumpled suits and venti Starbucks). Ms. Shepard’s interesting lectures on evolution and Darwin have really got Mena’s brain cells blazing. There’s just one problem—her former church friends. Every time Ms. Shepard mentions the “e” word, they all turn their chairs in protest. Mena is miserable. Just because she believes in God, does that mean she can’t believe in evolution? And if her old friends are such good Christians, why can’t they forgive her for doing the RIGHT THING (sorry, you’re just going to have to read the book to find out what that was—but it involves Mena helping an LGBT kid who refuses to bow to Christian peer pressure to “reform”) In EM & OFN, Robin Brande explores what it means to have faith—in God, in nature, in friendship, but most of all, in yourself. This is one articulate, well-written debut. Bravo to Brande for writing such a balanced, timely tome that humorously and sensitively addresses the current debate between intelligent design and evolution. 4 stars!

Sixteen-year-old Tessa gets smacked in the head with an orange volleyball during gym class and suddenly she’s airborn, moving toward that bright light in the sky, which bears a striking resemblance to the local mall. It makes sense that Tessa’s heaven would look like the mall, since that’s where she experienced most of the seminal moments of her life: buying her first bra, scoring her lucky red t-shirt, trying on prom dresses. But it’s also where she shoplifted, cheated, and lied to friends. When Tessa takes a trip to the sweet mall hereafter, she is forced to deal with the fact that she hasn’t always been the nicest person. Can this committed mall rat change her wicked ways? Or is she doomed to wander the wide waxed corridors of heaven forever? While Tessa isn’t always a character you can root for, she is always one you can empathize with. Wendy Mass’s sharply observed verse novel looks a lot like a winner. Ride this escalator all the way to the top!

When Steph Landry discovers a dusty old self-help book in a friend’s attic called How to be Popular, she believes she’s found the answer to all her problems. Ever since 6th grade, when she accidentally spilled a Big Red Super Big Gulp on Queen Bee Lauren Moffat’s white D&G skirt, Steph has been branded as a loser. Lauren has even gone as far as to make the whole school refer to any mistake made as “pulling a Steph.” Now it’s the beginning of junior year, and Steph is determined to make a new start. With a little help from “the Book,” her kindly (and wealthy) grandpa, who loans her enough money for a new wardrobe, and a winning attitude, Steph manages to create and organize a successful school fundraiser, woo away Lauren’s boyfriend, and collect a new batch of cool friends, all in the first week of school! But when she ends up alienating all her old friends, (especially Jason, her BFF, and possibly more) and her new crowd puts pressure on her to host a kegger on her grandpa’s property, Steph has to decide if being popular is really worth all the hassle! Using her trademark gentle humor and John Hughes-like understanding of teen angst, Meg Cabot has penned yet another enjoyable chick lit that reads quickly and goes down easy.

Annabel Greene’s life looks perfect. She has loving parents, a gorgeous house, and two beautiful older sisters who work with her in a local modeling agency. Her best friend Sophie, rules the school as Queen Bee Extreme, and Annabel goes along for the ride to all the best parties with all the coolest people. But looks can be deceiving. Annabel hates modeling and wants to quit, but doesn’t want to upset her depression-prone mom. One of her perfect older sisters has an eating disorder. And Sophie dumped Annabel hard last year after accusing her of trying to hook up with Sophie’s boyfriend. Annabel stuffs it all down, hoping that if she doesn’t acknowledge what her perfect life has become, it will all go away. Enter indie-music outsider Owen Armstrong. Owen gives Annabel a ride home from school after a particularly nasty Sophie attack, and slowly begins to pull Annabel out of her shell with his brassy, opinionated personality. There’s only one problem. Owen is a truth-teller. And the last thing Annabel wants to tell, or hear, is the truth. Slow, thoughtful, and thought-provoking like all of Sarah Dessen’s marvelous chick lit, Just Listen is a quiet story of a girl in crisis who learns that life is about taking charge even when it seems like you have lost all control.