Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!

Four upper crust NYC siblings take on the stone cold world of celebrity in this brilliant debut novel by playwright Theresa Rebeck. After a picture of the three girls in the title is published with much fanfare in an issue of the New Yorker, the newly minted celebriteens must learn how to navigate the shark-filled waters of fame. Each sib takes his or her turn at telling the story of how reporters staked out their school, how their aging ex-beauty pageant mother sold them out, and how they finally brought their borderline evil agent to heel. After her wild ride on the unstoppable fame machine, eldest sister Daria decides that fame “feels like a disease to me, and everyone is sick, the reporters, and the photographers and the commentators and the people, everyone has this disease, and what the disease does is it makes them hungry all the time…only for everyone else in America, me and my life and my family’s lives are the things that they’re hungry for, and they can never be satisfied, and so there is no ending.” Consider THAT next time you snap open your latest issue of People magazine! Sharply observed and incredibly well written in realistic and riotous teenspeak, this is THE novel for fans of Britney, Perez and Entourage. Consider it the perfect beach book for you AND your mom.

Seventeen-year-old Luke is a self-described loser skate punk who begins to ponder the meaning of life after he correctly predicts the day, time, and method of his best friend’s untimely demise. Hailed as “the prophet of death” by the media and hounded by the local minister to come to Jesus, Luke nearly self-destructs under the intense public scrutiny. Until he finally figures out what it is he wants to live for–his dead friend’s girl. Can Luke handle both the guilt of loving dead Stan’s gorgeous girl Faith and the feeling (if not the seeing) of dead people who keep passing through his nerve endings on their way out? This outrageous, day-in-the-life chronicle of a basement-dwelling, pot-smoking burn-out turned modern day mystic manages to be philosophical, sad, and uplifting all at once. It powerfully reminded me of one of my all time fav teenage male manifestos, Rule of the Bone. Take a walk on the Other Side with Joanne Proulx’s semi-supernatural debut.

This. Is. One. Badass. Book. Seriously. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if Maureen Johnson had also joined in the fray. So, three awesome chick lit. authors banded together to write this hilarious Florida roadtrip story via email, each adopting a different alter-teen-ego: “Christianpants” Jesse, tough-girl Vicks (who is described as having b & w hair, and I imagined her looking like voted-off-too-soon A.I. Season 7 Amanda Overmeyer), and shy, upper-class Mel. I won’t be the one to spoil the surprise of who wrote what, but friends, it was ALL good. Vicks’ s boyfriend Brady has gone off to college in Miami, which would be fine except he hasn’t texted or called in two weeks and Vicks is worried. So worried that she can’t even share her fears with her best friend, Jesse. Jesse, whose fine-looking Mama can still compete in wet t-shirt contests, has just learned that same sassy Mama has been diagnosed with breast cancer and is so worried about her mother’s possible demise and loss of her eternal soul (according to Jesse, wet t-shirt contestants go straight to Hell, without passing go or collecting $200 dollars) that she doesn’t tell Vicks. Instead, Jesse suggests a road trip to see Brady as a distraction for them both. Third wheel Mel invites herself along because wants a taste of the BF love that Vicks and Jesse share (and also, she’s the only one with an AmEx who could spring for the hotel). After three stinky days in a broken down Opel, an unsupervised house party, two ‘gator “attacks” (one stuffed, one real), a melt-down in a pirate themed-hotel room, and a glorious all-expenses-paid trip to EPCOT, they’re not just friends—they’re badasses (or “badbottoms” as Jesse would say) to be reckoned with. Not since Thelma and Louise has it felt so good to be this bad. The perfect title to be tossed in your backseat next time you hit the open road with your best buds!

Aslaug, homeschooled and raised wild in the rural woods of Maine, never knew who her father was. She tried asking her mother, a strange woman obsessed with plant lore and pagan religions, but the muttering odd woman took that secret to her grave. After her mother’s death, Aslaug, desperate for answers, hunts down the rest of her family, an aunt and cousins who live in the neighboring town. She hopes they will be able to tell her where she came from, but to her dismay, Aslaug discovers that in many ways her aunt’s house is just as strange as the home she just left. The secrets multiply until Aslaug doesn’t know what’s real and what is only a dream. But even as she plans her escape from the safe haven that has become her prison, the two people closest to her leave first–by dropping dead. And Aslaug is accused of their murder. As she enters the confusing and terrifying world of the legal system, the only source of comfort she has left is the Divine. But not even God may be able to help Aslaug now. This brilliant, densely written amalgamation of botany, religion, murder mystery, courtroom drama and dark family secrets is the twisted brainchild of newbie author Christina Meldrum. Now, I read a LOT of YA fiction, and this one stopped me dead in my tracks with its utter bizarreness. So if you want a challenging read that’s so far off the beaten track it’s practically in the MILKY WAY, dig up Madapple at your local library or bookstore.