Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!

“I was chained between two nations.” When Isabel Finch’s mistress dies, she is sold to a New York Loyalist family instead of being granted her freedom as was promised in the old lady’s will.  Bound to a cruel new Tory mistress who delights in tormenting her, Isabel is initially tempted to join forces with Curzon, the enslaved message boy of a rebel leader who believes in the patriots’ cause. However, it isn’t long before Isabel discovers that neither Tory nor Patriot is interested in granting slaves their freedom, and if she wants her independence, she’ll have to take it for herself. Armed with only her wits and the memories of her lost family, Isabel learns to play both sides against each other for the highest of stakes: her future. Giving readers an intimate portrait of the sights, sounds and smells of New York in the tense six months leading up to George Washington’s famous Delaware crossing, this suspenseful hist. fic.  had me turning pages with breathless anticipation to see how Isabel was going to engineer her escape. Friends, this prose MOVES—would you expect anything less of rock star YA author Laurie Halse Anderson of Speak and Fever 1793 fame? But this isn’t just an adventure story. It is also a tale of bravery, passion and fear featuring a smart, courageous heroine who is impossible to forget. (I just knew it would be good, especially with that cover that looks like it’s straight out of a Kara Walker exhibit!) This novel pairs perfectly with another of my fav titles that kicks it Revolutionary War-style: Octavian Nothing, vols. 1 & 2. Read ‘em all together for the total AmRev experience! Being released into a library or bookstore near you October 2008.

Height challenged freshman Sherman Mack loves the ladies. Really loves them.  “Sometimes I think I might die of girls. Like one will get too close and I’ll just be over.” He blames this benevolent love of all female kind on his young mom, a burlesque dancer who he worries “may be trying to make me gay…my mother is into glitter. This is very damaging for a developing male.” Still, “living with my mother and her dancing and dressing up…has been an education in the ways of womankind.” Because of his “concern for the welfare of all ladies,” the brutal practice of ostracizing certain girls at his high school just because a mysterious “Defiler” posts their picture on all the bathroom mirrors bothers him more than it might the average teenage boy. So when his crush object Dini Trioli looks like she may be in danger of becoming Defiled, Sherman creates Mack Daddy Investigations, his own detective operation, planning to expose the Defiler once and for all. But between trying to spy on suspect lacrosse players and conduct interviews with the smokin’ hot “Trophy Wives,” (the most popular girls at school) Sherman also finds himself falling in love—and not with Dini. Instead, someone much closer is slowly stealing his heart. Can Sherman stay objective long enough to solve the case of the Dastardly Defiler? Or will his predilection for lovely ladies end up blinding his private eye? Susan Juby’s hilarious story of high school hierarchy and the one super nerd who’s determined to stand up for what’s right even if he has to topple Trophy Wives to do it is equal parts Say Anything and The Pink Panther. Sherman’s dialogues with his fellow dorks ring funny and true, as do his exchanges with his quirky mom, who is just a little too frank: “I won’t be here for dinner…We’re practicing some new routines. Adrienne just bought a pole. Lots of fun.” Don’t miss one of the sweetest little sleepers of 2008!

Benjamin and Tom are two entrepreneuring eighteenth-century grifters who need a sympathetic third body to help them tug at potential marks’ heart and purse strings. Enter Ren, a small dirty orphan with only one hand. Grateful to have found a new “family,” Ren agrees to play his part, though his sensitive conscience (well developed at the Catholic orphanage) often pains him. Using Ren’s wan face and prominent disability, the two crooks clean up until they turn their illegal attentions to grave robbing. Caught at the dirty deed, the trio are targeted by a shady local mill owner, who holds an entire small New England town in his tight fist. As they try to escape his murderous intentions, a surprising secret about Ren’s past comes to light, changing, well…everything. This quirky historical yarn, reminiscent of the writing of Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, is full of colorful characters and unexpected twists. Both absorbing and exciting, often absurd and sometimes deeply sad, The Good Thief is a darn good read.

Thirteen-year-old Mau is devastated when a freak tsunami takes out his entire island  village, leaving him with only shy tree octopi and the less than charming, projectile-vomiting Grandfather birds for company. But not for long. The same storm that destroyed his people also shipwrecked the Sweet Judy upon his island’s shore. The lone survivor is Daphne, a properly bred English lass who appears to be a “ghost girl” to the dusky-skinned Mau. Together they form an unlikely friendship as they attempt to rebuild Mau’s lost “Nation” with the straggling survivors from nearby islands who continue to wash up on the beach. While working to raise food, create laws, and build defenses against the local cannibals, each teen struggles to overcome their own personal demons. Daphne learns that manners don’t help when it comes the necessary murder of a charming, yet psychotic pirate, while Mau discovers that after the tragedy of the tsunami, he no longer believes in gods he grew up with, and refuses to accept that only the gods have the answers: “I want to know why. Why everything. I don’t know the answers, but a few days ago I didn’t know there were questions.” The only thing that’s certain is that one day Daphne’s father will come looking for her. But if he finds her, what will happen to the newly minted Nation? Will Mau and Daphne’s created community just end up as another British colony? Or will the two inventive teens find a way to send everyone home happy? Daphne reminds me of Pratchett’s other headstrong heroine, Tiffany Aching of Wee Free Men fame, while her bond with Mau is reminiscent of the relationship between two of my fav characters in recent YA literature, Matt and Kate from Kenneth Oppel’s awesome Airborn. Pratchett’s trademark humor comes through in the hilarious cultural misunderstandings between Daphne and Mau, especially in the birthing of babies and the making of beer. But he also leaves readers with plenty of food for thought in terms of the politics of nation building, the dubious comforts of religion, and the enduring tenacity of humankind. An unusually thought-provoking survival story of the first order.  Landing in a library or bookstore near you October 2008.

Fifteen-year-old village girl Liga, emotionally and physically battered from bearing two children, one beget through incest, the other through rape, is given a well deserved respite when the Universe smiles on her by magically transporting her to her own personal Heaven, a gentle, patient version of the rough medieval-like world she once knew. Here, there are no brutal fathers, no leering village boys, no stone-faced grummas to judge her. There is only a beautiful little cottage in the middle of a wood populated with friendly beasts, (including a gentle enchanted man-bear who treats Liga’s children like his own cubs) and a welcoming village full of kind and smiling people who never lie or betray. Here, Liga raises her two sweet daughters, fair Branza and dark Urdda, in perfect peace. But the membrane between Liga’s heaven and the real world has grown thin over the years, allowing some who are not as pure-hearted as Liga and her daughters to enter. And likewise, the girls discover they can pass through into the real world of Liga’s tortured past. When teenage Urdda accidentally pushes through into the material world one day while exploring, she finds a place of passion and pain that is completely opposite of her woody haven. She doesn’t want to leave, but she also can’t bear the thought of leaving her beloved mother and sister behind. With the help of a powerful sorceress, she attempts to bring them to her, and sets into motion a chain of events that shakes her family to their core and irrevocably changes the path of their combined destiny. What I have described here barely scratches the surface of the captivating, complex world Aussie author Lanagan has created. Pushing the boundaries of YA literature, this dark, violent fairy tale, containing elements of everything from The Color Purple to the Grimm Brothers’ Bearskin, is rife with themes of memory, identity, lost childhood, family and what it means to grow up. You will need to digest these Tender Morsels for yourself to discover the magnetic power of her dense, gorgeous prose. Deeply imaginative and beautifully written, this is easily one of the best books of 2008.

Crossing over into our world October 2008.