Welcome to the second Weekend Picks for March 2025, brought to us by Beth Spinner from Grand Valley State University!

This Weekend Pick features a dystopian YA novel with storytelling at its core: The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. Take a look at what Beth has to say about this YA Weekend Pick. But first, a word about Beth: 
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​Professor Spinner taught middle and high school English before obtaining her PhD in English Education from Western Michigan University. She is currently a teacher educator at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Her research focuses on fostering social justice in the English classroom using reading and writing.

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​This dystopian novel centers the power of storytelling. Petra Peña is a twelve year old girl facing the end of the world. She wants to be a storyteller, like her grandmother, when she grows up, but her plans are disrupted. A comet is coming towards Earth but Petra and her family are selected to escape on ships because her parents are scientists. The plan is for the people selected to survive to sleep on board the ship for hundreds of years and then set up a society on another planet. Other people were also selected to board the ship with the task of keeping the ship running for those who were sleeping. Those keepers would not survive the trip, but would live out their lives in space.

Petra and her family board the ship and go to sleep, expecting to wake up several hundred years later and be ready to live on another planet. When Petra wakes up, however, she realizes that plan did not happen the way they expected.

​Welcome to our first Weekend Picks for March 2025!

To kick things off this month, Beth Spinner from Grand Valley State University digs into the dystopian YA Literature world, with her first pick: A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat. Take a look at what Beth has to say about this YA Weekend Pick. 

​Professor Spinner taught middle and high school English before obtaining her PhD in English Education from Western Michigan University. She is currently a teacher educator at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Her research focuses on fostering social justice in the English classroom using reading and writing.

This fantasy novel takes place in a land inspired by Thai culture where social class differences are profound and the law doesn’t always protect those who need protection. The novel follows Pong, a young boy born imprisoned because his mother had him while a prisoner herself, as he escapes and begins to question the justice system. Because he was born in prison and is therefore a fugitive, Pong has a mark that identifies him in this way, just like all the other prisoners who are now outside of prison. These marks make it difficult to get a job and live a comfortable life. Pong learns more about this system and how too often, a difficult life leads to many people returning to prison. The governor of the land believes this system is just and keeps order. The governor is also the only one who can produce light. The wealthy are able to afford better lights while the lower social classes are not able to purchase the same quality lights.

​This system, too, perpetuates social class injustice.

Yuiza tells their story like it’s the screenplay for a film. INTERIOR. DAY. THE BOOGIE-DOWN BRONX. Describes the scene, introduces characters, and pans the camera to see what they and their friends are doing: filming a scene for Yuiza’s horror movie. At least, that’s what they’re trying to do, anyway, in the time there is left. Yuiza’s film aspirations are being dashed by Mami’s plans - to send them away from the city and upstate to an elite prep school for girls, Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy. Yuiza’s been accepted on a scholarship, and will have a work study position to assist in paying the tuition. Yuiza doesn’t want to go, but does so out of duty to the tías and their wishes for them to have a better future. 

Once there, however, Yuiza’s certain there is something unusual, unnatural about Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy. ​The horror aficionado in them might be working overtime, but Yuiza knows that something is definitely off about the people in charge.

​Sarah is an assistant professor in the Curriculum & Instruction department at SUNY Oswego in upstate New York. A former high school English teacher for twenty-one years, she now teaches courses in English methods, literacy, and young adult literature. Sarah particularly enjoys reading and teaching about texts that can be used to forward antiracist and antibias teaching, and she engages in research that looks to support teachers in their redesign of ELA curriculum for such efforts.

​“‘Welcome to the neighborhood. It’s a great community. Your very own American dream.’ It was the Levitt & Sons jingle I despised. Because for us it was a dream deferred.”
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Most teens aren’t happy to have to move and start over in a new town, and Calvin is no different - he is not thrilled about his family’s move from Chicago to their new home in Levittown, PA. And what looks like the perfect, suburban community with its manicured lawns and pristine schools holds a darker truth.  ‘The neighborhood was just like the Levitt & Sons ads: affordable assembly-line-made homes that, from above, looked like perfectly carved-out squares for blocks. To people in Levittown, this was the American dream. But to me, this was a delusion.” 

Because for Calvin, it’s different. Calvin’s family is Black, passing for white.

Welcome to this final day of January, 2025! Our January 31st Weekend Picks is the final in a three-part series by blog contributor Jon Ostenson. He completes his suggestions with another amazing historical fiction (verse novel) published in 2024. 

Jon Ostenson, a former high school English teacher, is an associate professor and the current director of the English Education program at Brigham Young University. He teaches courses in young adult literature and writing pedagogy.

​Although he enjoys every class he teaches, he particularly enjoys his assignment to teach General Education literature courses where he can introduce students from all disciplines to the power and diversity of Young Adult Literature.

This verse novel takes us to the city of Leipzig, Germany, on the eve of the fall of East Germany in 1989. Helena, the narrator, is a 16-year old piano student who lives for music and dreams of being a conductor someday. The action of the story opens with Helena discovering that her best friend Katrin’s family has fled East Germany in a dangerous bid to find freedom in the West. Helena is surprised and feels abandoned by her friend with whom she attended piano lessons and shared secrets and dreams.

Her father, a university professor, has long resented and subtly resisted the oppressive Communist regime, but this is the first time these issues seem to matter to Helena. We see her awareness of the political climate unfold as her music teacher is arrested for participating in ongoing prayer and song protest meetings and the Stasi becomes increasingly interested in her family and friends.

Green’s verse novel is a moving story that, even though we know the historical outcome for Leipzig and East Germany, makes us care deeply about Helena and her family. Her poetic lines draw us into the turmoil of an oppressive regime on the edge but also show us the emotional tension within Helena as she deals with the loss of a best friend and the arrival of a new relationship with a fellow music aficionado.

​Green skillfully touches on the brutality of the regime and the terrible risks that Helena and her father take in participating in the protests, suggesting the violence and oppression without dwelling on it. Helena’s coming of age is smartly reflected in her growing interest in the protests (due in no small part to Lucas’ influence) and her recognition that the hope and possibility that the protestors call for is what she dreams of, too.

Our Weekend Picks for January 24th comes to us again from blog contributor Jon Ostenson, who last week suggested the 2024 historical graphic novel Pearl. His recommendations continue in the historical fiction genre with this week's pick. ​To remind readers, Jon Ostenson is a former high school English teacher, an associate professor, and the current director of the English Education program at Brigham Young University. He teaches courses in young adult literature and writing pedagogy.

​Although Jon enjoys every class he teaches, he particularly enjoys his assignment to teach General Education literature courses where he can introduce students from all disciplines to the power and diversity of Young Adult Literature.

​Edda, whose unique name came about because her father was hoping for a son he planned to name Edward, surprises her blue blood family by heading to France during World War I to work the switchboards for the American Expedition Forces. She returns unexpectedly to the United States and takes a job at the American Bell Telephone switchboard in Washington, D.C., where she struggles to cope with her trauma and the guilt that plague her after a deadly mistake at her switchboard in Europe led to the deaths of American soldiers.

​When a mysterious caller calls and admonishes her to “tell the truth” about those events, she enlists the help of Theo, a young man who lives with her in her aunt’s boarding house (and who also becomes a potential romantic interest), to uncover who knows her secret and what this unknown person wants from her.

​Every time I thought I knew what had happened in Edda’s past, a new twist would have me guessing again. In The Brightwood Code, Hesse once again creates interesting and authentic characters who reflect and challenge the times they live in.

​Readers will be drawn to Edda and Theo’s wrestles with guilt and unresolved traumas as they learn more about the role that these brave women played in the First World War.

​ In part one of a three-part series for the remaining January weeks, contributor Jon Ostenson brings us the Weekend Picks for January 17th. He focuses on historical fiction, including this week's recommendation. 

Jon is a former high school English teacher, an associate professor, and the current director of the English Education program at Brigham Young University. He teaches courses in young adult literature and writing pedagogy. Although he enjoys every class he teaches, he particularly enjoys his assignment to teach General Education literature courses where he can introduce students from all disciplines to the power and diversity of Young Adult Literature.

Our thanks to Jon for the beautifully written depictions of the historical fiction 2024 graphic novel Pearl. 

Thirteen-year-old Amy lives in Hawaii and is a typical American teenager who enjoys going to the movies and hanging out with friends. Her father is from Japan, and in 1941, Amy travels alone to Japan to visit her great-grandmother who is ill and likely to die soon. Although Japan is very foreign to her, she soon settles in with her father’s family on their farm outside Hiroshima.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shuts off any hope she might have of returning to the United States. As a native English speaker, she is quickly conscripted by the Japanese Army and forced to translate American radio broadcasts. At first she delights in the taste of home she gets from listening in to these broadcasts, but she soon hears rumors of people of Japanese descent being interned by the American government. After she finds out that the rumors are true and that her parents and baby brother have been imprisoned in one of these camps, she finds her loyalties divided and changes her attitudes towards her work for the Japanese military.

​​Illustrations feature simple blue tones and bold lines that subtly and powerfully define Amy, her family, and their struggles. The depictions of the dropping of the bomb and its devastation are perhaps the most powerful illustrations. The story is a testament to determination and survival in the face of horrible circumstances outside of one’s control.

It’s also a reminder that survival often exacts a heavy price. 

​​For the second Weekend Picks of 2025, our new Weekend Picks editor, Dr. Amanda Stearns-Pfeiffer, is once again our contributor. She is an Associate Professor of English Education at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan where she has taught courses in ELA methods, YA Literature, grammar, and Contemporary Literature since 2013. Prior to earning her Ph.D., Stearns-Pfeiffer was a high school English and Biology teacher and also coached basketball. Her current research interests include YAL featuring girls in sports and investigating the representation of those female athletes. ​​

Basketball, boxing, ballet, soccer, and romance. 

Wait, romance? Yes, that’s right. If you’re new to the sports-themed YAL genre, you will soon learn that in this market sports and romance tend to go together like peas and carrots. In this weekend's pick we have the perfect combination of sport and love. 
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While the title gives away the prominence of romance, Kisses and Croissants (2021) downplays the rigor of the sport (ballet) that the novel highlights. Mia is a seventeen-year-old, high-caliber ballerina from New York City who has the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to train for a summer at the prestigious Institut de l`Opéra de Paris. Hardworking, yet fun-loving, Mia is tensed by the fact that her nemesis Audrey has also been accepted to the Paris ballet school for the summer. The perfect foil to free-spirited Mia, Audrey is the model meticulous dancer: disciplined, practiced, flawless.
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​Author Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau expertly builds the tension between love and sport in Mia’s story of Paris, Louis, and ballet. And, true to reality, it takes a near-tragedy to sharpen the focus on what matters – and what should be prioritized – in life. Where Mia and Audrey saw strict boundaries between should and shouldn’t, focus and frivolous, life and sport prove more interesting in the grey areas in between.

​Kisses and Croissants is as fierce in its depictions of competitive sport as it is in its beautiful descriptions of Parisian museums, food, and famous landmarks. ​Spend the weekend transported to the streets of Paris alongside Mia, Audrey, Louis, and those French croissants. ​