Sharon Kane is one of the English Educators I look to for guidance. I always learn something in my conversations with her. Just when I think I am getting to be an expert in YA adult literature Sharon points me to something new. She has a noted reputation in content area literacy. This week she reminds us that YA literature has a place in all disciplines. 

Before you get started, take a minute to browse the contributors page for her other posts. All of her posts are interesting and you just might learn something new.

The math teachers always love to introduce their sometimes skeptical new students to people who actually find joy in mathematics. Mr. Ramalho offers Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson (2019), and Dreaming in Code: Ada Lovelace, Computer Pioneer, by Emily Arnold McCully (2019). (The whole school celebrates Ada Lovelace Day on the second Tuesday in October each year, along with others around the world.  (See more here.) There are fictional teens who are passionate about math, too. In Sandhya Menon’s When Dimple Met Rishi (2017), Dimple is an aspiring coder and app designer; and Early Auden, in Clare Vanderpool’s Navigating Early (2013), loves the number pi, envisioning a story where pi is lost, but will be instrumental in bringing his brother (presumed dead by the Navy) back to him alive. 

​The history teachers say that their students can never get enough of World War II-related literature, and want to know if there might be new additions for their classroom libraries. Sure! They can try The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler, by John Hendrix (2019), which uses a graphic novel format. White Rose, by Kip Wilson (2019), is a novel in verse based on the resistance movement in Germany. Operation Columba: The Secret Pigeon Service (Corera, 2018) will appeal to readers who love mysteries and true spy stories. Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II, by Svetlana Alexievich (2019) was just released this summer. And everyone can look forward to Deborah Heiligman’s Torpedoed: The True Story of the World War II Sinking of “The Children’s Ship,” which will hit book stores on October 8. 

Health, biology, and Family and Consumer Science teachers are planning to collaborate throughout the year using books related to nutrition, wellness, and care for the environment. Included in the display Mr. Ramalho has put together for them are the following:

-What’s on Your Plate?: Exploring the World of Food, by Whitney Stewart and Christiane Engel (2018) is an interdisciplinary text, able to be used in lessons on cooking, geography, history, language, culture, art, botany, etc. Readers will learn about the food culture in Thailand, Morocco, Mexico, Brazil, India, Greece, and more.

- Meal, by Blue Delliquanti with Soleil Ho (2018), is a graphic novel featuring protagonist Yarrow, who loves entomophagy; she has been harvesting insects and has earned certification from a culinary school. Her goal is to be hired in a new restaurant. The chef has given her a challenge, and we can join her as she looks for specialty ingredients such as ant larvae, grasshoppers, tarantulas, and mealworms, and then works her magic with them. Readers are rewarded with recipes at the end.

-Your Brain Needs a Hug: Life, Love, Mental Health, and Sandwiches, by Rae Earl (2019), combines the author’s personal experiences, tips about managing various conditions, humor, and resources.  

- With the Fire on High, by Elizabeth Acevedo (2019) introduces us to Emoni, a talented high school senior with a flare for cooking, and with great love for both the grandmother who raised her and her two-year-old daughter. How can she think about going to culinary school, with limited resources and competing responsibilities? Students will come away from this story with valuable lessons and intriguing recipes.
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-Diet for a Changing Climate: Food for Thought, by Christy Mihaly and Sue Heavenrich (2019) offers a rationale for broadening our view of what’s good to eat, and includes recipes students can prepare, including dandelion pancakes, roasted crickets, secret bug sauce, chirpy-chip cookies, mealworm tacos, and beetle croutons. Yum!

​ELA teachers clamor for fiction that is culturally relevant and that represents diversity in authentic ways. They want everyone to be able to find themselves represented in the classroom library. Mr. Ramalho gives a book talk for a new novel, Sarah Henstra’s We Contain Multitudes (2019), along with nonfiction and poetry books featuring Walt Whitman that are already in the library holdings. He shows A Queer History of the United States for Young People, by Michael Bronski, and adapted by Richie Chevat (2019), pointing out that an entire chapter is devoted to Walt Whitman.  

​Science teachers want to know what’s new related to their fields, and are not disappointed when they see interactive books such as Particle Physics: Brick by Brick (Still, 2017) and Marie Curie for Kids: Her Life and Scientific Discoveries, with 21 Activities (O’Quinn, 2017). There are biographies that will serve as mentor texts as students practice reading, writing, and thinking as apprentices in the sciences. These include the autobiographical Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist, by Sylvia Acevedo (2018), and The Plant Messiah (Magdalena, 2017) as well as biographies such as The Girl who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science (Sidman, 2018). Science-focused poetry books are on display as well: Countdown: 2979 Days to the Moon (Slade, 2018); Hidden City: Poems of Urban Wildlife (Tuttle, 2018); and Earth Verse: Haiku from the Ground Up (Walker, 2018).  

​The school’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes are larger than ever this year. They will be meeting often in the school’s makerspace, located in the library. Mr. Ramalho shows the teachers books featuring project-based, hands-on learning, including Engineering for Cats (Delaney, 2018); Temple Grandin’s Calling All Minds: How to Think Like an Inventor (2018); Build your own Chain Reaction Machines (Long, 2018); Fix a Car! (Schweizer, 2019); and How to Become an Accidental Genius (MacLeod & Wishinsky, 2019). The maker movement is represented in fiction, too. Adam Chen, one narrator in S.K. Ali’s Love from A to Z (2019), identifies as a maker, and is hoping to complete the conversion of a room in his house into a makerspace while he still can. He has recently been diagnosed with MS, the debilitating disease that took his mother’s life, so he does not know how long his hands will function well enough for him to use the talent he has for making art out of everyday objects.  

The art teachers have decorated their studios in an Impressionist style; their students will be learning art history using biographies such as Deborah Heiligman’s Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers (2017), and they will be painting outdoors. Mr. Ramalho recommends Gae Polisner’s novel In Sight of Stars (2018), in which Klee is grieving after his father dies by suicide. Vincent Van Gogh becomes involved as part of the healing process.   

​Physical education teachers and coaches know the power of literature. The school’s track team has doubled in size, thanks to Jason Reynold’s Ghost (2016) and the following three books in his Track series. In response to student requests after they read Pay Attention, Carter Jones (Schmidt, 2019) at the end of last school year, there will be a unit on cricket in the upcoming year. Fencing has also gained in popularity, due to Ibtihaj Muhammad’s memoir Proud: Living my American Dream, Young Readers Edition (2018).

​The music teacher can’t wait for the year to start.  She plans to bring her classes on a literary field trip to Woodstock by reading parts of the semi-autobiographical novel Summer of ’69 (2019). Her parents were there, as was the book’s author, Todd Strasser.  She grew up in a family that appreciated music festivals. But she will also introduce her classes to the graphic novel Operatic (Maclear & Eggenschwiler, 2019) featuring a middle school student who learns about the life and music of Maria Callas, falling radically in love with opera as a result. And she will read aloud from the verse biography Struttin’ with Some Barbecue: Lil Hardin Armstrong Becomes the First Lady of Jazz (Powell, 2019). She never knows which type of music will have the potential to change certain students’ lives. 

​Language teachers are happy with the table filled with books relating to language and cultures. There’s the novel in verse, Other Words for Home (Warga, 2019), where Jude, whose family fled Syria, adjusts to life in Cincinnati and learns to speak English. Maggie Stiefvater’s All the Crooked Saints (2017) contains numerous cultural references as well as bits of magical realism. Margarita Engle’s autobiographical Enchanted Air (2015) and Soaring Earth (2019) are filled with poems pondering issues of both language and culture.  

The main office has the look and feel of an indie bookstore; students who get sent to the vice-principal’s office because of an infraction often return to class with a book in hand, after a discussion of interests and reading habits. (Mr. Ramalho has taught the administrator about one of librarians’ favorite strategies, Reader’s Advisory.) Once a week, the principal’s voice comes over the PA system to announce that Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday’s latest post is out, or that there is a new “Weekend Pick” that just happens to be available in the library. Virtually all doors have signs indicating what staff members have recently read, are presently reading, and are looking forward to reading. Similar posters can be found on students’ lockers. What used to be the In-school Suspension Room is now a room filled with books and resources relating to Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), and is open to any student who wishes to spend time there. Any visitor would be able to tell that this is a school filled with people who read for pleasure. 

So, teachers are now ready to greet their new students. But further staff development is being planned. Instructional coaches and teacher volunteers will lead meetings of Professional Learning Communities using Lesley Roessing’s Talking Texts: a Teacher’s Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum (2019). Mr. Ramalho is awaiting the publication of Liz Deskins’ Content-Area Collaborations for Secondary Grades (2020) on October 1; he will use it as he plans future projects with teachers.

What do your schools look like in terms of literature in the disciplines? Feel free to write in the comment section if you have a book to recommend, or if you wonder if others have found literature connected to particular curricular topics. We can work together to create literature-based secondary schools, with the library, and the librarian, at their CORE.  

Until next week.

Yeah, Katie is providing a post once again! She is one of my teaching superstar. I am amazed by anyone who manages to teacher middle school year after year. I am even more impressed that she reads to her kids, keeps a blog from time to time, survived cancer, reads like a maniac, she connects with kids, and still can find time to write me a guest blog post. You should browse for her other posts on the contributors page.

​It has long been established that choice is the key to helping students find joy in reading. Access to a diverse group of authors, genres, and text complexities along with dedicated time to read during class time has proven to improve student reading more than any other strategy. As someone who has deeply invested in the research and strategies of Penny Kittle, Donalyn Miller, Kelly Gallagher, among others, I have spent years growing my classroom library to include books that can provide what Rudine Sims Bishop calls windows, sliding doors, and mirrors for all of my students. I also give my 8th graders time every single day to read.
 
But there is a step between the access and the time to read that tends to get glossed over. A well-curated classroom library is not a field of dreams--just by providing books does not mean students will read them. Teachers also need to become adept at pairing readers with books.
 
Too many times, students are brought to a library (if they are lucky) and/or told, “go ahead--pick whatever you want to read!” without any guidance. Those who are already reluctant readers will, at best, wander aimlessly choosing a random book. At worst, students will just not choose anything. When I was a newish high school teacher, I tried having the students pick what they wanted to read. It failed.

It failed for a number of reasons, but the big two culprits were that I didn’t read what my students read and I didn’t show them how to choose books that would meet them as readers.
 
The past five years that I have been at the middle school level, I have worked on some real strategies to get books in the hands of all my students. I think of books as potential new friends, and encourage my students to “meet” them in a variety of ways.

​This is similar to speed-dating, but with a different motif: that of a reading cafe. My fellow 8th grade ELA teachers and I set this up when we do literature circles.
 
We transform our Media Center into a Cafe: we dim the lights, project a fireplace on the big screen, play some quiet jazz, and set each table with a tablecloth, place mats, tea lights (the electric kind because middle schoolers will burn it all down otherwise), a table tent with instructions, copies of the book that will be “tasted” at that table, and of course, bakery treats.
 
Because we combine classes for this event, each teacher has an apron on. As students come in, one teacher will group the students for each table, and one will guide each group to their first table. Each table has a different menu that features the book for that table. Similar to my book speed-dating, Students get Taste Test Forms for each of the books that include First Impressions (title, cover, appearance), Menu Description (summary of the book, number of pages, etc.), and Taste Test (looking through the actual book). Students give the book “stars” for each category.
 
Also like speed-dating, students then use their forms to give their first, second, and third choice for which books they would like to read for literature circles.

​While all of these events are fun, the main thing I try to do is make books and talking about books a daily part of my classroom from Day 1 to Day 180. Talk TO your students about what they are reading or not reading. Find out what they like and what they struggle with. Constant talk and recommendations should be happening.
 
Every year I have students who will finish a book and say, “what should I read next” despite my best efforts to turn them into planners. For those kids, I either hand them a personally made recommendation list, or I pull books from my library and set a stack in front of them and say, “look at these for your next adventure.”
 
Books are part of each and every day in my classroom. Even on the last day of school, I make student curated “Summer Rec” lists available as they walk out the door reminding them that their public library is free and close by.
 
If you want students to read they need choice, access, and time, but they also need a teacher who loves reading enough to talk about it constantly. Now let’s get books into the hands of students!

Katie Sluiter currently teaches at Wyoming Junior High School in Wyoming, Michigan. She has taught middle school, high school, and community college English and Composition classes and has her Masters Degree in Teaching English from Western Michigan University. She advocates for best practices in the ELA classroom as a contributing writer to The Educator's Room. She has presented at multiple MCTE conferences and will be on two panels at the upcoming NCTE conference in Atlanta. Her blog, Sluiter Nation, chronicles her life as a mother and teacher. She lives in Zeeland, Michigan with her family. You can contact her at katiesluiter@gmail.com
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To donate to Mrs. Sluiter’s classroom library, check out her Classroom Library Wish List created by student requests.

​Until next week.

It has been three semesters since I have had the opportunity to have to teach a YA literature class. I am excited to be doing it again. It helps to usher in my work as the ALAN President. During the last year, I have been reading a wide variety of new authors mixed with some authors who are well established as I have been working on the program for ALAN Workshop this Nov. 25 and Nov. 26, 2019. 
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(More details about the workshop will be revealed over the next few weeks. Stay tuned.) 

My reading really has been intense and all over the place. There have been so many wonderful books. However, there a number of newish authors I hope people get to know: Rory Power’s Wilder Girls; Helene Dunbar’s We Are Lost and Found; and Becky Wallace’s Stealing Home.

​I also hope readers have run into the novels of Randy Ribay, Matt Mendez, and Mark Oshiro.

Of course, there are some tried and true authors who have interesting new works: Meg Medina, A. S. King, Padma Venkatraman, Laurie Halse Anderson, Alan Gratz, and Kekla Magoon all have interesting additions over the last year. 

​There were so many books and you just can’t include them all. So, I began to consider a variety of questions that might guide the creation of a syllabus.
Who takes the course?
What are their goals for the course?
Are they preparing to be teachers?
Do they just love YA literature?
What is important for me to cover in 15 weeks?
Do I want to discuss the origins of the YA movement?
Do I want to use my favorite lenses of Race, Class, and Gender?
Do I want to cover pedagogy?
Do I want to privilege self-selection?
If so, can I be sure that they get a broad exposure to the variety available?
Do I focus on literary quality by emphasizing books that have won awards that include YA literature?

Maybe, I should just buckle down and pick my favorites. Well, I could, but my students could find many of those by browsing my weekend picks over the last couple of years. Do I try to be an expert on everything? Well, of course not. People who try to do that are just masquerading as experts. Besides, I have had so many experts—teachers, academics, students, and librarians--who have developed an expertise and have generously share it through guest contributions on my blog. You might browse through posts by Lesley Roessing, Katie Sluiter, Alan Brown, Sharon Kane, Crag Hill, Stephanie Toliver, and Mark Lewis just as a beginning.

Well, I did finally make a few choices for the class. You can find the required text on my class subpage (YA Course Fall 2019) on Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday under MORE on the main page. There are fifteen required books and the chance to self-select 7 more in are variety of categories—Middle Grades, Dystopia, Sci Fi or Fantasy, and Graphic Novels. (These will be posted as they are introduced to my students.)

​In addition to those wide open categories there are three narrower options--one of three focusing on race and social justice in the United States--Chains, March, or All American Boys. These three choices are connected to an article, Crossing Selma’s Bridge, that I wrote with Gretchen Rumohr and Paul Binford about using YA to discuss historical moments. 

​Another area of choice is one of several nonfiction book by Steve Sheinkin (Yes, there are so many others who write outstanding nonfiction, but Steve is coming to the UNLV 2020 Summit in June of 2020. Watch for a new page on the blog that highlights the UNLV 2020 Summit). 

The final selection is the opportunity to pick one of several books by A. S. King. I felt that my students should all be introduced to one of the finest living authors around today. Not just in the YA community, but among all writers. I really think that you should try one. I think the opening two pages of Dig are an absolutely stunning portrait of two people in a nutshell.

There is a syllabus. Clearly, this post and the syllabus will reflect the type of YA Literature I love. I will try to let the syllabus be a guide instead of a mandate. Some of it may change, but a lot probably won’t. Students will read, they will write, and they will explore the wonderful world YA Literature. 

Until next week.

Part B is here! No intro needed, Take it away Lesley.

Two years ago I wrote a guest column titled “The New Nancy Drew: Strong Girls in YA Literature”. The list shared 27 novels and was based on my reading of the previous year or two, plus some novels from my adolescence. Last week I updated this topic with “50 More Strong Girls in MG?YA Lit, Part A”  which shared 25 novels (in alphabetical order by title) I read in the last two years for adolescent girls—and boys—to read and discuss. This post, Part B, completes the list with 25 more novels.
 
What does it mean to be a “strong girl”? Standing up to others? Standing up for ourselves? Discovering our true selves? Strength can be revealed by how we deal with a situation, by overcoming challenges and differences, by demonstrating resilience and even resistance. Sometimes strength is righting a wrong or helping others; sometimes it is how we deal with others and the way others treat us; and sometimes it is the courage to be ourselves or to change who we were. These 25 novels/memoirs demonstrate that girls can be strong in diverse ways.

Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

When I think of Laurie Halse Anderson, writer, I think of well-told important stories—whether contemporary or historical, memorable characters, critical messages. When I think of Laurie Halse Anderson, person, I think of hugs, compassion, empathy, attention, and action. Now when I think of Laurie Halse Anderson, poet, I will ruminate on the power of words, the rhythm of words, the lyricism of words.

It is hard to believe that Shout is Anderson’s first free-verse writing. I was swept away in the unexpected word choices, startling word combinations, thoughtful line breaks, and subtle alliterations.

[As a child,]
I learned then that words
Had such power
Some must never be spoken
And was thus robbed of both
Tongue and the truth. (16)

In this memoir, Anderson generously shares her life—the bottomless depths and the highest peaks—all that made her the force she is today. A challenging family life and the rape that “splits open your core with shrapnel,” clouds of doubt and self-loathing…anxiety, depression, and shame,” leaving “untreated pain / a cancer of the soul / that can kill you.” (69)

But also there were teachers, librarians, and the tutor who taught “the ants swarming across the pages” to form words and meaning, the lessons learned from Greek mythology, the gym teacher who cared enough to inspire her to shape-shift from “a lost stoner dirtbag / to a jock who hung out with exchange students, / wrote poetry for the literary magazine / and had a small group of …friends to sit with at lunch.” (88) and her home in Denmark which “taught me how to speak / again, how to reinterpret darkness and light, / strength and softness…redefine my true north / and start over.” (114)

She shares how the story of her first novel Speak found her and the origin of Melinda, “alone / with her fear / heart open, / unsheltered” (162)

Part Two shares the stories of others, female and male, children, teens, and adults, connected through trauma and Melinda’s story, the questions of boys, confused, having never learned “the rues of intimacy or the law” (181) and the censorship, “the child of fear/ the father of ignorance” which keeps these stories away from them. Anderson raises the call to “sisters of the march” who never got the help they needed and deserved to “stand with us now / let’s be enraged aunties together.” (230)

And in Part Three the story returns to her American birth family, her father talking and “unrolling our family legacies of trauma and / silence.”

This is a tale of Truth: the truths that happened, the truths that we tell ourselves, the truths that we tell others, the truths that we live with, and the power of Story—to tell and to hear. 

Shouting at the Rain by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

​Just like Ally (Fish in a Tree) and Carley (One for the Murphys), Hunt has created a third character who has come to live in my heart—Delsie, always barefoot, lives by the news from her weather station.

Delsie was raised by her game-show-watching Grammy and grandfather, Papa Joseph, since her mother deserted her shortly after birth. None of them ever knew who her father is. However, Delsie never thought of herself as an orphan until the complicated summer which began when her friend, playing the role of Annie, asks her, “What’s it like…really like…to be an orphan.” (2)

Delsie lives on Cape Cod, summer home to tourists, where Grammy cleans guest cottages and they live in a tiny community of four houses where everyone is each other’s family and support system. Papa Joseph has died, and they all miss him and try to fill his space.

The summer before seventh grade is a rollercoaster for Delsie. Her summer best friend, Brandy, is changing; she worrying about getting messy and then befriends the new girl Tressa, a classic Mean Girl.

Luckily, Ronan moves in with his father, and he stands up to the Mean Girls on Delsie’s behalf. He and Delsie become friends, sharing feelings of abandonment by their mothers and, therefore, being broken. Delsie has always felt like she has to lie to be friends with the girls (“I remember pretending to know things and like things I didn’t just because I wanted them to like me.”), but with Ronan, “I don’t have to lie about who I am.” (99) As family friend Esme tells Delsie, “…anything that matters in this whole…wide…world is about connection.” (83) What begins as a summer of abandonments becomes a summer of connections.

At the end of the summer, Delsie realizes two things: that people, such as the sour Olive, may have their own problems but also may be more caring then others realize or expect (“…instead of just a plain scoop of cold ice cream, a scoop with some chocolate chips hidden inside.”) (180) and that “Knowing that I have real friends that have my back and will protect my feelings—people like Aimee, Michael, and Ronan—makes all the difference.” (240) This pivotal summer Delsie learns a lot about her neighbors, about family, and about support and love.

Reading the novel was also a rollercoaster for me. I was sad about Delsie’s history, mad at how she was being treated by Brandy and Tressa, and glad that she was able to recognize her true friends and revise her definition of family. I know that middle-graders reading this book will identify with some parts of Delsie’s and Ronan’s lives and maybe those who don’t, will see themselves in Brandy or Tressa and gain some empathy and understanding. 

Silver Meadows Summer by Emma Otheguy

“Now Carolina saw [the road} like Papi saw it: white crest of salty water, foam and mist, a wave upon the sea, and one foot in front of the other. Cuba, Puerto Rico, New York, Carolina’s roots were not in the soil but in the rhythm of her family’s movement, step after step.” (193)

Carolina’s father lost his job in Puerto Rico, and the family—Papi, Mami, Daniel and 11-year old artist Carolina—move to upstate New York to live with her aunt, uncle, and popular 13-year-old cousin Gabriela. Caro misses her homeland, and she fights to retain her art, her culture, and her memories of Puerto Rico while living in the big house in a new development. When Tia Cuca tries to replace Ratoncita Perez, the mouse who leave money for children’s lost teeth, with her own version of the tooth fairy, Carolina realizes that she can accept, if not embrace, both cultures. Meanwhile Gabriela wants to learn more about her Cuban-Puerto Rican roots and to learn Spanish.

Carolina meets Jennifer, a fellow artist, who quickly become a best friend despite Mami finding her unsuitable and, as Carolina learns to stand up for herself, Gabriela learns to stand up to her friends, and together Carolina, Gabriela, and Jennifer help to save the farmland that comprises Silver Meadows from becoming all development.

A story of culture, family, friendship, nature, accepting change, and making a difference.

Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe by Jo Watson Hackl

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 9.8 million Americans aged 18 or older, or 4.2% of the adult population, are living with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder. Two-thirds of females and one-half of men afflicted with serious mental illnesses are likely to be parents,
“Turns out, it’s easier than you might think to sneak out of town smuggling a live cricket, three pocketsful of jerky, and two bags of half-paid-for merchandise from Thelma’s Cash ‘n’ Carry grocery store. The hard part was getting up the guts to go.” (1)

Ariana “Cricket” Overland is an adolescent a reader wants to champion. As the story begins, Cricket’s father and grandmother have died, her mother has left, and she is living with her Aunt Belinda who is secretly planning to pawn her off on Great-Aunt Genevieve. Her mother, a creative artist, has struggled between depression and wild adventures for years and is obsessed with a Bird Room she once saw, a room where “Everything was alive.” Cricket is sure that her mother will return to lay her grandmother’s headstone and, having said she wished her mother could “just be normal” (106) the night before she took off, Cricket wants to find the Bird Room and prove that her mother is not crazy and maybe find a treasure using clues hidden by the mysterious Mr. Bob..

When Aunt Belinda abandons her in Thelma’s Cash ‘n’ Carry, Cricket takes her pet cricket, spends all her money on supplies and food, writing an IOU for what she can’t afford, and takes off for Woods Time, as her father would say. “I couldn’t stop Mama from leaving, and I couldn’t stop Daddy from dying, but I could sure do something now. (11)
 
Living in a tree house and following her father’s guidelines for survival, she survives raccoons stealing most of her food and supplies and an ice storm and explores the ghost town, torn down and abandoned by a lumber company, until clues—and a snake bite—lead her to Miss V, the one person whose house still exists, a woman who helps her discover that not only her mother, but she, “contains multitudes.” “I thought about what Miss V had said about Mama being more than what the neighbors thought…. And it wasn’t who I was, either. I was my own, whole person.…Maybe it was time to start taking chances on me.” (203)

Cricket joins the ranks of literary strong girls; she is the resourceful and resilient hero of an adventure story about family and identity written by Jo Watson Hackl, a new author with an incredible voice. 

Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly

Song for a Whale is a story of isolation and the need for connection and belonging.

Iris is twelve years old and deaf as was her grandfather—her closest ally—and her grandmother who is grieving her husband’s death and has isolated herself. At her school Iris is somewhat isolated as the only Deaf student. The only person she feels close to is her adult interpreter. The other students may try to include her in their conversations, especially an annoying girl who thinks she know sign language, but Iris gives up as she “tries to grab any scrap of conversation” (64) and communicate better with her father.

In one of her classes Iris learns of Blue 55, a hybrid whale who sings at a level much higher than other whales and cannot communicate with any other whales. As a result he belongs to no pod and travels on his own, isolated. Iris decides to create and record a song that Blue 55 can hear and understand. “He keeps singing this song, and everything in the ocean swims by him, as if he’s not there. He thinks no one understands him. I want to let him know he is wrong about that.” (75)

Iris is a master at fixing old radios and feels without the storeowner for whom she fixes radios she “wouldn’t know I was good at anything.” (68). With her knowledge of acoustics, Iris records a song at his own frequency for Blue 55, mixing in his song and the sounds of other sanctuary animals and sends it to the group in Alaska who are trying to track and tag him.

On a “run-away” cruise to Alaska, Iris and her grandmother reconnect; her grandmother makes new connections to others and finds a place she now needs to be; Iris connects with Blue 55 giving him a place to belong; and Iris is finally able to request to go to a new school that has a population of Deaf students with Wendell, her Deaf friend.

Scattered within the story are the heartbreaking short chapters narrated by Blue 55. Readers will learn a lot about whales, about acoustics, abut Deaf culture, and even more importantly, about those who may feel isolated and the need for belonging in this well-written new novel by Lynne Kelly, a sign language interpreter. 

Takedown​ by Laura Shovan

Mikayla comes from a family of wrestlers. Her two older brothers are wrestlers, and wrestling is one way she can connect with her father who moved out. In sixth grade, under her wrestling name of Mickey, she joins the Gladiators travel team after the coach of the Eagles refuses to include a girl on the team. Her best girlfriend whom she has wrestled with for years decides that wrestling is no longer for her; in fact, it may never have been. And Mickey becomes the only girl on the team where she has to prove she belongs. There she meets Lev and his friends and becomes part of the Fearsome Foursome.

Lev’s best friend Bryan knows they won’t spend much time together during wrestling season and starts pursuing other interests. But Lev comes from a sports family where they spend their weekends and holidays at matches and his sister’s field hockey games. However, he finds he is writing poetry to calm himself down and getting headaches and missing the old family dinners and cultural traditions, and now he is even questioning the sport he used to love.

When Lev and Mickey are paired at practice, he is afraid she might get in the way of his training for States. But as their friendship grows, he finds that as he stands up for her goals, his just might have changed.

As an author on a sports fiction panel once said, sports is the setting, not the story. And even though the reader learns quite a lot about wrestling and the world of adolescent wrestlers through alternating narratives by Mikayla and Lev, Laura Shovan's new novel is a story about family, friendships, resilience, and finding identity. 

The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden

​“Some people can do their homework. Some people get to have crushes on boys. Some people have other things they’ve got to do.” (52)

And seventh-grader Zoey has a lot she has to do. She has to pick up the baby from her mom’s job; she has to meet her little sister and brother at the bus stop, take them home, and many times feed them. She has to keep them busy in the one bedroom they all share so they don’t bother her mother’s boyfriend or mess up his perfectly organized, clean trailer. She has to help her friend Fuschia when she is thrown into an abusive situation and her friend Silas when rumors are spread about him. And she has to get through each day, as unnoticed as possible, so she doesn’t get teased for her unwashed clothes. If only she were an octopus, she could use her many arms to hold her 3 siblings, do her homework, help her mother; she could camouflage herself and be even less noticeable; she could change her shape and fit in small places. She could protect herself, her friends, and her family.

Zooey used to have a strong, competent mother. But that was before Lenny, Lenny who breaks her confidence with his verbal abuse. How can Zoey convince her mother to leave; how can they afford to leave?

“It’s not enough to know your stuff. Not if one of the things you know for sure is that everyone you’re going up against is better than you.” (42)

There is one teacher who sees the potential in Zoey and forces her to join the debate team where Zoey learns about discrediting your opponent, thinking from new perspectives, and saying what you think with passion. When she hears Matt Hubbard, the most popular boy in the class—but one who has been nice to her—give a speech, “…suddenly, I know. This isn’t some crush on a boy. This is me wanting to feel the way he does. Strong. Confident. Like no one would even think about messing with me.” (68) Through her teacher and her mother’s friend Connor, she gets to the point “…when you start to wonder if maybe you do have a choice about the kind of person you want to become.” (102)

And she needs to help her mother back to the place where she realizes that she has choices and the right to be treated well, even if it means a harder life.

This is truly a story of resilience and growth, and, reaching the last page, I startled the waiting room where I had been reading but saying out loud, “Oh, no, it’s over?” Stan Lee said that you can’t care about the story if you don’t care about the characters. Zoey was one of those characters who will grab readers on the first page and not let go.

The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf

​I read this darling, wonderful novel that deals with important issues—diversity, bullying, intolerance, and refugee children—in one day because I didn’t want to stop reading. I fell in love with the narrator right away, a British 9-year-old upstander.

A new student joins Alexa’s class, but he doesn’t talk to anyone, he disappears during every recess, and he has a woman who helps him with his work. And even though she has what some might term a challenging life herself—her father died when she was younger, her mum works two jobs to make ends meet and isn’t at home very much, and they have to be really careful about spending money, Alexa never sounds like she is complaining. Alexa and her three best friends, Josie, Tom, and Michael, a very diverse group of 9-year-olds, make it their mission to become friends with Ahmet. They give him gifts and then invite him to play soccer, where he excels, and they try to keep him safe from Bernard the Bully and his racist remarks and threats, which, it turns out, Ahmet can handle.

When they learn that Ahmet is a refugee from Syria, escaping on foot and in a lifeboat from bad people and bombs, the four friends are concerned. But when Alexa learns that his little sister died on the crossing and Ahmet does not know where his parents are and then learns from the news that the border is closing to refugees the next week, she puts a plan, the Greatest Idea in the World, in motion. She will ask the Queen to find Ahmet’s parents and keep the border open for them. When that plan seems to fail, the friends move on to the Emergency Plan.

I found it amazing that a novel on such a complicated subject could be handled so well and so thoroughly in a book for readers age 8 and up. This book indeed will generate important conversations—and maybe some research and news article reading. 

The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman

This unforgettable novel is written as a letter by Viji to her younger sister. Viji and Rukku, who has a mental disability, run away from their physically abusive father when their mother forgives him time after time. Viji says, “Our togetherness was one of the few things I had faith in.” (2) Homeless, they join two boys, Muthu and Arul who live on a bridge, and the four of them become a family. They live day-to-day, picking through trash to sell recyclable materials, refusing to become beggars. Arul notices that Rukku can do more than Viji thinks and gives her small responsibilities, letting her feel valued. “…he’d seen something in you that I hadn’t bothered to notice.” (64) In fact, Rukku sells the bead necklaces she has been making for more money than they have had so far.

After they lose their “home,” they move to a graveyard infested with mosquitoes and Rukku and Muthu become ill. Viji decides to trust and seek help from Celina Aunty, a woman who runs a home for working children, but Rukku dies, and Viji blames herself. It takes time, but Celina Aunty convinces her that even if she has no faith in religion, she should learn to “have faith in the goodness within yourself.” (161) When Arul tells her, “Start giving thanks for what you do have.… You’re here in this home with a chance to do something more with your life. You have Celina Aunty. You have me. You have Muthu. Most of all, you have yourself.” (164)

Writing to her sister, Viji travels back, but she also can now move forward, imaging herself as the teacher she always wanted to be with new friends and her family, Arul and Muthu.
 
The Bridge Home is a 2019 Global Read Aloud Choice.

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty

Reading this wonderful new novel for middle grade readers straight through, I fell in love with Lucy and empathized with her struggles to understand human behavior—the mean girls who make fun of her differences and exclude her, the boy who cheats off her in math class and is constantly taking photographs, the BFF who betrays her.
 
When she works on a school project and falls in love with a dog at the shelter, she learns to reach out to save him and finds there are people she can depend on, especially Levy, the cheater. Levy grew into my favorite character behavior because, an outsider himself, he understood human behavior and was able to capture, appreciate, and share the complexity through his photography.

Middle school is where very few fit in—whether a genius or not. 

The Paris Project by Donna Gephart

Seventh-grader Cleveland Rosebud Potts has her future planned out. She is going to do everything she needs to get away from boring Sassafras, Florida, and move to Paris for eighth grade. She has been saving money from her dog-walking business and learning French from CDs borrowed from the library. As part of her Paris Project, she still needs to learn to cook a French meal, eat in a French restaurant, view French Impressionist paintings, and be accepted and earn a full scholarship to attend the American School of Paris. She has been wearing the beret her father gave her daily as inspiration.

However, many roadblocks have occurred on her way. Her father is a gambler, betting on dog races, and stole not only from his boss which has earned him a 7-month jail sentence, but took all of Cleveland’s savings, and as the daughter of a criminal, most of her clients have fired her. Her mother cleans houses to try to keep ahead of the bills, and her older sister Georgia works many jobs saving for her dream, to attend the University of Vermont the following year. When she video visits her father in prison, she has ambivalent feelings—she misses the funny father she loves but is furious with his actions and their effect on the family. Because of her father’s crime, the other girls at school ignore or laugh at her and she sits alone at lunch; in fact, people in town are wary of the whole family. “Life got divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’ that awful day when Dad was arrested for stealing money from Mr. Ronnie Baker.” (64)

Cleveland is not only determined and focused, she is spunky—she doesn’t complain the she only has a few outfits, her sneakers have holes, and her stomach frequently rumbles from hunger. And she does have one true friend—an eighth grader who also lives in the trailer park and is working on becoming a chef like the mother who left him and his father. Declan teaches her to cook French food, helping her to check that off her Paris Project list. However, when he becomes friends, and maybe more, with her father’s former boss’ (the man who put her father in jail) son, Cleveland has to decide how to act. “'Do you like Todd?… I mean do you ‘like’ him?” “Yes.” I understood that the words I said next mattered. A lot. I took a slow breath and gathered my thoughts. “That’s really great, Declan.” (162-3)

One friend decides to leave the pack of mean girls and Declan and Todd stop my Cleveland’s locker with hugs and high fives and “When it came to sisters, [she’d] hit the lottery,” (178) and together her support system, along with her strong mother, help Cleveland navigate life after and “after that” when her dad is released from prison. The preparing for the Paris Project ends up taking on a whole new meaning as Cleveland sets new goals. 

The Poet X​ by Elizabeth Acevedo

​The power of words – to celebrate, to heal, to communicate, to feel.

Fifteen-year-old Xiomara grabbed me immediately with her words. She sets the scene in “Stoop-Sitting”: one block in Harlem, home, church ladies, Spanish, drug dealers, and freedom that ends each day with the entrance of her Mami.

Xiomara feels “unhide-able,” insulted and harassed because of her body. We meet her family—the twin brother whom she loves but can’t stand up for her and a secret that he is hiding; her father who was a victim of temptation, and now stays silent; her mother, taken away from the Dominican Republic and her calling to become a nun and forced into a marriage that was a ticket to America; and Caridad, her best friend—only friend—and conscience,

Bur Xio fills her journal with poetry and when she discovers love, or is it lust, she finds the one person with whom she can share her poetry.
“He is not elegant enough for a sonnet,
too well thought-out for a free write,
Taking too much space in my thoughts
To ever be a haiku.” (107)

Aman gives Xio the confidence to see what she can become, not what she is told she can be, and to appreciate, rather than hide, her body. “And I think of all the things we could be oif we were never told out bodies were not built for them.” (188)

She also begins to doubt religion and defy the endless rules her mother has made about boys, dating, and confession. With the urging of her English teacher, Xio joins the Poetry Club and makes a new friend, Isabelle “”That girl’s a storyteller writing a world you’re invited to walk into.” (257) and with the support of Isabelle, Stephan, and Chris “My little words feel important, for just a moment.” (259)

When her mother discovers that Xio has not been attending her confirmation class, things come to a climax; however, even though her obsession with poetry has destroyed relationships in her family, it also, with some “divine intervention,” becomes the vehicle to heal them.

As I read I wanted to hear Xio’s poems, but when I finished the book, I realized that I had. A novel for mature readers, The Poet X features diverse characters and shares six months’ of interweaving relationships built on words. 

The Summer of Letting Go by Gae Polisner

Magic—“the power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces” (Oxford Dictionary). The older I become, the more magic, or coincidence, or fate observe. Maybe magic appears when needed.

In Gae Polisner’s novel The Summer of Letting Go, Francesca’s (Frankie) younger brother Simon drowned four years earlier while at the beach with his parents and sister. At the time eleven year-old Francesca was watching him, and she has felt guilty ever since. Guilt weighs heavy on a child, and Francesca hurts and desires more than a fifteen year old can handle.

Then she meets a little boy with her same name, Frankie, who looks like Simon and was born the day Simon drowned. Did Simon’s soul transmigrate to Frankie? Can Francesca make up for the tragedy of four years ago by taking care of, and loving, Frankie. As she helps Frankie, Francesca also helps his mother, a recent widow, and her own mother, also stuck in grief, and is able to heal and move on.

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

This novel introduced me to a new favorite character, Aza, whose name takes her through the alphabet and back again. Aza suffers from debilitating anxiety. Green, through Aza, is very effective at describing her condition to the readers, the way it spirals out of control, controlling her life as she tries to figure out who her “self” is. “I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.”
 
As much as Aza tries to control herself and her relationships, her thoughts take over, sometimes rendering her helpless, other times dictating her actions. Her thoughts intrude in her relationship with her new boyfriend Miles and almost derail her relationship with her best friend.

The plot involves a mystery, but I saw that more as a vehicle for the characters’ evolving relationships as they all—Aza, Daisy, Miles and his brother Noah—explore the world, face loss, and navigate relationships with parents and friends. “…the world is also the stories we tell about it” and John Green helps readers understand the complexities of life—especially life with loss and mental illness. 

Where the Heart Is by Jo Knowles

“When you learn vocabulary words in school, you memorize the definition. And you have a good idea of what the words mean. But it’s not until you feel them that you really grasp the definition. I have known what the word ‘helpless’ means for a long time. And ‘desperate.’ But I’ve never felt them. Feeling them is different. They fill your chest with a horrible sense of ‘dread’ and ‘guilt’ and ‘despair.’ Those are more vocabulary words that you can’t fully understand until you feel them. (246)

The summer before eighth grade is full of changes for Rachel. She turns 13; she has a job working with animals on her wealthy neighbors’ “farm;” her relationship with Micah changes when she realizes she only wants to remain best friends, not date him; she questions her sexual orientation when she realizes that her feelings when she is with Cybil are how she used to feel with Micah; and although her family has always been relatively poor since her mother lost her job, the bank is foreclosing on the house where she and her younger sister Ivy were born. If home is where the heart is, as her sister’s pillow proclaims, what defines a home?

In Where the Heart Is, a new novel by author Jo Knowles, some readers will seem themselves represented and others, such as Rachel's peers, will learn empathy for those whose lives may leave them feeling helpless and desperate, as is the case with too many of our adolescents who are in situations they cannot control.

Good story for middle-grade readers, especially girls. Topics: poverty - foreclosure - identity: questioning sexual orientation - peer relationships 

Wish by Barbara O’Connor

“Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”
Charlie Reese was very careful what she wished for, and she made sure to make her wish every day since 4th grade. Charlie knew every way there was to make wishes and never missed an opportunity.

Charlie’s family was “broken”—her Mama hadn’t “put her feet on the ground” or paid attention to her in a long time; her father, Scrappy, had a temper and was in prison getting “corrected;” and Jackie, her older sister, was living with a girl friend, graduating from high school, and working.

Charlie is sent to live with her mother’s older sister Bertha and her husband Gus in the Blue Ridge Mountains where people may or may not eat squirrel. Bertha and Gus are loving, try hard, and even though the cheesy Cinderella pillowcases, Bertha’s endless stories, and Gus’ “Butterbean” nickname for her may not be appreciated by Charlie, they never stop trying. “No, me and Gus are the lucky ones, right, Gus?” (157)

I was swept into the story by Charlie’s voice from the first page, “My name is Charlie. Charlemagne is a dumb name for a girl and I have told my mama that about a gazillion times. I looked around me at all the hillbilly kids doing math in their workbooks.” (3) Charlie is lost, but in Colby she meets Howard, a true friend, and Wishbone, her adopted dog, knowing that he was to be hers the first time she saw him, even before she caught him and he became her constant companion. “…I sent my thoughts zipping through the trees to wherever Wishbone was. I wanted him to know he didn’t have to be a stray like me.” (79)

The characters were all well-developed and unique, Howard, the boy with the up-down walk who ignores the bullies and the mean kids, whose own wish is to have Charlie as a friend, and who becomes her moral compass; the numerous Odom kids, and the loving Mrs. Odom who is accepting of everyone with their quirks. “I’m so glad to have a feisty female around here to help me keep these boys under control. I been needing a girl on my team.” (109)

Charlie’s older sister Jackie comes to visit and as positive, gregarious, and appreciative of Charlie’s new town, friends, and family as she is, Charlie learns that Jackie has grown up with the knowledge that, when she was seven and Charlie was a baby, their mother left them. “Nothing’s gonna change, Charlie.….Scrappy is gonna keep being Scrappy and Mama is gonna keep being Mama and you and I are on our own. (178) But her visit helps to show Charlie just how lucky she is to have a new start in her new town. “You got a good life here, Charlie.” (179)

Sometimes you get what you wish for, but sometimes you get even more. 

You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P by Alex Gino

​“The hard thing about accidentally saying the wrong thing is that you don’t know it’s the wrong thing until you have already said it and hurt someone.” (166)

Jilly P’s baby sister is born Deaf. Through talks with her fantasy chat room peers, especially her new friend Dereck, a young Deaf Black adolescent, Jilly learns that she has many misconceptions about the Deaf and about racism. And that some of her well-meaning comments and questions are hurtful. At a Thanksgiving dinner with her aunt’s wife, who is Black, she learns that racist attitudes are still alive—even within her own family members.

When a Deaf Black female—an Honors high school student—is shot running away from the police, having not heard and heeded their call to stop, Jilly observes, “Derek’s right. It doesn’t matter whether Jessica was wearing hearing aids. It doesn’t matter whether she was out late at night. She should have been safe….Everyone should be safe. But they’re not. Especially people who are Deaf. Or Black. Or both.” (202)

Jilly’s story was written by author Alex Gino to “help white readers learn a bit more about their privilege and how to support marginalized people in their lives.” (Author’s Note) Jilly recognizes, “I’ve learned that what you say matters, and that you can hurt people even when you don’t mean to. I’ve learned that sometimes you have to help someone start a rough conversation, even if that person is an adult. Even if those people are your parents. I’ve learned that racism is still around today….And I’ve learned there’s no such thing as being done with learning.” (215) 

Allies by Alan Gratz

The Battle of Normandy, code named Operation Overlord, began on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control.

In Alan Gratz’s new novel readers learn all about the invasion on D-Day from multiple perspectives, male and female.

First, readers meet Dee Carpenter, real name Dietrich Zimmerman, whose family fled the Nazis in Germany; his Jewish best friend Sid; James and his friend Sam, a Cree Indian, members of the Canadian army; and Bill and Thomas, soldiers from England. As casualties and injuries mount, readers meet the black medic Henry who has experienced racism and discrimination in his army life.

But readers also meet strong girls who helped with the invasion. Eleven-year-old Samira is French Algerian, and after her mother, a member of the French Resistance, is captured, she joins the Marquis (code name for the Resistance) to find and free her mother, helping others along the way.

And readers are introduced to Dorothy, the American reporter, disguised as a man so she can cover the battle; and the 13-year-old French Monique, who has studied first aid. Together they help save soldiers in the field, Monique soothing them with her singing.
​
This novel would appeal to those who are interested in history, battles, artillery, strategy and the men—and women—who served. 

A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielson
The Last Cherry Blossom by Kathleen Burkinshaw
The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba’s Greatest Abolutionist by Margarita Engle
The Orphan Band of Springdale by Anne Nesbit
The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins by Gail Shepherd
Unbound: A Novel in Verse by Ann E. Burg
Words on Fire by Jennifer A. Nielson

​A middle school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing  is the former Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education. In 2018-19 she served as a Literacy Consultant with a K-8 school and now works independently.

​She is the author of Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core; Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed. The Sentences They Saved; No More “Us” & “Them: Classroom Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect; The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension; and the newly-published Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum. Lesley has contributed chapters to Young Adult Literature in a Digital World: Textual Engagement though Visual Literacy and Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum and is a columnist for AMLE  Magazine and past editor of Connections, the award-winning journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. 

Until next week.

I am not sure how long I have know Jackie. One think is for sure, when I think of Jackie I think of her contagious smile, her love of books and her close association with the Youngstown State English Festival. I have been after Jackie for some time to write a blog post. Her tight look at A Good Kind of Trouble and its main character, Shayla, is a perfect post to fit between Lesley Roessing's two Friday posts (find the first one here) on strong girls.

“She taps her nails on the steering wheel, thinking. ‘Okay, like if you eat unhealthy food for a long time, you’re going to be unhealthy, right? Well, for too long people have been fed a diet about Black folks. About folks with brown skin. Making them think we’re scary. And that’s how the police have been trained to act. It’s going to take a long time to change people’s minds’” (41).

A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée

Twelve-year-old Shayla is starting junior high, is allergic to trouble, and has a giant forehead she doesn’t want her crush, Jace, to notice. She knows seventh grade will be different, but Shayla has no idea what she’s in for. Lucky for her, she relies on her two best friends, Isabella and Julia, aka the United Nations, to get through.
​
That is, until everything starts to fall apart. Shayla finds herself stuck with Bernard, the class bully, as her lab partner. People start to accuse Shayla of not being “black enough” because of the diversity of her friend group. And just when she thinks things can’t get any worse, the United Nations falls apart as Julia finds new friends and Isabella catches the eye of Shayla’s crush.

At home, Shayla is able to escape her school problems, but there, she is exposed to the harsh realities of society. A white police officer is on trial for shooting and killing and unarmed black man. The trial is at the forefront of the family’s discussions as Shayla’s sister, Hana, is an active member of Black Lives Matter who, at times, questions Shayla’s loyalty to her own race. Although Shayla’s parents try to shield her from some of what is happening, they recognize the necessity of teaching her the realities of the situation for black people in America.
​
As Shayla deals with her day-to-day struggles, she also struggles to come to terms with living in a world where the color of her skin makes people feel threatened and puts her in danger. After attending a silent protest where she realizes that “Hundreds of people walking together carrying candles and signs but not saying one single word? Let me tell you, that’s louder than anything…That’s when I found out how loud silence can be” (208), she decides to stage her own silent protest by wearing and distributing black arm bands at school in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Shayla realizes that sometimes it is important to get into, as Civil Rights Activist and Congressman John Lewis calls it “Good trouble, necessary trouble” to change people’s hearts and minds. 

​This book depicts the difficulties of finding one’s self in a challenging time of transition while also exploring the complexities of race and racial tensions in our current society. I loved the depth of the characters and their situations. Lisa Moore Ramée doesn’t set out to write a book about race; she crafts a story about a little black girl who has to deal with the reality that racism is alive and well in our country all while dealing with middle school. She also doesn’t offer cure-all as the characters in the book discuss—and in some cases strongly disagree about—race and racial tensions. Shayla begins to find her place in school as she begins to find her voice, transforming from a bystander to a rule-breaker, taking a stand for what she believes is right. 

What do I read next? 

Reading a book generates the reading of more books. After you pick up and read A Good Kind of Trouble, you might want to look at some of the books in the slide show below. These are books Jackie suggests are in the same vein as her selection.  I have to say some of these are my (Steve's) favorites as well.

If you know some of those, but have picked up and read about Shayla, then some of your old favorites might encourage you to try it out.

Blended by Sharon Draper 
Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D Williams
The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden 
Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes 
How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

Jackie Mercer taught high school English for nine years. She is now entering her second year as an English Education Lecturer at Youngstown State University. Jackie is passionate about civil rights and social justice. She is also passionate about getting books into the hands of young people. She is a member of NCTE, ALAN, and the Youngstown State University English Festival committee. 

Until next week.

If you follow this blog, Lesley Roessing needs no introduction. She is one of the most prolific readers I know and strong advocate for students and teachers. She advocates for student choice in reading, but readily demonstrates that if teachers are familiar with many titles they are better resources when their students are looking for something to read. She has contributed many times on a variety of subjects. Please browse through the contributors page and then look at her bio at the bottom of this post for more about her many projects and accomplishments.

This week she builds on a post about strong girls in YA that she describes briefly before introducing some of her more recent discoveries. She adds 50! (Many of these titles are books that I have come to love as well.) We will do part this week and the rest next Friday. (Oh ,Lesley placed them in alphabetical order, so your favorite might be part of next week's group.) What a great resource to have at the ready as school starts all over the country.

Lesley, thank you once again.

Two years ago I wrote a guest column for this site titled “The New Nancy Drew: Strong Girls in YA Literature." The list shared 27 novels and was based on my reading for the previous year or two, plus some novels from my adolescence.
 
I thought it was time to update the list with novels I have read in the last two years to share some new titles for adolescent girls—and boys—to read and discuss.
 
What does it mean to be a “strong girl”? Being strong on behalf of others? Being strong on behalf of ourselves? Sometimes strength is defined by how we deal with a situation; sometimes it is overcoming challenges and differences and demonstrating resilience; sometimes strength is righting a wrong or helping another (whether person or whale or saving a development); sometimes it is how we deal with others and the way others treat us; and sometimes it is the courage to be ourselves or to change who we were.
 
These 50 novels/memoirs demonstrate that girls can be strong in diverse ways

1. Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed

It is immediately apparent why this novel was one of the books chosen for the 2018 Global Read Aloud; well written, well-developed characters, a strong adolescent female protagonist, and contemporary issues.

Twelve-year-old Amal lives in a rural Pakistani village where she is the eldest daughter of a small landowner, who like everyone else owes money to the greedy, corrupt landlord. She goes to school and dreams of becoming a teacher. After a run-in with the landlord’s son, she is required to work on the Khan estate to repay her father’s debt, an impossible feat since the servants are charged for lodging and food. As she becomes part of the household, connecting with the other servants, she learns more about the unlawful Khan family and is forced to decide how much to risk to save the villages, her friends, and her future. She is counseled by her new teacher, “You always have a choice. Making choices even when they scare you because you know it’s the right thing to do —that’s bravery.” (210)

I am adding Amal Unbound to my list of novels featuring strong girls in MG.YA literature. She reminds me of such adolescents as Serafina (Serafina’s Promise by Ann E. Burg) and Valli (No Ordinary Day by Deborah Ellis).

As author Aisha Saeed wrote in her Author’s Note, “Amal is a fictional character, but she represents countless other girls in Pakistan and around the world who take a stand against inequality and fight for justice in often unrecognized but important ways.” In this way novels and characters can function as maps to help our young readers navigate the challenges and ethics of adolescent life.

2. Bernice Buttman, Model Citizen by Niki Lenz

Bernice Buttman is anything but a model citizen. She is a bully, having grown up from the days when her four brothers bullied others on her behalf. However, being a bully is lonely and she decides she wants a friend, but the other fifth graders are afraid of her, especially Oliver Stratts, the kid she has targeted for friendship. She does have one person in her corner, Ms. Knightley, the town librarian who sees the Bernice who has possibilities.

Bernice lives in the Lone Star Trailer Park where she sleeps on the sofa and her brothers share one bedroom; she has a mother who takes Bernice’s lunch money to have herself tattooed. But Bernice has a dream—to raise enough money by any means possible so she can go to Hollywood Hills Stunt Camp and become a famous stuntwoman.

When her mother and boyfriend leave home with their own plans for stardom, Bernice is sent to the picture-perfect town of Halfway to live with her Aunt Josephine, a nun. And as Ms. Knightley advises, “Bernice, I know you may not believe what I’m about to say, but this might be the best thing that’s ever happened to you…Going to a new place is like starting over. It’s like a clean slate.” (41)

As she settles in to her new town with the support of her aunt, Sister Marie Francis who teaches her to ride a horse, and Sister Angela-Clarence who only speaks in children’s book quotes (which actually make more sense than the two other Sisters give credit), Bernice decides that “things could be different in Halfway. I could be different.” (53). Unfortunately, her first day at school she unwittingly makes an enemy of the mayor’s daughter. But she also makes her first real friend.

New Bernice and Old Bernice battle each other as she learns what being a “model citizen” entails. She also learns that, even though her family doesn’t appear to change, her goals might change as she becomes, according to Ms. Knightley observation on a visit to Halfway, “different.”

What I loved most about the novel was the writing. Niki Lenz captures Bernice’s voice, while I may not have laughed out loud, I giggled inside through the book, not wanting to stop reading, but not wanting to finish. This book would be a great read-aloud, using passages as a mentor text for Voice. 

3. Disappeared by Francisco Stork

Juarez, Mexico: kidnappings of young women, sex and drug trafficking, the cartel, murder, poverty, betrayal, abandonment. Francisco Stork’s newest novel is about all of the above but also about conscience, personal responsibility, taking care of others, moral choices, and doing what is right, not what is easy or even safe.

Sara, a reporter for a local paper, is committed to finding and saving the young women who are being kidnapped, especially her best friend Linda, despite the warnings of her boss and the threats to herself and her family. She finds that she doesn't know whom to trust.

Sara’s younger brother Emiliano is looking for a better life—ways to make money to pay the family bills and win the love of his wealthy girlfriend, even if his has to sacrifice his commitment to the code of Brother Patricio and Jiparis Explorers Club, which rescued him from the effects of his father’s abandonment.

What the brother and sister find is “The city is like a spiderweb. Every thread is connected directly or indirectly to every other thread” and in helping others and doing the right thing, they may have to sacrifice, or revise, their personal goals.

I connected quickly to the main characters and found the novel to present multiple topics for provocative classroom discussions, especially about personal values and decisions. Even though the main characters were of high school age and a little older, the novel was appropriate for late middle and high school.

4. Eventown by Corey Ann Haydu

“In Juniper, nothing was ever perfect. Especially not lately. I didn’t think anything would ever be perfect again. But here in Eventown, perfect seems possible.” (73)

As fifth-grader Elodee knows “Some days are harder than other days.”(7) But it seems that more and more days are “harder.” Her identical twin Naomi seems to be growing away from her, the kids in the school think she is weird, she is losing the two friends she has, and she has these strong feelings of sadness and extreme anger. She is not sure why. When their mother and father get jobs in Eventown, they move there, This may be a way to start a new life, especially since the only thing they take with them is a rosebush.

They move into their perfect house and are immediately happily welcomed by their classmates, making best friends, Venna and Betsy. Everything is perfect, even if everything is the same. Elodee begins to notice that when Natalie “competes” in gymnastics, her special talent, everyone performs the same routine in the same way, and while the twins love the music class and have the opportunity to play the instruments that are perfect for them, they only ever play one song, The Eventown Anthem. Elodee’s passion is not only cooking and baking but creating innovative meals; however, in Eventown she is told to follow the recipes that came with their kitchen. She hopes to learn the stories of the town and the people because “it’s hard to know much of anything if you don’t know all the stories of a place and the people in it.” (81), but there are no stories to share. And, at first, Elodee doesn’t “want to interrupt the warm, glowy feeling [she’s] getting being around all these people.” (62)

When things become too different from what she has known, Elodee thinks, “I want some things to change, but other things to stay exactly the same.” (103). She wonders why this life is so easy for the others but not for her. “I want the niceness, the coziness and warmth to be enough.… I want to fit in with them and feel all the same things at the same moments.” (180) As Josiah says, “That’s what we all want here. To make things easier. Simpler. More even.” (132) And when Elodee’s Welcoming is interrupted, she begins to question the traditions and rules, and things begin to fall apart in this perfect town. The family rosebush begins to grow larger than all the others in Eventown, a town filled with rosebushes, all exactly the same. Next weeds take over the perfect yards.

Elodee realizes that there is something or someone important to her that she can’t remember, and Naomi doesn’t remember their past life at all. Again Elodee feels different, growing away from her classmates, neighbors, friends, and even her twin who tells her, “I don’t remember anything that you’re talking about…, That was our life there. The end. [Ellodee] needs [Naomi] to feel what I am feeling and remember what I am feeling.…” (216). Other than Veena who, although born in Eventown and knows nothing else, sympathizes, and her family, the town becomes suspicious of the new inhabitants.

Betsy’s mother explains “Some people think they can have a fresh start while still holding on to [their] past. But it doesn’t work like that. You can be here, or you can be there. But you can’t have both.” (239) In other words, things can be perfect, but at a price.

Corey Ann Haydu's new novel demonstrates the importance of memories—joyful, angry, scary, lonely, embarrassing, and heartbreaking. It allows readers to question perfection and the happiness that is achieved at a price, that of losing everything else. It acknowledges but challenges the advantages of sameness.

One of my favorite books to discuss with adolescent readers is Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Year after year, I found the conversations with and among eighth graders to be profound as they questioned the beliefs and rules venerated by Jonas’ Community. It was one of the few novels we read as a whole-class novel. However, many times this novel is required reading in younger grades. While the reading level may be appropriate, many of the ideas presented—euthanasia, Birth Mothers, and the repression of sexual desires, in my opinion, are too sophisticated for these undeveloped minds. Eventown would be an effective introduction to the ideas of the significance and importance of memories and the consequences of eliminating diversity. 

5. Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston

Imagine that something has happened to you, but you were not aware that it happened and you cannot remember anything about it. How would you feel or would you feel? Would an incident that you did not “experience” change you?

Hermione was enjoying her last summer of cheerleading camp, leading her fellow cheerleaders—female and male—and making new friends—female and male. Then the unthinkable happened. At a dance she was drugged and raped. She woke up in the hospital to her best friend informing her what had happened. That part of the evening was a blank; and it remains a blank. Hermione describes to her therapist that she feels sympathy for the girl to whom this happened but not empathy because she doesn’t feel the pain. “It’s a story someone told me.” (143). And she has to explain to others that her goals and dreams haven’t changed and “none of the important things have changed despite all the brokenness.” (186)

The advantage is that Hermione did not “experience” the rape and so does not relive the horror. “This—my attack—it’s just this huge blank spot. I don’t remember anything, so I can’t feel anything” (143), but there are disadvantages that are unconceivable. Not only is Hermione not behaving as other expect her to behave which leads to rumors and shaming, but she has a gap in her life and, now, she is terrified of losing time—even the time she loses when sleeping. She also does not know who raped her—could it be an old friend, could it be someone she just met at camp, could it be her boyfriend? Who can she now trust?

Luckily, she can trust her best friend Polly, the fiercest, most protective friend a girl can have. And she has many other friends to whom she is more than “that raped girl” (185). With a supportive family and cheer team and a very entertaining therapist, Hermione works her way to recovery. “I have danced before and I will dance tomorrow” (243).

E.K. Johnston’s novel, with it well-developed characters, gives the reader plenty to consider. Hermione stands up for herself and all women when a reporter asks what precautions she could have taken, and what advice she would give other girls, to keep this type of thing from happening, and she replies, “If I was a boy, would you be asking me that?” (194). Most important, it made me aware that there are many types of trauma. 

6. Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes by Mary E. Lambert

​I had, of course, heard of hoarders but did not realize the extent of the problem or the effect on their children until I lived through Annabelle’s secret in Mary E. Lambert’s new novel Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes. Annabelle’s mother is a hoarder, and almost every room of the house is filled with objects—well-organized objects. Mother lives in muumuus, the colors of which signal her moods, and doesn't leave the house.

One room is the exception. On her tenth birthday, Annabelle tossed everything in her bedroom out the window, clearing the room of anything nonessential; she checks once a week for anything not used within the last week. Her younger sister and older brother are not so lucky and live surrounded by piles of their mother’s purchases, new and used. Leslie collects articles about the dangers of hoards and has nightly nightmares. Chad has checked out from family life.

On the day the newspapers, organized by weather report, finally fall off the kitchen shelves onto Leslie, seventh-grader Annabelle was sure things would change. And they did. Their father left home; he knows something has to change, but he doesn’t know how to change it. Their grandmother Nora comes to help, and there is a disastrous Family Game Night.

But as difficult as life is in a house filled to the brim with purchases, Annabelle’s secret is safe from her friends and potential boyfriend. Annabelle has instituted a strict Five-Mile-Radius Rule. No one is invited to meet within a file-mile radius of the house. When she first visits a new friend’s house in fifth grade, “I thought families like Rae’s, with houses that perfect, only existed in books or TV shows.” (17) When her secret is discovered, she realizes that her friends do not let it affect their friendships; they are real friends.

This is a novel about a strong adolescent who helps her family through a challenge as many of our students are doing daily, although the challenges may be diverse. It is a novel for those children who need to see themselves or someone like them in a book and for those adolescents who need to discover empathy for their peers. 

7. Focused by Alison Gerber

In Alyson Gerber’s first novel Braced, readers were given the opportunity to learn the story of Rachel Brooks, a middle grades student who has scoliosis but also who has persistence and resilience. Rachel learns to re-see herself and her strengths, and she provided, for many readers, a mirror to their lives and the chance to see themselves and their struggles valued in a novel. And maybe more importantly, Braced gave readers who have not had to face such challenges an awareness, empathy, and understanding for those who do.

In the same way, Gerber’s new novel Focused shares the story of Clea Adams, a seventh grader who has ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). Clea works as hard as she can on her schoolwork but just cannot seem to complete all the tasks; she doesn’t always follow directions, finish assignments, or remember what she needs to do. She feels that she isn’t trying hard enough or isn’t smart enough to achieve. She is also affected socially as she blurts out whatever she is thinking, interrupting conversations and sharing the secrets of others.

Luckily, on the plus side, she has a best friend Red, a new girlfriend Sanam, a supportive family, and she is really good at chess, which she loves. Chess is the one activity where she seems to be able to focus. But when her lack of focus and impulsivity cause her to lose her friendship with Red and possibly forfeit her chance to remain on the chess team, Clea needs to take action. She is tested for ADHD and learns that it is her condition that controls her actions, rather than lack of intelligence or willingness to support her friends.

Clea learns that she needs to follow the advice of her psychiatrist, parents, and school counselor and to advocate for herself. “I don’t notice if anyone starts whispering about me when I walk back into the room, but I don’t care if they do, because for the first time all year, I got exactly what I needed and I know for sure I did my best.” (262)

According to the American Psychiatric Association, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common mental disorders affecting children. As of August 2018, an estimated 10 percent of children (over 6 million school-age children) had been diagnosed with ADHD. And that is why this novel offers not only a good story, but is important for children with ADHD and those who love, live, and work with them to read. As Braced, Focused will provide not only support for some readers who see their struggles valued in a novel but a map to navigate the difficulties of functioning with ADHD, and for others it will provide understanding of, and empathy for, those friends, family, and peers who may be facing some of Clea’s challenges. 

8. Forward Me Back to You by Mitali Perkins

When 16-year-old Katina is assaulted in the stairwell by the popular star basketball player, her jujitsu skills let her defend herself. But when she reports the attack, it is she who is made so uncomfortable she has to leave school. Her confidence shattered, she wonders if she will ever be able to trust men again.

Robin was born in Kolkata, abandoned by his mother, and adopted by loving, wealthy, supportive American parents at age 3, but he has never stopped thinking about his first mother, and his life seems to have no direction.

When Kat is sent to Boston to be homeschooled by a family friend’s aunt, Grandma Vee, she becomes a part of a teen church group. When Pastor Gregory takes Robin, Katina, and Gracie to Kolkata to work with female human trafficking survivors, with the help of her new support system and some of the young survivors themselves, Katina learns to trust again; Robin, now called Ravi, finds purpose in his life; and Gracie, who was the major support system for both of them, finally gets Ravi to realize his love for her. Kat and Ravi come from the experience having found ways to help these girls and future victims.

Told through very short chapters that alternate between Kat and Robin and simply written, Mitali Bose Perkins' new novel is a valuable read that is accessible to, and appropriate for, all adolescent readers. 

9. Front Desk by Kelly Yang

Ten-year-old Mia moves to the head of my “Strong Girls in MG/YA Lit” as she becomes an activist and champion of those who cannot, or will not, stand up for themselves [“You don’t get it, kid. I’ve been fighting my whole life. I’m done. It’s no use fighting—people are gonna be the way they’re gonna be” (105)], teaches others the wrongs of prejudice and injustice, and forms a community from her neighbors, patrons, and fellow immigrants.

Mia and her parents emigrated from China to the United States for a more “free” life. In China her parents were professionals; in America they feel lucky to find a job managing a motel. But the owner, Mr. Yao, is unkind, unjust, cheap, and prejudiced. He reduces their salaries until they are working for lodging and a life of poverty. And while this is a novel about Mia who manages the front desk and helps her parents temporarily hide other Chinese immigrants who have been mistreated, it is really a novel of culture, prejudice, bullying, community, and, most of all, the power of writing. “It was the most incredible feeling ever, knowing that something I wrote actually changed someone’s life.” (218)

In America there are two roller coasters, and people are born to a life on one or the other, but Mia and her friend Lupe, whose family came from Mexico, have decided to break that cycle. Although bullied in school and warned by her mother that she will never be a “native” English writer, Mia develops her writing skills to help Hank gain employment after a wrongful arrest, free “Uncle” Zhang whose ID and passport were being held by his employer, share her story with her teacher and classmates, and finally persuade friends and strangers to take a chance on her family.

Mia is a representative of the “nearly twenty million immigrant children currently living in the United States, 30 percent of whom are living at or below poverty.” (Author’s Note). As such, this book will serve as a mirror for many readers, a map for others looking for ways to navigate young adolescent life, especially in a new culture, and as a window for those who will learn empathy for others they may see as different. Author Kelly Yang also shares the autobiographical elements of the novel in her Author’s Note.

Front Desk, with its very short chapters and challenging topics would be a meaningful and effective 10-minute read-aloud to begin Grade 4-7 daily reading workshop focus lessons. I would suggest projecting Mia’s letters since they show her revisions as she seeks to improve her language skills and word choices. Front Desk is a 2019 Global Read Aloud Choice.

10. Gem & Dixie by Sara Zarr

“It’s not like I get hit. I don’t get touched. I don’t get threatened.… We don’t always have food but I manage to eat.… I take care of my sister.”
“But what does it take to be in danger? What does that even mean? Are things not bad enough? Should things be worse for me before…before I can make them better?”

Gem has been organizing her life and taking care of her younger sister Dixie and her mother most of her life. Her philandering father was kicked out and is a rare presence in their lives, and her mother drinks and uses drugs. I was drawn to Gem from the very beginning when the reader first encounters her as a child taking care of Dixie and leading her on “adventures” in their apartment.
 
As the sisters enter high school, popular, pretty Dixie grows away from the Gem, accepting life as it is and making it work for her. Readers see Gem, a high school junior, hustling quarters to buy lunch because her father is long gone and her mother won’t fill out the paperwork for free lunches. My heart broke for her as, alone and friendless and somewhat sister-less, she navigates life with the help of her school psychologist Mr. Bergstrom.

Their father’s return leads to an opportunity for the sisters to leave on a real adventure and although they bond for a few days, Dixie opts to return home while Gem, even though she still worries about Dixie, takes the solution that can make her own life better.

Author Sara Zarr created a character who broke my heart even while I was rooting for her.
“Everything that happened, it was only because we wanted our parents to be better, to know how to take care of us.” 

11. Give and Take by Elly Schwartz

“My insides are filled with a missing that can’t be fixed with words.” (85) Twelve-year-old Maggie’s world seems to be filled with good-byes. It all began on the first worst day of her life, "Forgot Me Day,” the day her Nana forgot who Maggie was, and then the second worst day, the day Nana died. Maggie becomes anxious that she will forget what is special in her life, and she starts collecting mementoes of small moments. She hides boxes under her bed and in her closet, boxes filled with gifts but also milk cartons and straws from lunches, sticks, rocks, anything that will help her remember.

When the family takes in a foster baby, Maggie knows it is only to give the baby a good start until she gets her forever family, but she hides away baby socks and diaper tabs. “A little something. To remember. So my memories don’t disappear.” (13) Baby Izzie is adopted and Maggie is filled with another “giant missing.”

When her secret hoarding is discovered, her parents send her to work with Dr. Sparrow, who helps her work toward “a heart big enough to love a lot and a brain healthy enough to let go.” (267)

During all this, Maggie meets a new friend, Mason, who joins their formerly all-girl trapshooting team; helps her little brother Charlie makes friends; finds—and loses—a pet turtle; and has to decide whether to tell a friend’s secret, a secret that could be hurtful to others, risking the loss of that friendship.

Maggie, who struggles with anxiety manifested through hoarding, joins her author-Swartz-sisters Frankie, who in Smart Cookie is dealing with the loss of her mother, and Molly who struggles with OCD in Finding Perfect in my heart. Their stories will help some young adolescents see their lives reflected and challenges honored and will give others the empathy to understand their peers. For the adult who read these novels, they may provide a flash of insight into those in our classrooms and families. 

12. How to Build a Heart by Maria Padian

Children who experience the loss of a parent or other family member through a military line-of-duty death are likely to face a number of unique issues. Izzy’s father died when she was ten, before her younger brother Jack was born. Her small family, estranged from her father’s relatives, has moved from place to place as her mother, a nurse’s aide, tries to support them.

When she moves to a trailer park in Virginia, Isabella Crawford becomes embroiled in the family drama of her best friend, and, as a member of the acapella group at the private school where she is a scholarship student, she befriends a freshman who is battling her own demons. To make her life even more complicated, her family becomes the recipient of a Habit for Humanity house, and Izzy has to volunteer hours towards its construction.

In the midst of all this drama, Izzy, who is determined to keep her family’s circumstances a secret from her classmates, discovers what friendship and trusting friends—and family—really means as she reconnects with her father’s pig-farming family and finds that her wealthy friends and her new boyfriend care about her, not her economic status.

Izzy, an adolescent straddled between two cultures—that of her Puerto Rican mother and her North Carolina father—is not quite sure where she belongs but learns to share her world with others. She is a memorable, well-developed character whom I did not want to leave at the end of the book. 

13. How to Rock Braces & Glasses by Meg Haston

There appear to be more books about boy bullies than girl bullying. And even though female adolescent bullying is different, what I loved about this novel is that it does NOT follow the expected plot—mean girl becomes a loser and is disrespected and insulted by her former friends; the nerds support her, and she sees the light and changes, dropping the popular kids forever. Neither is it the opposite. But, like middle school, it is somewhere in between; the story is nuanced as is adolescence.

Kacey is a bully. She does not see herself s a bully or even as a mean girl; she sees herself as honest, as knowing what everyone should say, do, and wear, and she is just there to help them or help them get real. "The truth may hurt, but it's always better to know"(189). Her world as school leader falls apart when an eye infection leaves her with glasses and new braces leave her—a school news reporter and star of the musical—with a lisp. Her best friends drop her and cyber bully her and while an old friend offers to help, it is to receive help herself having decided in fifth grade that she was embarrassed to be seen with Kacey (which is not how Kacey remembers the end of the friendship). And the cute nerd seems to be dating her former best friend.
 
Kacey reclaims her popularity, but takes responsibility for herself and her past actions, showing a kind of strength she didn’t realize she had.

14. How We Roll by Natasha Friend

Stan Lee said, “To my way of thinking, whether it’s a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you’ve got to care about the characters.” This is true whether watching a movie or reading a novel, and I thought of this when I read Natasha Friend’s newest YA novel, How We Roll.

Quinn has a brother on the autism spectrum, and his tantrums and food requirements consume her parents’ attention, especially her mother’s. So when Quinn’s hair falls out and she is diagnosed with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder, she handles the challenges on her own, assuming that her middle school friends will support her. Which they do—until they don’t. Bullied and ridiculed by her peers and ignored by her two lifelong friends, Quinn copes by keeping to herself and putting her energy into skateboarding and basketball.

Serendipitously, the family moves across the country so her brother can attend a special school, and Quinn has a chance to start over, with her two new wigs—Guinevere and Sasha. At her new school she meets a group of girls who adopt her. She also meets Jake. Jake, the former star football player, had a serious accident and is now a bilateral amputee, sad and bitter; the two become unlikely friends. Quinn also finds out that it is possible to have friends who like you for who you are, not what you look like.

What impressed me was how three-dimensional the characters were and not only how supportive Quinn is despite her heartbreak, but she is learning to trust that others can be as supportive. I really came to like all the characters, even Jake’s flawed brother and the ninth-grade popular girls (except for the old schoolmates whom the reader was not supposed to like). Readers will experience how demanding life with a neuro-diverse child can be but, on the other hand, how supportive a family and a community can be.

15. Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee

“They were just being friendly.” “Today’s my birthday.” “Seventh grade boys can be very immature.” “Maybe they just like you.” “It’s called flirting.” “Maybe if you think about what you’re doing…”

Hands swishing across her shoulder, squeezing a shoulder, bumping her shoulder on the bus. Boys asking for hugs and to touch her sweater for luck, leaning on her during band practice, touching her. Even when she tells them to stop. It gets worse when she finds out that the basketball team has made a game out of harassing her.

Seventh-grader Mila doesn’t know what is happening, but she knows she feels very uncomfortable. And it keeps getting worse. “The whole thing is out of control.” (184)
Are the boys on the basketball team just playing around or is she misreading their actions and words? Her friends aren’t much help. Zara makes everything all about her and can say mean things (although she always apologizes), Omi is supportive but timid, and Max insists that she talk to Mr. McCabe, but he is also the boys’ basketball coach. Her female guidance counselor is on maternity leave and, when she finally goes to Mr. Dolan, the male guidance, he brushes off her concerns, “Mila, I can tell you from experience that the best course of action is to try to ignore them.” (56)
Mila can’t tell her mother who has her own problems with a mean boss and trying to make ends meet and convince her ex-hband to pay child support.

Finally Mila gets some strength from karate lessons and Samira, a school classmate who leads the lessons. When she is again harassed before the big band concert, she makes an act of desperation, unfortunately bringing the concert to a halt, but reinforced by another classmate’s similar story, she ultimately tells the band teacher about the endless harassment. Finally someone understands, “…I also understand that sometimes you reach a point where the only thing that matters is being heard. No, not just heard. Listened to, right?” (202)

Mila’s story made me cringe throughout. The story, while simply told, conveys Mila’s confusion and feelings of helplessness. The novel illustrates the importance of telling an adult, an adult who understands and recognizes harassment for what it is.. As Mr. Dolan says when Mila is explaining how it felt, “I really think this is something I need to hear.” (216)

Barbara Dee’s newest novel needs to be read by all middle school girls and, even more critically, by all middle school boys. This would be an ideal book for a group of students to read-aloud and discuss with a teacher or counselor in a homeroom meeting or advisement period. It also would be an effective choice for a whole-class read before or after book clubs reading novels about bullying. 

16. Merci Suarez Changes Gears by Meg Medina

Mercedes Suarez lives in Las Casitas, a community of three houses, with her older brother and parents, her aunt and two little nephews, and her beloved Lolo and Abuela. She began attending Seaward Pines Academy, where she is a scholarship student, last year. But now Merci is a sixth grader, and things are changing. It is not only that the students will be changing classes and teachers, it is not only that she has to deal with mean girls—or at least one mean girl and her sidekick, but her grandfather who has been her confidant and bike-riding partner is changing. It is not until a car accident that the family lets her in on the secret; Lolo has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Her brother explains, “In the next few years, Lolo might not be able to remember us, Merci. He won’t even remember himself.”

Meg Medina newest novel for middle grade students features a Latina protagonist who is dealing with challenges that many middle-grade students face and a new challenge that more may face in the future. With the love of her family and the support of her new friends, Merci will decide if she can change gears.

This delightful read, full of engaging characters and sharing the day-to-day life of a busy family, reminded me of Medina’s novel Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass but written at a level for 5th to 8th grade readers. Merci Suarez was the winner of the 2019 Newberry Award.

17. Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

“moxie”- force of character, determination, nerve

Testosterone, football, and the football players run East Rockport High School in a small Texas town. All monies are funneled to the football team, and “Make me a sandwich” is the boys’ code for telling girls to stay in their place (even during classes). While girls are subject to humiliating dress code checks, football players get away with T-shirts displaying crude sexist rhetoric. Good girl, don’t-rock-the-boat Vivian, the daughter of a feminist, at least in her own high school days, has had enough and anonymously begins creating and posting vines from a group called Moxie, encouraging the other high school girls to take action.
 
As some girls eagerly join the movement—bake and craft sales for the girls’ soccer team, protests of the Dress Code crackdowns, and labeling the lockers of boys who subject them to a Bump 'n' Grab “game," others are concerned about the ramifications of joining, and it is not until a rape attempt by the star football player, son of the principal—is disregarded that most of the high school girls—and a few boys—cross popularity and racial barriers and find their moxie.
 
“It occurs to me that this is what it means to be a feminist. Not a humanist or an equalist or whatever. But a feminist. It’s not a bad word. After today it might be my favorite word. Because really all it is girls supporting each other and wanting to be treated like human beings in a world that’s always finding ways to tell them they’re not.” (p.269).
 
This is a must-read for high school students. 

18. Mustaches for Maddie by Chad Morris and Shelly Brown

“I learned a lot through my friends, troubles and surgeries. Like, small acts of kindness can go a long way….And when things are rough, you can always find a way to laugh.” (242) These words are from the real Maddie, the authors’ daughter. And this is the story of a girl who fights a bully and a brain tumor, told convincingly in the voice of a sixth grader which rings true.

There is a girl in story-Maddie’s class who is a bully. She bullies in the distinctive way of girls—through exclusion. Cassie decides who can play with her each recess and excludes all others. As Maddie wins the part that Cassie wants in a class production, the meanness escalates, and when Maddie is diagnosed with a brain tumor, Cassie tells the other students that she made it up. However, Maddie has created a more inclusive playground with her imaginative games as she invites more and more students to join in.

Through two surgeries Maddie keeps her wild imagination and sense of humor—anything is funnier while wearing a mustache, discovering that she has quite a lot of school friends and a wide community for support and even a boy who likes her. But she learns that many children are going through tough times and they all need a little support, even if they don’t ask for it.

This is a novel that many children need as they face—and help others face—bullies and all sorts of problems that our young people of today are facing.

19. Property of the Rebel Librarian by Allison Varnes

Censorship is a growing threat that infringes on our foundational rights. The year 2017 saw an increase in censorship attempts and a revitalized effort to remove books from communal shelves to avoid controversy. In 2017 the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 354 challenges to library, school and university materials. Reasons for banning: suicide, same-sex relationship, gender identification, drug use, profanity, promoting sex education, LGBT characters, sexual violence, violence, use of the N-word, and thought to “lead to terrorism” and “promote Islam.”Many times when I read articles about books being banned in schools, particularly books such as the Harry Potter series, Charlotte’s Web, the dictionary, and ironically, Fahrenheit 451, I feel clueless. Can this happen? Why? Who is in charge of these bannings.

Well, in Varnes’ new middle-grades novel, Property of the Rebel Librarian, I found those people—parents, PTSA members, school board members, administrators, those whom we trust to educate our children, are the ones taking barrels of books out of the school library, leaving empty shelves.

It all started with one book. Seventh grader model student, band member, non-dater, and avid reader June Harper is relentlessly supervised by her parents. She and her college-student sister Kate are being groomed as future doctors, no preferences requested, no dating until age 16. But June is caught by her Dad reading a book called The Makings of a Witch. Not only was she reading the contraband, but the novel had been given to her by the school librarian. “It’s our job to protect you.” (4)

The parents have the librarian suspended and institute a school library “book extraction for quality control.” The board passes resolutions prohibiting classroom use and independent reading of books containing “profanity, drugs, violence, rock/rap music, witchcraft, drinking, smoking, or rebellion of any kind.” And banning them from unsupervised distribution (59). Students are threatened with disciplinary action and teachers with termination.

Just when you think people cannot be more narrow-minded, June’s parents take every single book off her bedroom shelf. They plan to read every book and return only those deemed “quality reading material.” They eventually return some of the books, and, miraculously, Old Yeller has been cured and the other books have also had passages altered. Not only are books being banned, but “appropriate” books have been censored.

One day on the way to school, having lost the people she thought were her friends, June discovers a LITTLE FREE LIBRARY. She takes a book and an idea is born. With her new friend Matt, she begins a lending library of banned books from the empty locker next to hers, checking books out under Superhero names in her notebook titled “Property of the Rebel Librarian.” Now everyone in the underground knows her; she meets readers she never knew—the eighth-grade popular kids make up quite a surprising number. “Everywhere I look, kids line the hallways with oversized textbooks in their laps. At lunchtime and after school, their sneakers dangle off sidewalk benches. I don’t have to look to see what they are doing. I already know. Reading.” (119)

As she and her fellow readers take too many risks for their right to read and the library is discovered, a reporter asks June “So if you could say one thing to America, what would that be?” “Don’t tell me what to read.” (246)

This is a novel for all bibliophiles and those who question banning and believe in the right to read—starting with this book.

20. Punch Like a Girl by Karen Krossing

I find my voice.
"He tried to rape me." The words flutter free. "Again."
Why did I think that speaking out would hurt me?

Punch Like a Girl is not about attempted date rape; it is a story about the power of finally speaking out.

After Tori is sexually assaulted by her controlling ex-boyfriend, she lashes out at others and herself, physically and emotionally. But through standing up for others, she learns to stand up for herself, not by punching and pushing away, but by letting others in and sharing her story, thereby healing herself.

This novel is a good quick read for teens—without any graphic description or profanity. One strength is that it doesn't bash all males; there are some wonderfully drawn male teen characters—Jamarlo, Daniel, Sal, and finally, even Joel. The story also shows the complexity of adolescent female relationships. 

21. Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy

She is 6’3””; has blue hair; lives in a trailer with her father, pregnant unmarried sister, and now the undependable baby’s father; and works two jobs to help out. She is not a particularly good student and doesn’t have a lot of friends (although the ones she has are very tightknit and loyal—and very different); and has known she is gay since ninth grade. I am not sure what drew me to Ramona immediately, but I found myself looking forward to going back to the novel and unfolding her story every time I put the book down.

Ramona assumes she is stuck in Eulogy, Mississippi, a town that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina as was Ramona’s family. After the hurricane left, her mother left also, although she is still minimally involved in the girls’ lives. Now that her older, but less practical sister is pregnant, Ramona feels she will never be able to leave, but she has come to accept her fate.

As the story opens Ramona is involved with Grace, a summer renter who has a boyfriend at home and has not yet labeled herself as gay. When they break up and Freddie, a childhood friend, moves back to town, Ramona is conflicted. She has feelings—strong feelings—for Freddie. “I’ve never wanted to touch a boy in the way I want to touch him. It makes me feel uncomfortable, but I’m starting to think that the gist of life is learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” (217)

And that is the lesson that Ramona, and the reader, learns from this story. By being with Freddie, “I’ve embraced another facet of myself. Life isn’t always written in the starts. Fate is mine to pen. I choose guys. I choose girls, I choose people. But most of all: I choose.” (280)

In addition, Freddie also has introduced Ramona to swimming, her ticket to community college and out of Eulogy. But can she take that step, used to thinking that everyone is dependent on her and she has no control of her future? Can Ramona choose the other aspects of her life? Through her various relationships explored in the past year, Ramona learns that even though, as a child, Freddie saw her as Peter Pan, she can “prepare to do what Peter never could.” She is the “captain” of her fate. (408)

Julie Murphy has given mature readers a story of resilience and the importance of controlling our choices.

22. Saving Fable by Scott Reintgen
​
Fantasy, mystery, intrigue, spells, literary references, and a kind, feisty, lovable Protagonist who is only supposed to be a Side Character.

What a delightful, clever, and entertaining novel! Indira Story has spent her life hoping to be chosen to train as a protagonist at the famed Protagonist Preparatory in Fable. She thinks if she is the main character in a story, she can include her brother who was passed by and now lives in a town where he is a miner for golden nuggets buried within stories. Finally chosen, she fails her audition again an antagonist and is demoted to the side character track. But she is determined to prove her worth and become the hero of her story. Along the way she meets Brainstorms, Marks (bookmarks), Dog-ears, the Grammar Police, Editors and finally an Author; gains an lovely foster mother and little brother; and makes friends, enemies, and even a crush.

This novel would lend itself to a fantastic Grade 4-8 read-aloud that will let teachers review and discuss literary elements and genres and cause their students’ imaginations to soar as they follow another girl who finds her strength.

23. Scars Like Wings by Erin Stewart

I have written about the importance of children of all ages seeing their lives reflected in a story, especially those who don’t regularly see their lives reflected in the world around them. However, just as important is for readers to meet and become acquainted with those who they may see as different from themselves or may not see at all—not only children who live in different places or times but those who are hiding in plain sight within their classrooms and worlds. And those who are not hiding, but are in view for all to see but are still not truly seen.

“I was a normal fifteen-year-old who went to football games on weekends and spent way too much time rehearsing for the spring musical. I was a daughter. A friend. A brunette. A singer. I was a million things.… Now, I’m only one thing—the Burned Girl.” (40-41)

Ava is the survivor of fire—the fire that killed her father; mother; and Sara, her cousin-best friend, the daughter of Aunt Cora and Uncle Glenn. When Ava awakes in the hospital, over 60% of her body has been burned and she has lost her family and home. And her normal life.

A year after the fire during which Ava has lived with her aunt and uncle in Sara’s room, homeschooled, she promises them that she will try two weeks at a new school, planning that that will be her only two weeks in school.

But then she meets a survivor of a car crash, Piper, a wheelchair-bound, also scarred, gutsy, flashy, get-out-there-and-do-it, strong girl—or so it seems. She also meets Asad.

“No matter what reaction people have, there’s always one common thread:
1. Everyone looks at me.
2. Then everyone looks away.”
Until now.” (32)

With Piper and Asad’s support, Ava tries for a “new normal” but it’s not all uphill. “—in the last thirty-six hours, I had an epic meltdown, took a harrowing trip down memory lane, and visited my suicidal friend in the hospital. No wonder [Cora and Glenn] look at me like I’m a bomb about to detonate.” (322)

This novel tore at my heart. I loved all the characters—Ava, Asad, Piper, Aunt Cora and cowboy-boot-wearing Uncle Glenn, and even mean girl Kenzie and her more-sympathetic sidekick Sage. All characters were so well-developed, and each had their own backstory, even Dr. Layne, the therapist (no flat characters here) that it is hard to believe that this is Erin Stewart's debut novel.

​Scars Like Wings is an important book for all of us who have scars—physical or emotional.

24. Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham

This multi-formatted novel— newspaper clippings, phone conversations, letters, internal dialogue, and mostly free verse—chronicles 15-year-old Jane Arrowood’s life during the year following a shark attack, an attack that took her right arm.

“Where can I find that line to stand upon,
step into the stream of humanity,
the place that is mine.” (112)

A high school junior, Jane has won the art contest every year and planned to become a professional artist. Little did she know when she went to the beach that day, her life and her aspirations would dramatically change. The novel, although fiction, has the feeling of a true story of an actual person. The reader experiences Jane’s ordeal from her perspective, even when she argues with her negative inner thoughts.

Through most of that year, Jane journeys through numerous emotions, the majority negative and despairing. She feels the tingling, throbbing, ache of the phantom limb and the frustration of using a prosthesis. She is not encouraged by the cards and presents sent by strangers—Pity Bears—a result of the video of the attack that someone posted. “Those people who write to me. They tell me they love me. / They don’t even know me.” (71) Her therapist tells Jane that is natural to be depressed. “Allow yourself to feel as bad as you want. / The sooner you do this, / the sooner you will be able to move on.” (25) and then moves her beyond, a step at a time. “’Time to think about the smaller picture,’ / Mel says. ‘Like getting through one day. / Not your whole life, not forever / one day. / Sometimes we can only look at one hour / or one minute.’” However, she is supported by family (particularly her brother who rescued her and whose quick-thinking saved her life) and friends, and Jane is greatly inspired by Justin, a little boy who lost both legs but retains his optimism.

In the fall she goes back to school, facing the hurdles of being the Shark Girl, some days bad but some good, support coming from unexpected places and people. “’We’re all just trying to help.’ / [Angie] shifts. ‘I don’t want to see you get hurt again.’” (264)

Although she struggles to train herself to draw with her left hand, Jane begins to reflect on the encouragement she received from hospital staff members (and on those who were unsupportive and unfriendly), and she realizes the difference a person can make. She begins to look into careers in the medical field—physical therapist, art therapist, nurse, doctor, gaining a new goal and purpose. “I’m going to start living again, / only differently.” (265)

This story is truly a mirror and a window that will develop empathy for those who have to navigate life “differently.” 

25. Shine! By JJ. And Chris Grabenstein

“How do we use the stars when we wish to journey safely into the vast unknown? It’s simple, really…. We just need to find one star…. The one that’s always constant and true.” (174)

J.J. and Chris Grabenstein’s new novel Shine! really does shine. This is a valuable story about how adolescents can shine just by being their best selves. It is a story of the importance of kindness and caring for others, perfect for Grades 4-8.

Seventh grader Piper Milly lives with her father, a music teacher (and hopeful Broadway show composer), her mother having died when she was three years old. In the middle of the school year, her father is offered a position at a prestigious private school for wealthy, talented students. Along with the position comes free tuition for Piper who knows she will not fit in. Her mother had also been a scholarship student at Chumley Prep but was an extremely talented cellist; in fact, her name is on a plaque at the school. Piper feels she has no special abilities—certainly no musical talent, and with her frayed shirt collars and inexpensive shoes, she won’t fit in with girls who buy their accessories at the ritzy Winterset Collection.

Shunned from the beginning by Ansleigh Braden-Hammerschmidt, Mean Girl extraordinaire, and her band of followers which include most of their grade, Piper finds three good friends, and together they become the Hibbleflitts: a math whiz, a magician, a comedian, and Piper, an astronomy “geek.” When their English teacher tasks the class with journaling about who they want to be, not in the future but now, and the students compete for the new Excelsior award, Piper feels she does not excel in anything, "excelling" being the only defined criteria for the award, and she is not sure who she wants herself to be—Does she want to super-talented like her mother, a singer like Brooke, a limit-pusher, the award winner?

As she navigates the year, facing multiple challenges, helping strangers and friends alike, and trying to figure out where and how she might excel and who she wants to be, Piper finds she can shine by being the person she already is, maybe finding that star or maybe being that star for others. 

Part B will be next Friday, August 16, 2019

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A middle school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing  is the former Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education. In 2018-19 she served as a Literacy Consultant with a K-8 school and now works independently. She is the author of Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core; Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed. The Sentences They Saved; No More “Us” & “Them: Classroom Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect; The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension; and the newly-published Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum. Lesley has contributed chapters to Young Adult Literature in a Digital World: Textual Engagement though Visual Literacy and Queer
Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum and is a columnist for AMLE  Magazine and past editor of Connections, the award-winning journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. 

Until next week. 

 About a month ago, Margaret produced a blog post on rape and diet culture as treated in YA literature. Typical of Margaret, she has a ton of great ideas. So, we planned for her to write another post based on her long term interest in Fanfiction. This topic is far from my wheelhouse so I appreciated the post.

​In part of this post she also references Dr. Ebony Thomas wonderful text, the Dark Fantastic. I have been reading it and Wow. for many years now, when I want to think more clearly about African American writers or about questions of race in general, I have turned to Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark for inspiration and to stifle any or all impulses of my white privilege. (This is especially poignant since I am prepping this post on Aug. 6, 2019, the day of Morrison's death.) I won't ignore Morrison, but I will be adding Thomas's work to my list of touchstone texts. Thanks Margaret, this is another wonderful post for us to think about. 

Books about fandom culture are becoming more common within the YA genre. As someone who has been a part of the Harry Potter fandom since the early 2000’s and has been attending popular culture conventions since 2005, I’m excited to see this trend. Within the past ten years, I’ve noticed that being a “geek” and a “fan” is becoming more mainstream and socially acceptable than it used to be.

 I believe fandom can build a sense of community through online and affinity spaces (Gee, 2004) and in-person fandom gatherings alike, a reoccurring theme in many of the books I describe below. For instance, in Ms. Marvel Volume One: No Normal, the main protagonist Kamala Khan (also the new Ms. Marvel superhero) shows a passion for writing fanfiction about Carol Danvers, her superhero predecessor and mentor. Both years I have taught this book so far, either before or after reading the comic, I have the students write a fanfiction story about a topic of their interest, as connected to building community through story. One year, they also wrote an expository essay about this chosen fandom to view it from the perspective of a different genre of writing. 

Perhaps if students can learn which interests bring us as human beings together, we can learn to have more empathy for people who have different religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Much of what brings us together as human beings is stories, and the digital world has increased the possibility for us to connect through story. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (2016) notes that today’s adolescents and young adults “engage in textual and visual production that is collaborative, shared in what has been characterized as environments of digital intimacy” and grow in the sharing of their texts and ideas through “affinity spaces and networked publics” (p. 3). I have learned through my own involvement in fandom communities that there is more that bonds people into communities than what divides us. I hope over time, I can continue to encourage students to form their own literary and creative fandom communities, both in such in-school spaces as a fandom club and fanfiction stories and in out of school spaces that carry over from the exposure in school. 
​
 As fandom interests become more mainstream, there has been an increase in books about this topic for teenagers and adults alike. Since I consider myself an “acafan” with both an academic and a personal interest in fandom, I have read several of these novels recently and wanted to make recommendations for teachers, librarians, and literacy scholars. Some of the books listed below include characters of color, LGBTQ+ characters, and/or non-Christian characters. Specifically, Ship It, Geekerella, The Princess and the Fangirl, Ms. Marvel: No Normal, Princess X, The Pros of Cons, and Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here include diverse characters, and Fangirl addresses neurodiversity by including a character with mental health issues. However, I would be remiss not to note that the representation of characters of color in YA books about fandom seems, overall, to be lacking. 

​There are other fandom and YA novels on my radar that I hope to read, so I will work toward making a longer recommendation list. In the meantime, check out the Young Adult Literature track at DragonCon this Labor Day weekend, the Teen Stage at Decatur Book Festival, and Conjuration Atlanta in November for more recommendations and a lot of fun book-centered panels. You can also click here for a list of Comic Cons throughout the nation. 

Until next week.