Although it was published over 40 years ago, Stephen King’s novel Carrie is still an accurate representation of the experience of being the bullied and slut-shamed girl in high school (minus the protagonist’s telekinetic abilities). Carrie, who is described as “the sacrificial goat, the constant butt, believer in left-handed monkey wrenches, perpetual foul-up,” is the most bullied girl in Chamberlain, Maine. Carrie’s outsider status is due mostly to her mother’s religious mania. It’s bad enough that Margaret constantly tells her neighbors that they are backsliding and hell-bound due to their comparative secularism. Margaret also raises Carrie in a way that makes it difficult for her to fit in with her peers.
Carrie is teased by her peers on the first day of school after she naively prays before eating lunch. Also, Margaret makes Carrie wear skirts that are too long or plain to be fashionable, and prohibits her from wearing bright colors, especially red, which Margaret describes as the color of sin, and Carrie must make a special effort to have a passing understanding of popular culture as there is no television or popular magazines in the house, and Carrie can only listen to popular music on the radio when her mother is not home. Even mirrors are forbidden in the White household, and Carrie is allowed only the most rudimentary grooming products, so as a teen, she is a “frog among swans” with her greasy, lifeless hair and acne.
But worst of all, Carrie is not safe at school or at home, where she faces verbal and physical abuse of some sort from everyone, including her mother. At home, Margaret routinely locks Carrie in the closet for hours to “repent for her sins” after the slightest disobedience or beats her. At school, the bullying she endures ranges from name calling to being tripped in the aisles and having her books knocked out of her hands by other kids. The emotional harm done to Carrie by her mother and peers is compounded by the location of the story, the small town of Chamberlain, Maine, and prevailing attitudes about bullying and child abuse at the time.
Chamberlain is so small that she cannot escape her tormentors by simply changing schools. Also, in the 1970s, neighbors rarely intervened in suspected cases of child abuse, believing that a parent’s disciplinary practices were none of their business, and school administrators were not trained to spot the signs of abuse and had little knowledge of the lasting harm it does. Bullying too was mostly ignored in the 1970s, when experts still believed that it was best for children to sort out their own problems by confronting their bullies, not realizing or caring that this is not an option for many victims.
So Carrie’s resulting anger on Prom Night after her peers’ play the most cruel joke on her yet is not surprising. Carrie’s telekinetic abilities, that are unknown to her peers, or even fully to Carrie until her sixteenth year, give her the ability to translate this anger into violence—and she literally burns the town to the ground before the exertion required to use her mind to move matter to this degree is so stressful on her heart that she dies.

King’s novel is superior to Brian de Palma’s 1976 film of it, which the novel’s paramaterial. Carrie’s story is not written as one, fluid account related in the first-person or by an omniscient narrator. Instead, King tells the story of Carrie in retrospect, after various experts and journalists have investigated the event and weighed in about the event. A combination of scientists and experts in the paranormal agree that Carrie’s powers were a one-off, and so the world is safe after her death. Their conclusion is typical of stereotypical horror of the time, where the monster is always vanquished. However, Carrie’s last pages resist narrative closure in the form of a poorly spelled letter from an Appalachian woman describing her infant to her sister. The child shows signs of being telekinetic, a trait she has inherited from her female relaitves, as the letter’s writer makes reference to a grandmother who had the same ability, though she did not use her powers to kill anyone. Because this girl lives in a part of the United States that is underserved by medical and scientific experts, it is possible that she might develop her telekinetic abilities before anyone who could understand their dangers might intervene. 

The Girl with All the Gifts is a retelling of the zombie apocalypse along George Romero’s (Night of the Living Dead, 1968) and Richard Matheson’s (I Am Legend, 1945) pandemic models. However, the zombie in this case is not a devolved form of our species who have been turned into mindless consumers (of flesh), but a post-human creature whose emergence is a positive evolutionary leap, though it still brings about the fall of civilization and the death of most of the human race.
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In The Girl with All the Gifts, most humans have become infected with a fungus that turns them into mindless fiends whose strongest drive is to consume human flesh. Just the smell of human saliva can provoke one infected, or “hungries” as they are called, into a feeding frenzy. Anyone bitten by a hungry but not killed will also turn into a hungry, although one does not resurrect as a hungry after dying from natural causes. A team of scientists led by Dr. Caroline Caldwell are holed up in a bunker with a set of special captive hungries, those who were born to mothers who were infected during their pregnancy, and who have matured as human children do and seem capable of learning. The early adolescent hungries are taken from their cells every day in restraints and placed in a classroom to be taught by Miss Justineau so that the head scientist can determine which hungries are the smartest and then euthanize them and dissect their brains in order to find a vaccine for the remaining number of the living who are uninfected.

The precocious Melanie is Dr. Caldwell’s next target as she is much more intelligent than most humans. She can effortlessly memorize complex facts such as the chemical composition of a compound, and she is also able to understand the Greek mythology that Miss Justineau teaches the class and use it to inspire a story of herself as a modern-day Pandora, as well as a new type of being who transcends biological categories in order to save her beloved teacher from other hungries. Miss Justineau, the only human character in the story who cares about her charges, is so moved by Melanie’s story that she touches the girl on the head, which prompts the guards to sweep into her classroom and haul her away for punishment, and then take Melanie to the lab for dissection.

This is an old novel, and certainly not as genre-defining as King’s Carrie, but it’s one of the best works of horror that I have ever read about teens, and it’s still available to read as a Kindle book. Blood Crazy is a sort of post-apocalyptic Lord of the Flies. On an otherwise uneventful Saturday, Nick Aten observes that one of those events that cleave time into “BC/AD” occurred: Something changes the brains of everyone over 21 so that they now view all young people as enemy species who must be killed. A world-wide murderous rampage ensues where many of the young are murdered by adults, and the remaining young people hide and protect their younger siblings. Because civilization collapses overnight, each new day is a challenge for finding food and potable water and safe shelter.  Nick falls in with a group of youth who have sheltered in a compound that they have secured and provisioned. All is comfortable for a few weeks before Tug Slater, bully extraordinaire, and his droogs, seize control.

With little to keep his worst impulses in check, Slater is in a better position to terrorize other members of the compound, who are only allowed to stay and be fed if they prove useful or amusing. Slater, a Negan (The Walking Dead) wanna-be, forces many of the teen girls to be part of his harem, and finds inventive ways of tormenting those who annoy him. One girl, whom Slater dislikes due to her love for her dog, is forced to play “carry the can,” a game where the unlucky participant has an IED strapped to her neck and must find the key to remove it before it explodes. When Slater straps an IED to the girl’s dog and deliberately does not give her enough time to save her companion, she opts to embrace her dog so they will die together.  Unable to fight Slater alone, Nick escapes the compound to brave the ruined landscape and roving bands of transformed adults to locate survivors and possibly answers about what has happened to his species overnight.

Clark’s infected/affected adults bent on murdering the young externalize an ugly reality that all young people have probably felt to some degree—that some adults might want to kill them. As well, Blood Crazy is like some of today’s best YA dystopian fiction in its depiction of teens shouldering responsibilities that even most adults would find too challenging. But Nick and other of the good teen characters in this novel rise to the occasion perhaps because they are so young—their lack of experience makes it difficult for them to understand the possible dangers, a condition that makes it easier to do a serious but unfamiliar task.

Finally, like Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts, Blood Crazy has a hopeful ending. After making what is essentially a hero’s journey, Nick returns to the compound in a better position to liberate it of Tug’s tyranny, making their small world safe for the other inhabitants and his infant son he has fathered with his girlfriend. Whether or not this small community can survive remains to be seen, but it is run on the principles of communitarianism and egalitarianism that will prevent the creation of social hierarchies that create winners and losers with unequal access to resources. 

​However, my favorite winner is literary in scope.  Nikki Grimes’.  One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissancefeatures the works of poets of that era.  She uses the “golden shovel” technique by creating her own poems using the original words from the classics as her last lines or words. 

​The artwork by contemporary African American young adult/children’s artists adds emotional impact.  Language arts teachers should grab this multiple award winner whether teaching the Harlem Renaissance or not, powerful and inspirational tool.

The last nonfiction honor book defies prosaic categorization.  Alison Deering and Bob Lentz created Sandwiches!: More Than You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about Making and Eating America’s Favorite Food, a fun-filled collection of unpredictable recipes prepared from top to bottom, along with timelines and factoids.

Most of the winners are currently featured on author websites as they represent their most recent work.  VOYA loved the way the group worked together and appointed us to the 2019 Nonfiction Honor List Committee for this year.  Books arrive daily when the hurricanes and other natural events documented by Winchester don’t delay the process!

On October 4, 2018 Kelly Roberts wrote a piece for The Conversation that was, in part, a way to react to the Kavanaugh hearings through a robust YA novel, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Most people in the field of YA scholarship know the book and its constant impact in classrooms and among individual readers for nearly twenty years. I have personally witnessed Ms. Anderson, not only sign books for the obligatory 30 to 60 minutes but she stays and listens to the intimate stories and concerns that readers of the book want to share with her for as long as it takes. She looks them in the eye, she hugs them if they need it, and she believes them.
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I have learned a great deal from watching Laurie on several occasions. Most recently, as she presented at the 2018 Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature last June at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, I observed her take a long lunch with one of my graduate students who need the personal touch that Laurie frequently provides.  I believe, as professor Joan Kaywell claims, that books can save lives. Maybe not every book with every kid, but those of us who work with adolescents and promote Young Adult literature have watched too many kids completely embrace a book.

​Genevieve’s War by Patricia Riley Giff (MG)
 
Despite the war that is overtaking Europe, Genevieve does not want to leave her grandmother’s farm in Alsace to return to New York. When the Nazis overtake Alsace, she and her grandmother are forced to board a Nazi soldier. At the same time, they hide a fugitive in their attic, risking their lives to protect their friend. This book provides a clear picture of life in occupied France during the war. 

When I, Sharon, met my Young Adult Literature class for the first time this semester, we watched a book trailer for I Crawl Through It, by A.S. King, and I assigned the novel as a whole class read for the following week, promising something extraordinary. I also assigned the article “Who’s Afraid of A.S. King?".  

​During our second class meeting, before I even had a chance to read students’ responses, we talked with the author via a videoconference. Amy Sarig King fielded many questions, and gave my students even more to think about regarding standardized testing; the ongoing trauma of intruder drills and safety threats; creativity; mental illness; the intelligence and emotional depth of adolescents; surrealism; and more. Here are samples from notes students wrote in the thank you card we sent her: