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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Basketball, boxing, ballet, soccer, and romance. 

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

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

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

​Despite knowing that his habits are bad for her hardworking sensibilities, she stays in the relationship long enough for their sex and fast-food rituals to take both a physical and mental toll on her performance in the ring. Her coaches and fellow boxers start to point out her slow footwork and lagging performance. And as often happens in bad situations that we have stayed in too long, in a seemingly ordinary moment between them, Gravity recognizes all she will sacrifice for these quick pleasures in life if she stays with Lefty. 
 
Gravity overcomes many versions of adversity on her journey toward finding her way in the world and in the ring: a broken home life, poverty, an absent father, a drunk mother who steals Gravity’s money, and a series of villains along the way who play dirty, cheat the system, or otherwise aim to undermine her. Spend your weekend alongside this girl-on-fire.
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