 Jillian Marino | Spring is in the air, and our blog contributor Jillian Marino has a speculative fiction YA novel for the first May Weekend Pick. Jillian Marino is a third-year Secondary English Language Arts teacher in the Chicago suburbs. She holds a MEd in Learning, Teaching, & Curriculum from the University of Missouri. She fell back in love with YA Literature through Mizzou’s College of Education and their “Overbooked” book club for early career teachers. Our many thanks to professor Renee Stites Kruep from University of Missouri for mentoring her graduate students and book club members to write for the blog this month. We appreciate your dedication to our YA community! |
All Better Now by Neal Shusterman
 | All Better Now is the newest in a long series of personal favorites from author Neal Shusterman. I truly believe no one does speculative fiction the way he can! Set in a near future, still reeling from the social trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, All Better Now is a clever take on the interrogation of what it really costs to recover as a society. A new virus begins to spread, and survivors find themselves changed. If they make it through the rapidly spreading illness, they discover a new, shockingly positive outlook on the world; some might even call it true “enlightenment.” The question remains: Does this apparently blissful side effect come at a greater cost to survivors or the world as a whole? Shusterman’s three young narrators — Mariel, a forever survivalist; Rón, a curious explorer; and Morgan, an ambitious game changer — experience Crown Royale as not just an illness, but as a challenge to the social order and everything they have known. |
| The beauty of Shusterman’s worldbuilding has always been his ability to fill in the gaps — to make you feel like this could happen tomorrow, to question where you would really stand if things came crashing down. Even in our own little microcosms, it is important to consider what we truly value and believe in. Even young readers should slowly begin to question what they would be willing to stand up and fight for even if the rest of the world didn’t stand with them. We face unique challenges every day, and I know in my own classroom they span from bullying and parental conflict to concerns about policing and immigration. Shusterman develops complex characters that don’t always land on a “right” or “perfect” answer to the problems; still, he doesn’t vilify the struggle to make decisions and even to change your mind when you realize you may have been following the wrong path. |  Neal Shusterman |
Beyond spectacular speculation and core character development, Shusterman crafts a narrative that both adult and young adult readers alike can enjoy for its balance between intensity and levity. The question is: If we could simply make ourselves feel all better, what could possibly go wrong in the process?
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