Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Laquan McDonnald.  Quintonio LeGrier. Jordan Edwards. Christian Taylor. Tony Robinson. Kendrec McDade. Ramarley Graham. Antwon Rose Jr.

The names above are just a short list of the young black men who have been shot and killed by police officers (or George Zimmerman) in the last few years. It seems like we can't go a month in this country without someone (usually white, usually male) perpetrating an ex officio execution on some black man, for everything from petty crimes to entering their own apartment. Young adult novels are beginning to explore this topic, with books like On a Clear Day and The Hate U Give being two of the most recent examples. In that spirit comes Nic Stone's Dear Martin.

Justyce McAllister is an excellent student, one who escaped his rough neighborhood school for an elite private school, where he is one of a very few students of color. But his superior grade point average couldn't protect him from being racially profiled by the white police officer who put him in handcuffs for no reason. Trying to reconcile his identity as a "good" kid with his treatment by the police, he begins writing letters to Martin Luther King, Jr., using them as a journal for processing his feelings and basically asking "What would Martin do?". When his friend Manny is shot by an off-duty police officer, Justyce has to reckon with the way he is portrayed in the media. Even though he did everything right, it still wasn't enough to keep society from seeing him as a stereotype.

While not carrying quite the same emotional weight as The Hate U Give, Dear Martin does a good job of exploring many of the themes related to the impact of white supremacy on young men of color. It also does something that feels a bit irreverent, which is to honestly explore whether MLK's insistence on non-violence is actually the best way to affect change against a system that perpetrates violence against people of color as a regular part of the functioning of the state. I think that there are many young people who would relate to Justyce. His story demonstrates the challenges that youth of color face just existing in a world where who they are is less important than what they are perceived to be.

I'm hoping to use this novel as a literature circle option for an African-American lit class, and another teacher wants to use it with his leadership class as a way to talk about the importance of social justice. Regardless, this book should be in any well-stocked classroom library!

Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, by Isabel Quintaro

Body image. Two short words that carry so much weight (pun intended). For American women andbecause men like some curves, especially in the baby-feeding area of the body, but certainly not FAT! Being fat means you're lazy. Being fat means you have no self-control. Being fat means you don't care about yourself. Being fat means people can dismiss you without guilt, because being fat is a seen as a character flaw, not a natural subset of human appearance.
girls (and, increasingly, girls anywhere in the world influenced by American beauty standards), the phrases "body image" and "weight problem" go hand in hand. There are certainly other (unrealistic) expectations for things like flawless skin, silky hair, etc..., but even those things won't make a female person "ideal" without also being thin. Not too thin, of course,

Being a curvy girl myself (Godbout hips, am I right aunts and girl cousins?), I have spent almost all of my life, from as far back as I can remember, ashamed of the size of my body. Especially when I was a teenager, which is ridiculous because looking back I was a perfectly average-sized person. But then, teenage girlhood is fraught with messages about the ways we don't measure up to feminine ideals-we're too skinny/too fat/too smart/too air-headed/too prudish/too slutty/etc...Isabel Quintero explores this through the lens of Latinx culture in her novel Gabi, A Girl in Pieces. 

The book follows the protagonist, Gabi, through her senior year in high school. Told through her journal entries, the story takes us through her struggles to maintain her grades, complete college applications, and manage a social life. Gabi's body image is pretty low, so when a cute boy named Eric wants to date her, she begins a relationship with him, despite the fact that they have nothing in common. Luckily, she soon finds Martin, a boy from her English class who shares her love of poetry.

Gabi is also trying to juggle all the stress of senior year with her concern for her father, who has been addicted to meth as long as Gabi can remember. When she comes home one day to find him dead of an overdose, it throws her into a tailspin that threatens to derail her plans to escape her dead-end neighborhood and find the life she has always dreamed of.

Quintaro expertly navigates the space between hope and fear with Gabi, who alternates between being sure her life is over and recommitting herself to the future she wants to have. Gabi's poetry demonstrates how she processes her life experiences, eventually finding her own voice. The novel takes on a lot-body image, first love, teen pregnancy, sexual assault, drug addiction/overdose-but it does a decent enough job addressing them all that the story doesn't feel disjointed. Quintero mixes the darker events with lots of Gabi's own self-deprecating inner life, creating a nice emotional balance. I think a lot of teenage girls would relate to Gabi, especially Latinx girls. This was definitely one of the best YA books I've read this year.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens' Agenda, Becky Albertalli

Simon is 16, gay, and in the closet. Afraid of how his friends, classmates, and parents will react when
they find out he likes boys, he lives a double life, pretending to be straight by day, and emailing back and forth with the anonymous and very gay Blue by night. When he accidentally leaves his email open on a school computer, another student, Martin, sees his conversation with Blue. Martin uses this knowledge to blackmail Simon into arranging a date between Martin and Simon's friend Abby Martin's threats and Simon's own increasing difficulty keeping his truth from his friends leads to tension in his usually close knit friend group, and when his relationship with Blue goes from virtual to irl, Simon finds himself struggling to adapt to the changes in his life.

This book is the inspiration for the movie Love Simon that came out last spring, and while I haven't seen the movie yet, if it is half as charming as the book then I know I will love it. Simon is such a likable, relate-able character. He perfectly represents the situation so many of the queer youth I know find themselves in. Society itself has moved so far in terms of LGBTQ+ acceptance it seems like everyone should be able to be out without fear, but the reality is much more complicated. There are still plenty of people out there who think being gay is a sin, and even people who claim to be accepting sometimes have trouble coming to terms with the issue when the person coming out is their own son, daughter, brother, or sister. Simon THINKS he knows that the people closest to him will be accepting, but taking that first step into the light makes a person incredibly vulnerable, and once that news it out there's no taking it back.

But Simon isn't a sympathetic character just because he is making this huge, scary change. It's because he reads like any normal (and by normal I mean weird) teenager. He can be selfish and self-absorbed, he can use people, he makes decisions out of fear of rejection and ridicule, and he makes poor choices about school and drinking and how to talk to his friends. But all of those things just make him more endearing, because he reads like a REAL PERSON. I mean, I can think of at least a half dozen teenagers I've known over the years who are basically Simon by another name. And not just gay teenagers, either. Some of the struggles Simon has are universal, though they make look different depending on your identity. How do I know my friends will stand by me? Who am I in relation to who my parents think I am? How can I tell if a person likes likes me? Anyone who's has been, or is currently, a teenager has gone through some form of Simon's journey.

Finally, and this is my favorite, the book is NOT TRAGIC! My wife and I joke that the gays always have to have some tragic end in every movie or TV show, whether that end is a job, a relationship, or their life. This book shows that life for LGBTQ+ folks doesn't have to be full of suffering and sorrow. Figuring out who you are and how to navigate romantic relationships are just part of growing up, and it's refreshing to read a story that treats that process as the normal part of life that it is, rather than focusing on how hard and sad and dangerous it is when the person is gay. Not that there aren't people who experience danger and sadness and anger in their coming out process, but focusing on that fact ALL THE TIME is just one more form of othering.

The Bitter Side of Sweet, by Tara Sullivan

Fifteen-year-old Amadou and his young brother Seydou spend every day picking cacao pods on a plantation in the African Nation of Ivory Coast. Two years before, Amadou left his impoverished village in search of work, hoping to make enough money to help his family survive the dry season. Younger brother Seydou insisted on tagging along, wanting to be just like his big brother. Thinking they were being hired for day jobs working close to home, the boys were tricked into forced labor. Now, Amadou and Seydou must pick enough cacao pods daily to avoid the brutal beatings of the bosses in an attempt to pay back the money they "owe" to the plantation owner so they can return home. Problem is, the bosses won't tell Amadou how much that is, and in the two years he's lived on the plantation, he's never seen any of the boys actually repay their debt.

Near starvation, beaten down by the constant abuse and hard physical labor, Amadou is beginning to give up hope of ever escaping the plantation. That is, until Khadija shows up. The only girl Amadou has ever seen brought to the camp, she is a spitfire, constantly fighting against the bosses and trying to escape. Despite the rules he's made for himself over time designed to keep him and Seydou safe from the worst of the abuse, Amadou finds himself being inspired by her spirit, and when Seydou is injured cutting cacao pods, Amadou realizes that if he doesn't act soon, there's a good chance neither of them will survive.

This story is one of struggle and survival that takes the reader into the world of forced labor and human trafficking in a very intimate way. Amadou fights to retain his humanity, while at the same time trying to harden himself against the suffering of others. He sees it as the only way to survive his captivity; make no friends, stick your neck out for no one, keep your head down and do as you're told. Without Seydou, I think he would have lost himself completely, but having to protect his younger brother, physically and emotionally, forces him to persevere against the despair and hopelessness that could easily come from living in slavery.

The Bitter Side of Sweet is not Sullivan's first foray into human rights abuses in Africa. Her book, Golden Boy, describes the trafficking of albino children in modern-day Tanzania, who are considered by practitioners of traditional medicine to have special curative powers-but only in pieces. Sullivan brings a well-researched perspective to issues of human trafficking of children in that part of the world. Each of her books ends with an afterword that gives the real-life context for the stories she tells and highlights the ways in which global consumption and the effects of poverty drive modern-day human slavery. Sullivan's writing doesn't shy away from the brutality inflicted on victims of trafficking, but it also doesn't glorify it in any way. Her books are a good avenue for exposing young people to an important social justice issue, one that affects them whether they realize it or not due to the increasing globalization of our economies., and the way consumer behavior affects the people who produce the things we consume.

The Beginning of Everything, Robyn Schneider

Experiencing tragedy is an inevitable fact of being alive. Relationships fail, loved ones die, jobs are lost, and lives are irrevocably altered every moment of every day. Often, the tragedy itself feels like an ending; whether slow and creeping or abrupt and violent, the tragic event becomes the demarcation between "before" and "after".

The "before" and "after" for Ezra Faulkner, the protagonist in Robyn Schneider's YA novel The Beginning of Everything, is separated by the car accident that crushed his leg and ended any hopes he had for a tennis scholarship or someday joining the pro tennis circuit. At the same time he lost his dream of tennis stardom, he also lost his girlfriend and most of his popularity. Ezra, who has always defined himself by what he was able to do, suddenly doesn't know who he is if he can't do those things anymore. Who is he supposed to be now that he isn't the star athlete and likely prospect for homecoming king?

But the tragedy that Ezra thinks is such an ending is really a new beginning. Into his life comes new girl Cassidy, someone who never knew Ezra as the golden boy tennis star. She represents a blank slate for Ezra, someone he can try out his new personality and way of being with. Between his relationship with Cassidy, and the support of new friends on the debate team, Ezra is able to come to terms with the his own personal tragedy and find a new self-confidence that can help him keep moving forward into his new life. But Cassidy has experienced tragedy, too, and her tragedy threatens everything about their relationship

I really liked the characters in this book. Smart, witty, with just enough quirk to make them interesting but not so much to make them weird, Ezra and his friends are the cool intellectual kids I'd want to hang out with. Schneider does fall back on some pretty played out stereotypes about jocks and popular kids when describing Ezra's pre-accident friends, but the story only really works if Ezra's old group of partying popular kids are as selfish and inconsiderate as those types of students are often portrayed. While this yet another coming-of-age/teen romance story, there are twists to the story that add a layer of complexity that makes the story more thought-provoking. For a debut novel, Schneider gets the balance of exposition and action right, and she manages to create a character in Ezra who is self-pitying without being annoying. And the ending did not disappoint-at least, I wasn't disappointed. Let's just say it was not the pat ending that readers of YA love stories may have come to expect.

The Body Finder, Kimberley Derting

To quote the wisdom of Ben Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility". In The Body Finder, Violet Ambrose discovers the truth of this statement when she is drawn into the search for kidnapped girls in her small Washington town.

Violet has known since she was a little girl that she could sense things that other people could not. For as long as she can remember, she has been drawn to the bodies of small animals killed by predators, compelled to give them a peaceful burial in her backyard. At the tender age of eight, she was drawn to the biggest, most gruesome discovery of her short life-the body of murdered girl. Despite Violet's inexplicable discovery of the body, the killer is never captured.

Nine years later, Violet's town and the surrounding area are once again rocked by the disappearance of young girls. While at an end-of-summer party, Violet is drawn to the body of one of the disappeared girls, floating in the marshy reeds at the edge of a lake. Older now, Violet realizes that not only can she feel the bodies of the violently deceased, she can sense the same energy coming from their killers. Violet, with her best-friend-maybe-boyfriend Jay, hatch a plan to search for the serial murderer terrorizing their small town. But the responsibility she feels to the dead may come with deadly consequences for herself.

Derting has managed a pretty astounding feat with this novel. She has written a sweet teenage love story and a gruesome murder mystery all in one. And amazingly, neither one feels shorted. While the theme of friend-turned-love-interest is a common one, Derting does an admirable job making this particular love story charming and believable. While there is no real explanation or exploration of how and why Violet got her unique ability, the internal logic of what it is and how it works hang together pretty well. Derting creates enough suspense that I found myself unable to put the book down the closer I got to the end, and there was at least one gasp-worthy moment as the story came to a head. While this book reminded me in some ways of Barry Lyga's I Hunt Killers, it is much less graphic, and the violence when it comes is more implied that explicit.

This book is the first in a series about Violet and her strange power, so if you are looking for a new YA series for yourself, or if you are looking to hook a teenage reader with a love of supernatural crime shows (goodness knows the CW is full of them), then I suggest checking this out. We are using it next school year as a choice book for literature circles with our senior English classes, and I sincerely hope the students who choose it enjoy it as much as I did.

Still Life With Tornado, A.S. King

What would you say if you could go back in time and talk to your past self? Would you tell yourself Still Life With Tornado uses this idea of traveling back to your past selves explore how our past, present, and future are bound up together through the memories and dreams each of us holds.
to avoid the things you regret? Would you want to relive previous stages of your life? How would that change the person you became? A.S. King's novel

Sarah, once a gifted artist, can't even summon the skill to draw something as simple as her own hand. After a falling out with the art club kids she thought were her friends, Sarah stops going to school, instead wandering around the town where she lives, searching for anything that is truly original. One day on her ramblings she meets her 23-year-old self riding a bus. This 23-year-old version of Sarah is angry, though she won't tell 16 year-old Sarah why. Soon after, she runs into her 10-year-old-self, sunburned from a family trip to Mexico that present-Sarah barely remembers, but which was apparently a turning point in the life of her family. Finally, 40-year-old Sarah shows up, firm but kind, demanding present-Sarah remember what happened in Mexico, so she can face the trauma and start to heal. The more time Sarah spends with her past and future selves, the more she is drawn into both her memories of the Mexico vacation, and the truth about her parents' toxic relationship.

There are a lot of moving pieces with this narrative. There are chapters from Sarah's perspective, flashbacks to the Mexico vacation, and short sections narrated by Sarah's mother, revealing the details of her relationship with Sarah's father and how their family got to the low point they are currently in. Despite the jumping around, the story hold together nicely, with well-paced revelations about Sarah's life and family. The past and future Sarahs are not hallucinations; present-Sarah doesn't have dissociative identity disorder, nor do we discover at the end it was all a dream. Sarah's mother and brother eventually see all of the other Sarahs too. While King offers no explanation for where they came from or how they got there, it's clear that the existential crisis present-Sarah is having has caused them to appear. King perfectly captures Sarah in all of her stages; 10-year-old Sarah's personality has clear connections to present-Sarah, and present-Sarah is reflected in the personalities of the older Sarahs. I was impressed by King's ability to create the same character at four very different stages of life that really did feel like they could be the same person, all while having them interact with each other.

Ultimately, this novel explores the impact of domestic violence on families, specifically on children. Sarah's father's rage and violence create a brittle home environment, one in which both parents are present, but clearly not in true relationship with each other. Like many children growing up in violent households, Sarah perceives the long, hostile silences and frequent arguments as normal. Her home life can't be that bad, right? Eventually, through the gentle (and not so gentle) coaxing and cajoling of the other Sarahs, present-Sarah is able to confront the sad and scary truths behind her parents' apparent hatred of each other, and her brother's seemingly inexplicable absence from their lives.

As in her other books, King creates a detailed and well-developed internal life for Sarah. Eventually, the reader learns what the incident was that caused Sarah to stop going to school. That incident became the catalyst for the personal crisis that led Sarah to confront the realities of her home situation. The incident also explains why Sarah suddenly found herself unable to make art, which up to this point had been her outlet for the stress of living with parents who were constantly in conflict. As usual, King has given us a well-crafted, beautifully told story that shows her deep understanding of how teenagers think and feel. I think Reality Boy might still be my favorite of hers, but this one is a close second.

The Sky is Everywhere, Jandy Nelson

Jandy Nelson's book I'll Give You the Sun was one of my favorite books last year. Nelson has a profound ability to name and describe complex emotions, especially those experienced during the turbulence of adolescence. Her characters feel raw and vulnerable, her writing artful and often poetic.

The Sky is Everywhere is not the masterpiece that I'll Give You the Sun is, but it still demonstrates Nelson's ability to create characters who are fully realized and intensely human. Our protagonist, Lennie, is stunned and gutted by the sudden death of her sister Bailey, struggling to keep living with the gaping hole her sister's death has caused. Withdrawing from most of the people closest to her, she finds comfort in spending time with her sister's boyfriend Toby. When they are together, she feels Bailey's presence in a way that she finds compelling and addictive. But then a new boy, Joe, comes to town. Joe is full of exuberance and joy, expressed most keenly through his musical genius. She is caught between her feelings for these two boys, one tying her to a past where her sister still lives, the other calling her to move into a future full of hope and possibility. Does she dare to dream her own dreams, live her own life, knowing her sister never can?

This is a more straightforward narrative than I'll Give You the Sun, but it covers some of the same ground. Both deal with grief and loss, the characters responding to tragedy and loneliness different ways. Both explore what it means to fall in love for the first time while grappling with the feelings of anger, sadness, and loneliness that tragedy can bring. Lennie knows that her compulsion to be with Toby is a way to hold onto a past that can never be regained, but finds it almost impossible to consider what it would mean to move past her loss and continue living. Joe, this boy who never even knew Bailey, represents the future she could create for herself, if she didn't feel as though having a future at all is an act of betrayal to her sister's memory. Nelson's prose is beautifully written, full of imagery and with a lyrical flow that helps to create the emotional impact the story carries. The Sky is Everywhere is a jewel of a book, one that proves that Nelson is no one-hit-wonder. May her career be long, and may her books continue to explore the deep emotional life of youth.

Scythe, Neal Shusterman

Neal Shusterman is one of my faves. I heard him speak at a reading conference a few years ago, and I appreciated how much he honors the intelligence of young people in his writing. His novels are full of action and excitement, but they also deal with big, challenging ideas that make the reader think and question. My favorite series of his is the Unwind Dystology, but I've liked almost everything I've ever read of his (sorry, Challenger Deep-I just didn't get you).

It says something about just how many YA books I currently have on my to-read shelf that it's taken me as long as it did to read Scythe, the first book in a new trilogy by Shusterman. The book is set in a future America where an artificial intelligence called the Thunderhead has benevolently taken over control of human society, solving all of the problems that plague mankind-poverty, crime, war, disease, even death-in the process. Because people can now reset themselves to younger ages, even be brought back from the dead (they call it "being deadish"), the population threatens to grow too large for available resources. That is where the Scythes come in. The only thing the Thunderhead does not control in this new world order are the Scythes, trained assassins who are required kill a certain number of people each month in an effort to keep the population under control. Scythes can choose to do this however they see fit, as long as they don't choose their victims based on biases, or spare victims because of personal connections. As you can imagine, Scythes are not exactly a welcome sight at your office picnic or kid's soccer game. Though they are revered for their necessary service to society, no one really wants to BE one. But that is exactly what Citra and Rowan have been selected for-to be apprenticed to a Scythe in hopes of earning the robes that will allow them to choose life or death for the people they meet. But, as they soon discover, there is a growing corruption in the order of the Scythes; there are Scythes who feel they should be freed from restrictions on who and how many people they can kill, Scythes who enjoy taking life so much they make a spectacle of it. Citra and Rowan must figure out how they can protect society from these immoral Scythes, or die trying.

Shusterman does a few unique things here with his worldbuilding. First, there is the whole premise of Scythes. I mean, people try to cheat death all the time, right? But what would the world be like if people really couldn't die? Would they stop getting married, having families, etc..? Probably not. The planet would be overrun in a generation. (This reminds me of Torchwood: Miracle Day, which had a similar storyline, though with a different cause). Also, not only didn't they die, but they can reset themselves back to a younger age to have a better quality of life. This appears to lead to some changes in the way people perceive relationships, both romantic and familial. Would people stay married to the same spouse for eternity, or would they eventually desire something different? How many children can a person have over centuries before they can't even remember all of them? How does the relationship change when suddenly your grandmother looks and feels younger than you do?

Most of the time when authors write stories about all-powerful AIs, they are trying to enslave humanity (think Skynet from the Terminator movies). Shusterman's Thundercloud, however, uses its power to save humanity. Of course, it takes over the functions of government to do so, and controls every aspect of daily life, but benevolently. Maybe Shusterman is setting us up for some big reveal about how the Thunderhead is actually using humans as slave labor for some larger purpose, but I don't think so. I think that Shusterman is presenting a version of the future where the technology we've created really does end up helping us instead of hurting us. That would be great, since technological advances are happening exponentially and there's no stopping them. I'd prefer the future where that's a good thing instead of a world-ending thing. This does beg the question of genre, though. I mean, ordinarily I'd say this is dystopian science fiction, but is it really dystopia if life is better after the computers take over?

The main characters Citra and Rowan are pretty well-developed, though I'm a little over the star-crossed-lovers thing in YA books in general. At least in this case the thing that makes them star-crossed is a little more unique than usual. I'm looking forward to seeing where Shusterman takes the story-a plot line that I assumed would take the whole trilogy to resolve was resolved by the end of the first book (and resolved well, not rushed nor through some deus ex machina shenanigans). Book 2, Thunderhead, arrived yesterday, and despite the many other books that have been on my to-read shelf longer, I may just have to dive right into it.

Jumped In, Patrick Flores-Scott

"Don't judge a book by its cover." "Looks can be deceiving." "All the glitters isn't gold." "Beauty is only skin deep." We have quite a few sayings in English about using more than just appearances to make judgments about people. That idea is the foundation of the young adult novel Jumped In by Patrick Flores-Scott. The main character is Sam, a teenage boy who has perfected the art of slackerhood. He has learned how to keep his head down and avoid drawing the attention of teachers or his fellow students, thereby allowing him to drift through high school doing just enough to pass and escape the not-always-friendly scrutiny of his peers. But when he is partnered with Luis, a tough-looking Hispanic kid, for an English project, Sam's whole modus operandi is threatened. Sam is sure Luis is a gang member; his brother is infamous for his involvement in gangs, and Luis has a huge scar running up his neck. Sam knows there will be no slacking or hiding this time-if he doesn't do his part in their slam poetry assignment, Luis is bound to pummel him into the ground. But not everything is as it seems with Luis. Can these two boys from seemingly different worlds actually be friends? 

I love this book! Flores-Scott does an amazing job creating sympathetic characters, and the friendship that develops between these two boys is really quite sweet. Sam is the narrator, so his internal life and perspective are easy to see, but Flores-Scott uses Luis' poetry to give us insight into his character that proves his tough exterior is protecting a tender soul with depths of thought and feeling people wouldn't assume just by looking at him. I think that teens who have ever been misjudged by others based on the way they look, or because they are part of a stereotyped group, will completely get Luis and his internal struggle. 

Because Luis is so enthusiastic about the poetry assignment, he is able to inspire Sam as well. Sam has his own issues; his mom left two years ago, and he has a love of the rock of the Pacific Northwest (musical, not mineral) that none of his classmates seem to share. He feels isolated and alone most of the time, and he adopts his slacker persona as a cover for these feelings, and as a way to cope with feeling so out of place at school. The way he blossoms through his friendship with Luis is a reversal of the white savior syndrome that so many books about young people of color and their white teachers/peers fall into. Luis is the one that saves Sam, not the other way around. Though Sam does get his chance to repay the friendship Luis showed him; after a gang fight, Luis disappears, and Sam has to put himself front and center with teachers and peers in a way that he never would have if Luis hadn't become such an influence in his life.

The high-interest nature of this book, coupled with the easy readability, make it a good choice for inclusion in a readers' workshop or other independent reading activity. It would also make a good novel to use in middle or high school (with lower level readers) to explore friendship, assumptions, stereotypes, and overcoming personal challenges.

The President Has Been Shot, James L. Swanson

Any regular readers of this blog will know that non-fiction isn't really my thing. Apparently, I need a plot, because the only genre of non-fiction I read on a (semi)regular basis is the memoir. But, because we are gearing up to do some major curriculum revisions in the social studies department at my school, I spent the last month or so reading all the young adult non-fiction I could find pertaining to world history, American history, psychology, government, and even <gasp> economics.

Some of it was definitely not my cup of tea (I'm looking at you, Naked Economics), but I surprised myself by how many of the books I really enjoyed. One, in particular, was The President Had Been Shot by James L. Swanson. It details John F. Kennedy's rise to the presidency, including major events such as the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then gives a detailed, almost minute by minute account of the days leading up to the assassination, and the immediate aftermath.

There has been a rise in the amount of non-fiction aimed specifically at young adults in the last few years, and Swanson definitely understands his target demographic. The book is chock full of photographs, maps, and diagrams, breaking up the information visually and providing support for the reader, both of which have been shown to have a positive impact on the engagement and comprehension of young adult readers. The prose mostly reads like a good story, rather than a list of dates and facts, written in language that is sufficiently academic not to insult the intelligence of young adult readers, but not so academic that it feels stuffy and dry. The subject matter lends itself to a feeling of drama and suspense, despite the fact that we obviously already know how things turned out on that fateful day, and Swanson's writing fosters that feeling, especially once he gets to the events in Dallas just prior to, during, and after the assassination. What was new to me, even as an adult reader, was the descriptions of what happened the day of the assassination in terms of the gathering of evidence and treatment of the crime scene by police, FBI, and Secret Service officers. How so many people botched what was, even on the 1960s, pretty standard investigative protocols is beyond me, even given the extraordinary event that was the assassination of a sitting president.

There are a ton of content connections in the text that could be used as jumping off points for bringing in other material, if this book were to be used in a classroom. It mentions the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, as stated above, but also the space race, the Berlin Wall, Joseph McCarthy, the Civil Rights movement, and Soviet defections. It is also an opportunity to examine the uniquely tragic history of the Kennedy family in general; Joseph Jr's death in WWII, JFK's assassination, RFK's assassination, Rosemary Kennedy's botched lobotomy, Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick scandal, and JFK Jr's plane crash. The book also makes mention of some of the conspiracy theories about the assassination that grew out of the Warren Report, providing a springboard for talking about how historians evaluate evidence and draw conclusions, as well as teaching students how to evaluate whether a source is credible.

I'm definitely not a fan of exclusively using the textbook to teach, well, anything, so if I were teaching US History I could definitely see using this book as one resource for a unit on the 1960s, the Cold War, or the US presidency. I think that it would stimulate not just intellectual curiosity but also the emotions of teenagers, and getting emotions involved is one way to help students retain information. If they can remember how they felt when they read something, the content will stick with them longer. Unless what they felt was bored, which is why I think that using this type of text is a great way for history teachers to increase the engagement level of their students with their content.

Death Coming Up the HIll, Chris Crowe

As a child of baby boomers, I heard a lot about the 60s, the Viet Nam War, and the civil rights movement when I was growing up. My father served in the Navy during the last years of Viet Nam, and was never stationed in Southeast Asia, but so many men of his generation were horribly traumatized by that conflict. And unlike World War II, which most Americans seem to regard as a just war, the advent of television and the anti-war movement created a very different cultural moment when it came to Viet Nam. The domestic upheaval of the 60s essentially redefined what it means to be an American in some pretty profound ways.

Chris Crowe's book, Death Coming Up the Hill, is a short novel, told in a series of interconnected haiku, does an admirable job of fitting in a little something about almost all of the major events of 1968 and 1969. The title, and the last chapter, are based on a letter sent home by a US Marine shortly before being killed during the battle on Hamburger Hill. The main character, Ashe, is a senior in high school. Every week, his history teacher writes a number on the board-it is the number of US soldiers killed in Vietnam the previous week. Numbers are very important to Ashe, especially the number 17, which is why he writes his "journal" in the form of haiku (Japanese poems that consist of three lines totaling 17 syllables). Ashe's mother and father married because of him. His father, a former college football star, gave up a career in the pros to marry Ashe's mother. His mother, for her part, was never 100% comfortable in the housewife role she'd been relegated to. When she becomes interested in the anti-war movement, things get really tense at home. Luckily, a beautiful new girl, Angela, enrolls at Ashe's school. They quickly become involved, and Ashe learns that Angela's brother is missing in action in Viet Nam. As the war grinds on, and things at home deteriorate, Ashe is forced to make a decision that may force him to pay the ultimate price.

Novels in verse are having a moment right now, so the fact that this novel is told through poetry is not singularly unique. What is, however, is the very intentional way that the author (through the character of Ashe) honors the memory of every US soldier killed in the Viet Nam war. Each syllable of each haiku represents one soldier lost, and the number of haiku times the syllables in each (17, of course) equals 16, 592; the total number of the fallen. Frankly, this is one of those feats that always amaze me. It's hard enough to tell a compelling story with all of the words in the world available to you, but to limit yourself to 196 poems of three lines and seventeen syllables each to tell a story as moving and comprehensive as this one is pretty impressive.

You'd think that a novel as short as Death Coming Up the Hill would feel overworked by the inclusion of so many historical references, but Crowe finds a way to weave the history of the late 60s into the story in ways that make sense and don't feel contrived. The school year he chronicles (1968-1969) was chock full of events with historical significance. Because I was thinking about using this in a US History class as a supplemental text, I made a list of the historical tie-ins that could be explored; the Viet Nam War, the civil rights movement, the assassination of MLK, the assassination of RFK, anti-miscegenation laws, the Democratic Convention riots, the hippie/peacenik movement, and the Cold War. Some of these topics are mentioned in passing in the context of some event that happens in the novel, and some become larger themes, but all are woven into the story in ways that feel true.

The character I probably related to the most on a personal level was Ashe's mother. My own mother was a housewife for most of my childhood, and that role never sat well on her. She is one of the smartest women I know, someone who needs a lot of intellectual stimulation, and being home taking care of the house and watching me and my brother was not really meeting that need. Luckily, she was able to go to college when I was in high school, and while she only briefly worked outside the home due to some physical challenges, college gave her an outlet for her own intellect and allowed her to meet likeminded folks who had more in common with her than many of the other moms on our block. So I saw a lot of my mother in the character of Ashe's mother, but I also saw a little bit of myself. I can totally envision myself doing exactly what Ashe's mother does when she realizes the power that she can have by freeing herself from the chains of expectation regarding what is "proper" for a wife and mother to do.

Of course, I'm old now, so it makes sense I would see more of myself in the adult characters, but Ashe and Angela are both well written and relatable. Ashe is a little more mature than I expect most 17-year-olds to be, but he had to grow up fast to survive the conflict in his home. I think teenagers will see in him the same uncertainty and fear they themselves feel as they grow towards adulthood, grappling with decisions about what exactly they will do after high school and learning to navigate adult relationships. While ultimately we decided not to use this book in US History, I still think it would make a good addition to a social studies class at the high school level.

Forgive Me Leonard Peacock, Matthew Quick

Much has been made lately of the precarious state of mental health of our young people. With school shootings frequently in the news, the high-profile suicides of young people suffering from depression and bullying, and the rise in diagnosed cases of anxiety disorder in youth, there is reason to be concerned. If you've spent any time with teenagers lately, you've probably noticed heightened levels of stress, from friendships to dating to college admissions. And anyone who has dealt with the aftermath of a teen suicide, as I have in both my personal life and my professional life, knows the devastation they cause.

It is this very timely, very deep subject that Matthew Quick takes on in his YA novel Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock. On Leonard Peacock's birthday, he packs a loaded gun in his backpack, intending to kill first his former best friend and then himself. But before he can do that, he has to say goodbye to the four people in his life he cares about-his elderly neighbor Walt; his "friend" Baback, the violin prodigy; the Christian homeschooler he's in love with, Lauren; and his favorite teacher, Herr Silverman. As he talks to these four people throughout the course of the day, he slowly reveals the secrets he's been holding onto that have led him to this point.

The book is well-written, well-paced, and emotionally impactful pretty much from the jump. One of the very first things we learn about Leonard is that he plans to commit a murder/suicide, so you know up front that you are probably in for a dark ride. I spent most of the book cycling from sadness to anger and back to sadness again, but in a good way. I was completely drawn into the story in a way that I don't always achieve. I essentially read it in one sitting, and I'm pretty sure the house could have caught on fire while I was reading and I wouldn't have noticed.

Quick doesn't pull punches with this story. Leonard is an extremely sympathetic character, and his first-person narration allows the reader to experience how disturbed his mind truly is. His reasoning and logic are heartbreaking and wrong, but as you read you begin to understand the pain and confusion the secret he carries is causing him. With no outlet, traumatic experiences can quickly become poison to the soul, eating away at a person until all they can feel is the sickness and the desire for it to be over. With Leonard, you get to see this poison working as he tries to come to terms with what he plans to do.

SPOILERS AHEAD

This book is a book about sexual violence. It is a book about a male rape victim, and the aftermath of that rape. While it does not contain actual sexual violence, the subject is present in every aspect of the book, even before you actually find out why Leonard wants to kill his former best friend. Despite the best friend's behavior and Leonard's murderous intent, you can't help but feel sad and sorry for both of them.

In the end, Leonard's teacher, one of the four people he says good-bye to, figures out what's happening and stops him from following through. However, instead of taking him to an emergency room or calling child protective services, he takes Leonard to his own house and then gives him back to the mother that was so out-of-touch she wasn't even one of the four people Leonard cared about in the world. What the what?!? As a teacher myself, it is COMPLETELY inappropriate not to report Leonard's suicidal actions, nor should you take a MENTALLY DAMAGED TEEN WHO WAS RAPED BY A MALE into your home as a male teacher. Not only could that be triggering for the victim, it opens the teacher up to accusations of inappropriate student contact that could be career ending. I can't think of one teacher I know who would react the way this teacher does, and I know a LOT of teachers. While Herr Silverman has good intentions, his "It get's better" advice only goes so far without actual mental health care for this kid. Other than this rather unrealistic portrayal of what would and should happen if a student discloses suicidal thoughts to a teacher, the story is a haunting look at how sexual violence affects the victims, and how depression, trauma, and despair can convince a person that life isn't worth living. I would not necessarily recommend it for use as a whole class novel, but as part of a student book club, or maybe in a social work setting, I could see this book affecting young people in a really powerful way.

100 Sideways Miles, Andrew Smith

What do you get when you cross a quirky protagonist with a horny best friend, a horse falling out of the sky, and aliens flying on angel wings? You get the very different, very charming, slightly weird 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith.

Finn Easton measures time in miles instead of minutes. The earth rotates at a speed of about 1000 miles per hour, so Finn counts increments of time, based on how far the earth has traveled in that time. He figures the horse that fell from an overpass and killed his mother traveled 100 sideways miles before it struck. That accident has come to define his own life. Himself injured in the crash, he developed epilepsy, and has a very distinctive scar on his back from the many surgeries needed to repair it. Finn's father, a famous author, wrote a well-known sci-fi book that has also come to define his life. It features a boy named Finn, with a distinctive scar on his back, that is fighting a horde of aliens that fly to earth on angel wings. His father swears the boy is not him, but Finn feels trapped by the expectations people have that he will be just like the Finn in the story.

Luckily, Finn has a best friend, Cade. Cade is a wildcard, prone to doing outrageous things both in and out of school. Finn also meets and falls in love with the new girl, Julia. Julia, who is living with her grandmother while she recovers from a sexual assault, eventually must return home to Chicago. Finn, lonely and restless, takes off on a road trip to Oklahoma with Cade, ostensibly for a college visit, but mostly just to get away from his life. While on the road trip, Cade and Finn become unexpected heroes, and that experience leads the journey to go in a whole new direction.

As strange as the premise sounds, this book is essentially a buddy comedy with a romance thrown in. While it's a buddy comedy, is it a buddy comedy with heart! Think Wedding Crashers, only with depth. Cade is in turns hilarious and horrifying, but all of that actually helps Finn stay grounded somehow. Finn has trouble seeing himself as a real boy-he feels very confined by the character his father created that isn't him, yet is him. Especially since other people have expectations about how he will be based on the book. Cade helps get him out of his head. Finn also feels inferior to the fictional Finn, who is a heroic protagonist, fighting evil aliens. Finn doesn't feel his own agency-he seems to experience life as something that happens to him, rather than as something he creates. Add to this general feeling of being an imposter the certainty of Finn's blankout seizures, and you can understand why Finn doesn't feel in control of his own life. As journeys tend to do, the road trip with Cade provides Finn the opportunity to learn about himself, grow as a person, and come to terms with some of the negative emotions that are holding him back.

While Cade's friendship provides roots for Finn, his relationship with Julia teaches him what it means to have wings. He falls for her almost immediately, and his gentle way and quirky personality is non-threatening enough for her to feel safe with him, despite her past experiences with boyfriends. I understood how lost Finn felt after Julia went back to Chicago. I remember how it feels to be left behind when someone moves on in a different direction, literally or figuratively. The love story, even though it has some darkness present in it, is still the most charming part of the story.

While the story itself is pretty outrageous and unrealistic, the themes are universal; the discovery of self, first love, friendship. Smith handles all of them with a tenderness that is not necessarily the first thing you notice when you read, but as the novel develops you see how deeply the characters feel for each other, and the way in which they support each other, even when they know the other person is making a bad decision. We should all be so lucky, which is something that Finn realizes in the end. Surrounded by people who care about you, life can be what you make it.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, Gabrielle Zevin

So you know how on soap operas, anytime they want to shake things up they do something like bring someone back from the dead or give someone amnesia? And how that always feels contrived and unbelievable and lazy? Yeah, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is the OPPOSITE of that.

Naomi was your average high school student-editor of the school paper, tennis star, popular girl. She was an average high school student, that is, until she fell down the stairs and gave herself amnesia. She remembers nothing about her life for the past four years. She doesn't remember why her best friend calls her "Chief". She doesn't remember her father's fiance or her mother's new family-in fact she doesn't remember them getting divorced. She doesn't remember her boyfriend Ace, and she certainly can't remember why she fell in love with him in the first place. The first thing she remembers since the accident is the face of a boy named James, who pretended to be her boyfriend to get into the hospital to see her. Naomi struggles to regain her old life, but the more she learns about it, the more she wonders if she wants it all back. Will she still be the same person when and if her memory does return?

Zevin manages to make the whole amnesia thing feel new and fresh, despite the many, many, MANY times it's been used in literature, TV, and movies. The new Naomi is such a different person in some ways than the pre-amnesia Naomi that I found myself wondering if I would like her as much if Zevin had started the story with her old self instead of her new one. While there is a romance component, the parts I found more compelling was the relationship between Naomi and her best friend Will. In regards to the age-old question of whether men and women can ever just be friends, I'm much more a Sally than a Harry (When Harry Met Sally? You know? Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal? Of course, Sally ends up getting together with her best friend in the end, which sort of negates my point. OK, then I'm a 'beginning of the movie" Sally). I always appreciate when an author or film-maker presents straight characters of different genders who are just friends. Of course, despite that, this story is a love story, albeit one that is told through a very inventive plot.

The Burn Journals, Brent Runyon

This year, my district has experienced three student suicides; two middle schoolers and a high schooler. As the number of teens experiencing mental health issues continues to rise, we in the school community are left to support our students the best way we can, while dealing with our own trauma, often without adequate numbers of counselors or social workers to help us all cope. This increase in rates of teen depression and anxiety has me searching for answers, answers to the questions that plague me on some of my sleepless nights; how can I make a positive difference in the life of my youth group members and my students so they never feel the utter despair that leads to suicide?

One way I try to find the answer is to read. Of course, that's my go-to for most things; no matter the question or need I always think, "There's a book for that". But I hope that by finding compelling stories of teenagers who attempted suicide but ultimately overcame their despair, I can point students towards the authors who will make them know they are not alone and that recovery is possible. One such book is The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon. When Brent was 14, he poured gasoline all over himself and lit himself on fire. The formerly excellent student had started to slip into some poor life choices, including setting a locker on fire. Sure he was going to be caught, he decided the only thing left to do was to die. With third degree burns over 85% of his body, he spent the next year in the hospital recovering from his injuries. While there, he was forced to confront the feelings that caused him to attempt suicide in the first place, and to try to fathom why he chose THAT method. The book details his long journey to wellness, both physical and mental.

Like many teen suicide attempts, this one is impulsive. Faced with disappointing his parents, Brent can only see one way out. Throughout his recovery, he goes back again and again to that one instant. Between the support of his brother, the love of his parents, and the amazing nurses who care for him, he begins to realize how much he has to live for. He decided to start writing The Burn Journals on the 10th anniversary of his suicide attempt. Over the year he had not shared much of his story with others, choosing instead to focus on his future, but with the anniversary he felt as though it was time to share his story, in the hopes of helping others see that there is always another way. Runyon's writing is straightforward, and he doesn't try to soften or minimize anything. I think that this book would be good to use in a classroom when discussing mental health, decision making, or perseverance. It could also be part of a unit on memoirs; the structure of the story and the amount of detail make it a good example of the genre.

Dumplin', Julie Murphy

When I look back at pictures of my teenage self, I wish that I could somehow send her a message
telling her she's not as fat as she thinks she is. I've always been a curvy girl, and as I moved into adulthood and parenthood I went from curvy to firmly plus-size, but when I was in high school, the way I looked didn't match the way I felt. American society has done such a disservice to women and girls. We are constantly bombarded with images of ultra-thin, perfectly made-up women, presented as the ideal. In reality, even the women in those images don't look the way we see them on billboards, music videos, and the pages of fashion magazines.

If only the teenage me had been able to meet Willowdeen Dixon, the main character of Julie Murphy's Dumplin'. Willowdeen lives in a small Texas town, with an aging beauty queen for a mother and a high school full of people who just don't get her. This last fact never really bothered her before, because she had her best friend Ellen, who had never seemed to mind that Will was different than the other girls. She's also dealing with the death of her beloved aunt, who was the only person in Will's life who seemed to see her for who she was. Willowdeen is full of contempt for the pageant culture that interests most of the other girls in town; of course, when you're overweight and have unconventional looks, contempt is a safer feeling than envy. Will's worldview is shaken, though, when she meets Bo, a handsome, brooding private school boy, who actually seems to be interested in her romantically, an experience that is unheard of in her life so far. She might have been able to deal with the feelings this arouses in her if she could have had Ellen to talk to, but Ellen has done something unexpected; she's signed up for the Miss Clover City beauty pageant. Suddenly, it's like Will doesn't even know her anymore. Struggling to deal with her mother's constant harping, Bo's unexpected interest, and Ellen's betrayal, Will decides to do something no one expects. She's going to join the pageant herself.

Murphy has created a character in Willowdeen that reminded me so much of my younger self. She's smart and funny, but also deeply insecure. That insecurity is something that I suspect almost all female-identified people in our society feel. I like to think it's getting better, as body positivity and more diversity in representation change the national conversation on what is beautiful, but for women of my generation and older, I bet there's not a day that goes by that we don't listen, just for a moment, to that voice in our head that says we should be skinnier, or have bigger breasts, or perfectly toned abs. If we're lucky, we can tell that voice to shut up, but I can't think of one day of my life since puberty when I haven't had negative thoughts about some aspect of my body and appearance. Ultimately, Will gets some self-acceptance through her relationship with Bo and her participation in the pageant, but that struggle is one that resonated strongly with me.

Some of the most emotional parts of the novel are the sections where Will is remembering her aunt. Lucy. Lucy was her rock, the adult in her life who accepted her exactly as she was. They shared a love of Dolly Parton, and of good southern cooking. Lucy was, in fact morbidly obese, unable to leave the house. Will's mother, who ran the Miss Clover City pageant, lived in constant fear that Will's connection to Lucy was going to take her down the same path to obesity and early death, which explained the nagging about what Will ate and how much (or little) she exercised. Will's relationship with her mother continues to be rocky when she signs up for the pageant. Her mother, rightly so, thinks that Will and the other unusual contestants that join with her are mocking something that is very important to her, and while I think pageant culture is creepy and weird, I do understand where her mother would be hurt by her actions. It is this family dynamic that makes this more than just a novel about a fat girl who finds love. Though the fact of Lucy's death, explained as a result of her weight, sort-of undermines the point that size doesn't matter. In the end, though, that is a small criticism. The book is full of humor and heart, and would be a great read for teen girls and female-identified folks.

The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth GIrl, Barry Lyga

I first discovered Barry Lyga at the Illinois Reading Council Conference. My best friend and I were I Hunt Killers. As a lover of mysteries and thrillers, how could I not bring it home with me?
browsing the booksellers' stalls (and let me tell you, the exhibit hall at the IRC Conference is children's/YA book heaven), when I was stopped in my tracks by a book with the provocative title of

That book, and the two that followed it completing the trilogy, gave me a lot of respect for Lyga's storytelling and character writing. Imagine my excitement at discovering that the I Hunt Killers books were only a few of the many books he's published. Diving into his body of work, I decided to go back to the beginning, and start with his debut novel, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl. 

The book's narrator is Donnie, a nerdy sophomore who loves comics more than anything else. While his school years have never been easy for him, this year is becoming especially challenging. His parents are divorced, and his mother remarried a man who could not be more different than Donnie. She is currently awaiting the birth of her first child with the man Donnie calls "step-fascist". His best and only friend, Cam, has started loving lacrosse and his new-found popularity more than the Donnie and the comics obsession they used to share. The icing on the cake is the bully in his gym class who has taken to punching Donnie so hard in arm or shoulder every day that he's developing a permanent bruise. Donnie's only salvation is the graphic novel he's been working on, called Schemata. But even that starts to suffer, when the drama going on in his life interferes with his time and creativity. Into this dismal existence comes Kyra, aka Goth Girl, a loner with an "eff you" attitude about anyone or anything that she disdains-which is pretty much everyone and everything. She challenges Donnie to stand up for himself, and thus begins a friendship/relationship that allows Donnie to grow and become more assertive. Over time, Donnie begins to realize that Kyra's rough exterior is protecting a vulnerable girl working to be tough, and his ability to help her makes gives him more agency in his own life, and to change his general attitude towards certain things in his life.

Lyga has done an admirable job in this novel creating characters that feel real, with problems that I think a lot of young people can relate to. Certainly issues like divorce, exclusion, isolation, and mental illness are common enough. Even the "popular" kids in high school can feel as though they are not enough; that if someone uncovered the "real" them they would reject them, much as Donnie feels rejected for his love of comics.

I wonder how much of Donnie is modeled on Lyga's own experiences. Lyga spent many years working in the comics industry, and before the last decade or so, comic shops were essentially seen as the natural habitat for nerds, geeks, and weirdos. Lyga's love of and knowledge about comics is clear in the book, and it helps give the story authenticity. The story itself is a fairly common YA trope-two misfits find each other and fall in love while thumbing their noses at conventional popularity-but it is written with such compelling characters and enough nuance as to not feel formulaic. I'm not sure I can say I loved it as much as I loved the I Hunt Killers series, but I can say I loved it differently, since The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl and I Hunt Killers are so different in theme, mood, and tone they could almost be written by two different authors. But I did love it.

Extraordinary Means, Robyn Schneider

I don't know about you, but when I think of tuberculosis patients, I think of pale, waifish invalids lying on fainting couches wanly coughing up blood until they waste away in Victorian politeness. Truth is, tuberculosis is far from being eradicated worldwide. In fact, it is estimated that up to one-third of the world's population is infected with TB. While most tuberculosis cases can be cured with antibiotics (something those Victorian sanitarium patients could only dream of), for people with impaired immune systems, such as those with HIV, tuberculosis is still a killer. And, of course, overuse of antibiotics has led to new, tougher strains of lots of bacterial infections, including TB.

Why do I need to give you a primer on the prevalence of tuberculosis in the modern world to review a YA love story, you ask? Because Robyn Schneider used a drug-resistant strain of TB as the context of her novel, Extraordinary Means. In some near-future time, a strain of TB has developed that does not respond to any conventional treatment. It is so infectious that anyone found to have the disease is sent to live in quarantine conditions. For Lane Rosen, that means a private boarding school, Latham House, that is now a sanitarium for teenagers with the dreaded Total Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis. Before TB, Lane was an AP student, preparing to apply to the Ivy League. He is used to working hard, compulsively so, and plans to continue his studies at Latham House. However, his doctor soon informs him that things will be different-his day will be filled with yoga, health walks, and rest time instead of study sessions. Lane does his best to stick with his self-imposed study schedule, but soon finds that in the struggle between his illness and his determination, his illness always wins.

As he is getting acclimated to Latham House, he notices a group of students (patients) who don't seem to follow the rules. Granted, students are left to wander around pretty much on their own most of the time, and if you miss class, everyone assumes you were too sick to make it. But this group, including a girl named Sadie that he happens to know from summer camp, sneaks off into the woods, dresses provocatively, and generally seems to thumb its nose at the rest of the students (patients). Sadie, for her part, has accepted that she is probably going to die, and so lives each day with reckless (in this case, literally reckless) abandon. Lane ends up a part of the group, and he and Sadie fall in love. Sadie teaches Lane that there is more to life than AP classes and Ivy League collges. Because of Lane, Sadie decides she does have something to live for after all. When news of a possible cure makes its way to Latham House, both Lane and Sadie begin to think about what a future for them outside of the sanitarium might look like. But will the cure come in time?

As epidemic stories go, this one is pretty low on action. No brave doctors risking their lives in disease-ravaged countries to track down the elusive plant/chemical/scientific whatsit needed to find a cure. No rampaging infected to contend with ("28 Days" is my favorite zombie movie). It is, indeed, a story of first love, with all of the conventional elements: meet-cute, miscommunications, obsession, late night phone calls. But in the background, for the characters and for the reader, is the knowledge that unless a cure is found, this particular love story is doomed. Schneider keeps reminding the reader of that fact throughout, with students who were there one day, and quietly gone the next. Finally, the reality of the "death" part of tuberculosis hits their little group, which really brings it home to the reader.

What the novel isn't low on, however, if good characterization and emotional impact. Lane and Sadie are both well-rounded, realistic characters. The rest of their merry band of misfits are also well-written, and each provides a necessary aspect to their little group. Charlie, especially, is endearing, as a gay teen trying to write as much music as possible before the inevitable end of his music writing career. If you are a fan of John Green novels, you will definitely enjoy Extraordinary Means.

All the Bright Places, Jennifer Niven

Boy meets girl-on a ledge. Violet was considering throwing herself off, but then Finch, who is no
stranger to suicidal thoughts himself, convinces her not to. Thus begins the love story of Violet and Finch, two smart, troubled teenagers living in small-town Indiana. Finch has lived with the darkness for a long time. He's basically been bullied by everyone in his life, starting with his father, for as long as he can remember. Living with a physically abusive parent doesn't exactly make for a rosy childhood. Violet has recently descended into the dark places Finch knows so well. Her sister was killed in a car accident, and it seems like everyone and everything she loved before is meaningless to her now. She and her sister hosted a blog together, which means that even writing, which used to be an escape for her, is tainted. Because of a school project, Finch and Violet end up spending a lot of time together, and before long they are deeply in love. But sometimes, love isn't enough to keep the darkness at bay.

Without going into too much more detail, let's just say this book is tragic. Like, "ugly-cry" tragic. Finch and Violet are both excellently written as characters, and you root for them to overcome their issues. Finch especially seems almost too good to be true. He is pretty consistently more considerate and kind than I'd expect most anyone to be, but especially a mentally ill 17 year-old boy. Finch really helps Violet see that to go on living is the only way to honor her sister, and that rather than withdrawing from the world until she can escape her small town and its painful memories, she should focus on living each day to the fullest. For her part, Violet helps draw Finch out of himself, getting him out of his own head and back into the world of the living. Sounds great, right? It is-for a while (cue ugly-crying).

This YA novel deals with some pretty heavy adult issues, namely mental illness and suicide, but Niven makes them understandable for younger readers. And really, as recent studies have shown, more and more teenagers are dealing with exactly the kind of depression and anxiety disorders that plague Finch and Violet. The story is a testament to anyone who has ever felt despair and overwhelming desperation. It also shows that even when you love someone, that person is ultimately responsible for their own choices. I think one of the messages Niven is sending to young people is that it is not your job to fix someone else, and that some problems are too big for one person, no matter how deeply they love the other, to deal with on their own. One of our protagonists learned this lesson a little too late, but because of a message left behind, they are able to let go of some of the guilt they'd been holding onto. While there is not a happy ending, Niven does leave us with a sense that, at least for one of the characters, things will eventually be OK.