Ami McKay discovered the idea for her second historical novel (following The Birth House) while researching her own family. Her great-grandmother was a doctor on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late 19th century, caring for the homeless children living in the alleys and tenements of the area. McKay describes her research in an Author’s [...]

The school year is over, ALA Annual is (nearly) past, the big fall books are calling, it must be time to announce our Best of the Year so far!
As usual, we are excited to highlight books that offer a combination of quality and teen appeal. For more information, click on title links for full blog [...]

The school year is over, ALA Annual is (nearly) past, the big fall books are calling, it must be time to announce our Best of the Year so far!
As usual, we are excited to highlight books that offer a combination of quality and teen appeal. For more information, click on title links for full blog [...]

As stated in her website bio, Meg Howrey is a classically trained dancer who has performed with the Joffrey, Los Angeles Opera, and City Ballet of Los Angeles. She knows the competitive world of the ballerina and in The Cranes Dance, she shares it with her readers.
For me, the best things about this novel are [...]

As stated in her website bio, Meg Howrey is a classically trained dancer who has performed with the Joffrey, Los Angeles Opera, and City Ballet of Los Angeles. She knows the competitive world of the ballerina and in The Cranes Dance, she shares it with her readers.
For me, the best things about this novel are [...]

This coming of age novel begins with a forbidden romance. Henry is a junior in high school, working at a stable when he meets Mercy. Her family considers him to be from the wrong side of the tracks, but the two fall deeply in love.
What begins in a romantic vein becomes a dark story of [...]

This coming of age novel begins with a forbidden romance. Henry is a junior in high school, working at a stable when he meets Mercy. Her family considers him to be from the wrong side of the tracks, but the two fall deeply in love.
What begins in a romantic vein becomes a dark story of [...]

from graphic novel guest blogger Francisca Goldsmith:
If you have the feeling that cartoonists seem to be producing a small stream of sequential art nonfiction about the builders and building of the atomic bomb, you aren’t wrong. If you still haven’t taken the opportunity to explore how and why one or two isn’t “enough,” however, it’s [...]

Ricki Lewis, a geneticist and journalist, offers an absorbing narrative of the history of and recent advances in gene therapy. She’s written textbooks on the topic, as well as hundreds of articles, and is a guest blogger for Scientific American. The combination of science clearly presented and the personal stories that humanize this cutting edge topic promise [...]

Richard Ford’s novel hooks readers from the beginning, “First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.” Dell and his twin sister are 15 when their parents’ actions doom them to being orphans, though the novel is less about these events than about their effect.
In a Daily Beast [...]

Tom Wright’s debut is far from a typical southern coming-of-age novel. What begins as a dysfunctional family story (and what a family) becomes something else after our two young teens, Jim and L.A., find the body of a girl just about their age while out riding bikes and collecting bottles to supplement their allowance.
There’s an [...]

from graphic novel guest blogger, Francisca Goldsmith:
Magdy El Shafee, who edits a comics journal for youth, shows great skill in crafting his own graphic novel here.  Looking at contemporary Cairo through the eyes of a young Everyman, readers can nearly smell the superheated subway cars (see the official transit map), feel the hairs on the [...]

Carolina De Robertis has written a beautiful novel about a horrifying time in South American history. Perla is a young woman who comes of age following Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-1983). As a young adult, Perla learns that her family was involved in the fates of “the disappeared,” and must contend with that legacy.
The novel addresses [...]

Jerry McGill’s inspiring short memoir tells the story of coping with disability and the injustice of a life changed in a moment.
Originally self-published, Dear Marcus was acquired by an editor at Random House thanks to a piece in the New York Review of Books. That editor recently shared her story in The Ampersand, the Spiegel [...]

The Other Boleyn Girl fans — welcome new kid on the block, Sophie Perinot and her historical fiction debut about two very different, very strong sisters. Word on the street (rather, consensus among historical fiction bloggers) is that this is an author to watch whose book is a page-turner, fast-paced, emotional, passionate, well-written and carefully [...]

Melanie Thorne admits right out the gate that her first novel is based on personal experience. In fact, writing it was a kind of therapy for the author, whose mother chose her sex offender husband over her children. At 14, Thorne was asked to leave home, and spent the following years moving from house to [...]

Ben Fountain was inspired to write his first novel by a television broadcast of the Thanksgiving 2004 Dallas Cowboys game (still available for viewing in a very blurry Youtube video). Destiny’s Child performed the halftime show, which featured men dressed in military attire and a prominent martial drumbeat. The strange combination struck him, and the result is [...]

BookExpo 2012 is right around the corner, so I spent some time this weekend compiling my wish list. For this post I am limiting myself to adult books that have potential teen appeal. Please keep in mind that I haven’t seen most of these yet, so I am working off of instinct. That being said, [...]

Today I am pleased to review a dystopian novel that seems to be flying under the radar in this country, even though it was longlisted for England’s 2011 Man Booker Prize (along with a couple of our favorite AB4T books from last year, Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch and Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman) and [...]