Nonfiction

Last week I was so excited to discover the Internet Archive Book Images project.  Yesterday (also via @infodocket) I discovered Photogrammar– a digital humanities project from Yale University. Exploiting Library of Congress metadata, the Photogrammar team created a web-based platform for organizing, searching, and visualizing the 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the [...]

Get the inside scoop behind the whale who inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, take a walk on the wild side with The Accidental Highwayman, and blast off with Sally Ride, in the September stars, which offer the best of fiction, nonfiction, and multimedia.

This month, SLJ highlights some picture books about famous figures—before they made it big. Barbara Krasner details Golda Meir's first stab at leadership, Stephanie Roth Sisson offers a glimpse of Carl Sagan's childhood dreams about the stars, and Jacqueline Briggs examines foodie Alice Waters, starting with the early years.

The latest nonfiction for older readers spotlights gender and bodies, from a frank and original look at puberty to a memoir by a transgender teen.

“Media Mania” gets unplugged to feature exciting new books that spotlight the oldest form of mass communication: art. Ranging in topic from magnetic and multifaceted biographies of art world giants, these handsomely illustrated offerings invite teens into an intriguing and thought-provoking world.

Rainbow Rowell’s many, many teen readers are definitely not the target audience for her summer novel, Landline, but no matter. Rowell’s signature clever dialogue and snappy one-liners are in generous supply as one women tries to save her marriage. And while a failing marriage is not a favorite literary topic among teens, this novel also takes [...]

Kekla Magoon’s How It Went Down about a black teen who is shot by a white man, is especially timely with recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and just the right title for young adults grappling with streaming headlines. And, a new book from the queen of verse novels, Ellen Hopkins, will entice fans of the format. The following fiction and nonfiction titles for teens will be perfect for late-summer reading and back-to-school shelf-browsing.

High school is behind you, but you’re not quite an independent adult. Today’s reviews cover one book of essays and stories written during–and one graphic novel memoir written about–the college years. Marina Keegan was a talented writer who died days after graduating from Yale. She had lined up a position as an editorial assistant at The [...]

"In comparing football players to drug dealers, Almond’s point is that football is among the very few limited options available to black youth," writes Mark Flowers. The Adult Books 4 Teens blogger considers Burning Down the House, by Nell Bernstein, and Against Football, by Steve Almond.