Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, Will Grayson
By John Green & David Levithan
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One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens--both named Will Grayson--are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history's most fabulous high school musical.

An unusual love story
Review by Dean Schneider

"Much depends on a best friend," Will Grayson says. And when that best friend is Tiny Cooper, friendship is a big deal. Literally. Tiny is 6'6", so huge that when he sheds a tear, it could drown a kitten. So huge that one of his sobs measures on the Richter scale in Kansas (and he lives in Chicago). Will believes that Tiny may just be "the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large." Tiny and Will have been friends since fifth grade, and Will stood up for Tiny when a school-board member argued against gays in the locker room. But recently Will has become too disengaged from life. He lives by two simple rules that have helped him to survive high school: "1. Don’t care too much. 2. Shut up."
Will Grayson is not gay, but in one of many funny scenes in his first-person narrative, he meets another Will Grayson in a Chicago porn shop who is gay, and who begins a dramatic relationship with Tiny. This Will's story forms the other half of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan, who each wrote one of the Wills.

As it turns out, the original Will still needs Tiny, too. Tiny is the one who does care, who always speaks his mind, who lives in larger-than-life drama and color. And when Tiny puts on a musical, it becomes the vehicle by which each character finds meaning and order in the universe. The musical is Tiny's gift to the world, and his gift to the original Will Grayson is an appreciation of life and a repudiation of his anti-life rules.

Tiny will long live in readers' imaginations--provided they have imaginations large enough to contain him. For an older young adult audience, this book about love, friends and what matters in life will be one of the best books of the year.


© 2010 BookLetters LLC

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The Sky Is Everywhere

By Jandy Nelson

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Lennie Walker, a 17-year-old bookworm and band geek, spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey. But when Bailey suddenly dies, Lennie is catapulted to center stage of her own life.

~~~~~~

Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker, bookworm and band geek, plays second clarinet and spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey. But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to center stage of her own life and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two. Toby was Bailey's boyfriend; his grief mirrors Lennie's own. Joe is the new boy in town, a transplant from Paris whose nearly magical grin is matched only by his musical talent. For Lennie, they are the sun and the moon; one boy takes her out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it. But just like their celestial counterparts, they can't collide without the whole wide world exploding.

This remarkable debut is perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, and Francesca Lia Block.

Just as much a celebration of love as it is a portrait of loss, Lennie's struggle to sort her own melody out of the noise around her is always honest, often hilarious, and ultimately unforgettable.

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Before I Fall

By Lauren Oliver

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A terrible accident takes Samantha Kingston's life. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she relives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she had ever imagined.

Review by Norah Piehl for BookLetters

There's something you should know: You probably won't like Samantha Kingston very much, at least not the first time you meet her. But by the time you've met her for the third, or fourth, or seventh time, you might start thinking about Samantha a little bit differently. Because she sure starts to see herself that way.

If you've seen the movie Groundhog Day, you'll be familiar with the basic structure of Lauren Oliver's debut novel, Before I Fall. Samantha relives the same day seven times. She is the only one who's aware that her life is stuck on repeat--everyone else just keeps living life, moving forward, unaware that for Samantha at least, there's no such thing as tomorrow. Before I Fall takes a darker, more serious tone than the Bill Murray comedy, however--because what prompts Samantha's string of "do-overs" is her own death in a car accident.

For so long, Samantha was one of the queen bees, someone who, by her own admission, "just followed along" in the wake of her beautiful, charismatic and sometimes mean friends. But what might happen if she makes different choices--if she takes another look at the boy she's written off, or reaches out to the outcast, or challenges her best friends' cruelty? And what will flash before her eyes in the moments before she dies? Samantha hopes it will be the best moments of her life--but what if, instead, her final hours are replayed ad infinitum, giving her the chance to make the right choices, to make amends, even to save someone else's life, if not her own?

It's remarkable that Oliver can plot the same day seven times and make each retelling engaging. But Before I Fall is not just a fascinating piece of storytelling; it’s also a thought-provoking commentary on the unintended, and sometimes profound, consequences of even the smallest actions or remarks, and a powerful testimony to people's ability to make real, meaningful changes in their own behavior and outlook--changes that can deeply affect others' lives as well.

Norah Piehl is a freelance writer and editor in the Boston area.
© 2010 BookLetters LLC

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The Last Summer of the Death Warriors

By Francisco X. Stork

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When Pancho arrives at St. Anthony's Home, he knows his time there will be short: If his plans succeed, he'll soon be arrested for the murder of his sister's killer. But then he's assigned to help D.Q., whose brain cancer has slowed neither his spirit nor his mouth.

Review by Angela Leeper for BookLetters

Like last year's critically acclaimed Marcelo in the Real World, Francisco X. Stork's The Last Summer of the Death Warriors is the story of a teen faced with difficult choices before the start of a new school year. Kicked out of his foster home and recently orphaned, 17-year-old Pancho Sanchez has one more chance at St. Anthony's, an orphanage in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Unable to find a construction job for the season, he becomes the aide to fellow resident Daniel Quentin, known as D.Q., who is dying from a type of brain cancer known as diffuse pontine glioma. The immediate allusions to Don Quixote give depth to the quiet steadiness of the novel.

D.Q. has another round of treatment, which he knows he can bear because it will give him one more opportunity to confess his heart to Marisol, a young worker at Casa Esperanza, his outpatient home. And he'll even endure the two-week recovery period with the bipolar mother who turned him over to St. Anthony's as a child--if afterwards he can be legally emancipated, allowing him to die where he chooses and to follow the tenets of his Death Warrior Manifesto, a declaration to "love life at all times and in all circumstances." ("'Life Warrior' is probably more accurate because the manifesto is about life," admits D.Q., "but 'Death Warrior' is more mysterious-sounding.")

Their journey out of town provides the angry, depressed Pancho with a way to avenge the death of his mentally challenged older sister after the police, claiming she died of natural causes, filed away the case. He is also a boxing fan, and the author takes great care jabbing boxing imagery into the Hispanic teen's own fight for life. Like his literary predecessor, Pancho's observations of D.Q. illuminate his friend's idealism and his attempts to claim love in spite of the disease attacking his body and mind. In an unflinching ending, Pancho must decide between carrying out a certain death sentence or finding faith and his place in humanity--and becoming a true Death Warrior.

Angela Leeper is a librarian at the University of Richmond.
© 2010 BookLetters LLC

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Borderline
By Allan Stratton
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Life's not easy for 15-year-old Sami Sabiri, especially as the only Muslim kid at his private school. And when Sami catches his father in a lie, everything he's ever known comes into question.

Review by Dean Schneider for BookLetters

Living in upstate New York with a name like Mohammed Sami Sabiri, Sami has always felt like an outsider--the school nerd, a member of his school's "leper colony" and the subject of constant taunting. His father fled Iran as a young man because of the secret police and has worked hard to fit into his community, where the Sabiris have become a respected family: original members of the Meadowville subdivision, father on the golf club's planning committee, mother in the Ladies' Invitational golf tournament. They send Sami to one of the most elite private boys' academies in upstate New York.

But Sami feels he doesn't know his father, and when Mr. Sabiri takes a mysterious trip to Toronto, he begins to wonder if his father is having an affair. So he starts to do a little undercover investigation of his father's email messages and online accounts. Before he gets too far, the FBI storms the Sabiris' residence, arrests Mr. Sabiri and confiscates all records that seem to incriminate him as part of a terrorist cell led by one Tariq Hasan. The fact that Mr. Sabiri is the research director at Shelton Laboratories, where anthrax, smallpox and other viruses are stored, escalates the hysteria about potential cross-border biological attacks.

But is Arman Sabiri a terrorist or a victim of a latter-day witch hunt, akin to the Salem Witch Trials, the Holocaust and the McCarthy hearings that Sami's history teacher, Mr. Bernstein, has been discussing in class? In the context of a thrilling suspense story, Stratton explores the many ways people are separated from each other--the yearning of people like the Sabiris to simply fit in, the distance that secrets create and the evil dance of persecutor and victim, whether the Nazis, the KKK or the bullies at school who torment Sami and maneuver the firing of Mr. Bernstein. All is not what it seems with Mr. Sabiri, and Sami's quest to clear his father's name will carry readers along for an exciting ride.

Dean Schneider teaches middle school English in Nashville.

© 2010 BookLetters LLC

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Voices of Dragons

By Carrie Vaughn

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Seventeen-year-old Kay Wyatt knows she's breaking the law by rock climbing near the border, but she'd rather have an adventure than follow the rules. When the dragon Artegal unexpectedly saves her life, a secret friendship grows between them.

© 2010 BookLetters LLC

Viola in Reel Life

Viola in Reel Life

By Trigiani, Adriana

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From the author of the "New York Times"-bestselling adult novel "Very Valentine" comes the first book in a fresh new teen series, about a group of boarding school friends navigating the ups and downs of living together, falling in love, and following their dreams.

Love is the Higher Law

Love Is the Higher Law

By Levithan, David

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"First there is a Before, and then there is an After. . . ."

The lives of three teens--Claire, Jasper, and Peter--are altered forever on September 11, 2001. Claire, a high school junior, has to get to her younger brother in his classroom. Jasper, a college sophomore from Brooklyn, wakes to his parents' frantic calls from Korea, wondering if he's okay. Peter, a classmate of Claire's, has to make his way back to school as everything happens around him. Here are three teens whose intertwining lives are reshaped by this catastrophic event. As each gets to know the other, their moments become wound around each other's in a way that leads to new understandings, new friendships, and new levels of awareness for the world around them and the people close by. David Levithan has written a novel of loss and grief, but also one of hope and redemption as his characters slowly learn to move forward in their lives, despite being changed forever.
© 2009 BookLetters LLC

Crash Into Me

Crash Into Me

By Borris, Albert

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Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae have one thing in common: they all want to die. When they meet online after each attempts suicide and fails, the four teens make a deadly pact: they will escape together on a summer road trip to visit the sites of celebrity suicides...and at their final destination, they will all end their lives. As they drive cross-country, bonding over their dark impulses, sharing their deepest secrets and desires, living it up, hooking up, and becoming true friends, each must decide whether life is worth living--or if there's no turning back.

© 2009 BookLetters LLC

Sea Change

Sea Change

By Friedman, Aimee

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After major drama with her boyfriend and (now ex) best friend, 16-year-old Miranda Merchant is happy to spend the summer on small, mysterious Selkie Island. There, Miranda finds a place with a mysterious, mystical history, and Leo, who challenges everything she thinks she knows about boys--and reality.

© 2009 BookLetters LLC

Wings

Wings
By Pike, Aprilynne
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When a flower blooms in the middle of her back, Laurel discovers that she is a faerie and was placed with human parents as a child. As Laurel learns about her true background and the dangers that face the faerie realm, she struggles to find her place in both worlds.

Indie Next
Recommendations From Independent Booksellers
"What a great modern-day twist on typical fairy stories! Laurel is that newbie high school girl who happens to find out she's really a fairy. Never believing in that sort of thing, she finds herself in situations and adventures she never dreamed of. I can't wait for the sequel!"
--Hallie Wilkins, Anderson's Bookshop, Naperville, IL


© 2009 BookLetters LLC

After the Moment

After the Moment

By Freymann-Weyr, Garret

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Leigh Hunter is completely and forever in love with Maia Morland. But life is not a romance novel and theirs will never become a true romance. For when Maia needs him the most, Leigh betrays both her trust and her love, in this new novel by the Printz Honor-winning author Freymann-Weyr.

Publisher Comments

A new novel by the Printz Honor author Garret Freymann-Weyr, about a boy who discovers what happens when love fails us--or we fail love. Maia Morland is pretty, only not pretty-pretty. She's smart. She's brave. She's also a self-proclaimed train wreck.Leigh Hunter is smart, popular, and extremely polite. He's also completely and forever in love with Maia Morland.Their young love starts off like a romance novel--full of hope, strength, and passion. But life is not a romance novel and theirs will never become a true romance. For when Maia needs him the most, Leigh betrays both her trust and her love.Told with compassion and true understanding, After the Moment is about what happens when a young man discovers that sometimes love fails us, and that, quite often, we fail love.

© 2009 BookLetters LLC

Twenty Boy Summer

Twenty Boy Summer

By Ockler, Sarah

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Beautifully written and emotionally honest, this debut novel explores what it truly means to love someone, what it means to grieve, and ultimately how to make the most of every single moment this world has to offer.

Blending love and memories
Review by Angela Leeper

Next-door neighbors Anna and Frankie have felt like sisters all their lives. In Sarah Ockler’s poignant debut novel, Twenty Boy Summer, the girls’ friendship is tested when a freak accident changes their lives forever.

Anna’s longtime crush on Frankie’s older brother, Matt, turns to love when he kisses her on her 15th birthday. They keep their romance a secret, since Matt wants to wait until his family’s summer vacation to break the news to his sister. But the night before the big trip, the three teens experience a tragic car crash which takes Matt’s life.

Now a year later, Anna joins Frankie’s family on their California excursion. While hanging out in all of Matt’s favorite locales, Anna meets Sam and finds instant, mutual attraction. She can’t help but worry, though, that falling in love with Sam means erasing her memories with Matt.

With friendship at the forefront, Anna explores grief and love and the pain and wonders of it all. The teen’s dilemma—how to remember Matt, move on with Sam and still be loyal to Frankie—gives a firm tug on the reader’s heart.

© 2008, All rights reserved, BookPage

© 2009 BookLetters LLC

Chasing the Bear

Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel

By Parker, Robert B.

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For almost 40 years, Parker's inimitable private investigator Spenser has been solving cases and selling millions of books worldwide. Now, for the first time, fans can see how it all began as the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master sheds light on Spenser's formative years spent with his father and two uncles out West.

A detective grows up
Review by James Neal Webb

Robert B. Parker's literary protagonist and alter ego, the Boston private investigator Spenser, is a man many readers would like to emulate. He's brave, witty, strong and smart, with a streak of impregnable integrity and a stubborn determination to do the Right Thing. He's also a wise-cracking detective who always seems to be up to his neck in trouble. Through almost 40 novels, Parker has given us glimpses of Spenser's past, but in his newest novel, written for teens, the details of his boyhood are fleshed out. Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel, takes us back to an incident that molds the boy Spenser into the man he would become.

Spenser (as in the adult novels, no first name is mentioned) is a teenager growing up in Laramie, Wyoming, being raised by his father Sam, and his two uncles, Patrick and Cash. As you might imagine, an all-male household means a lot of testosterone-influenced activities, including boxing and hunting, so Spenser is a tough kid who knows how to defend himself. What you might not expect is that the three men try to teach their young kin as best they can by exposing him to the classics (like Shakespeare and Milton) and by teaching him to always try to do what's right. These lessons come into play when Jeannie Haden, a friend from school, is taken upriver against her will by her abusive, alcoholic father, and Spenser has no choice but to follow them in a small, rickety skiff. The choices he makes in trying to rescue Jeannie will have repercussions both in the short term and for the rest of his life. As a result of his adventure, he learns a valuable lesson in dealing with both sides of the law; he is reluctantly drawn into a school racial dispute; and Jeannie (and her mother) give him an unexpected lesson in interacting with the opposite sex. In the process we watch as the adult Spenser takes shape.

Chasing the Bear will appeal to teen readers in much the same way the Spenser mysteries appeal to adults. Spenser's wit, strength, and moral rectitude serve as a stand-in for the way we want ourselves to be. He's the quintessential hero, and we all need a hero, no matter what our age.

Wintergirls

Wintergirls
By Anderson, Laurie Halse

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Six years after Cassie and Lia resolved to become the skinniest girls in their school, Cassie dies. Unable to bear the sadness and guilt following Cassie's death, Lia spirals deeper into her own eating disorder. Elijah, the last person to see Cassie alive, helps Lia find the strength to face her own demons and enter recovery.

Evermore

Evermore
By Noel, Alyson

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The first book in Nol's exciting new Immortals series. Since the accident that claimed her family, 16-year-old Ever can see auras, hear people's thoughts, and know a person's entire history through one touch. She's been branded a freak at her new high school, but everything changes when Ever meets the mysterious Damen August.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

The Forest of Hands and Teeth
By Ryan, Carrie
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In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best, and the fence that protects her village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth must remain intact. After fence is breached, Mary's world is thrown into chaos, and she must choose between her village and her future.