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Tag Archives: young adult lit
This Is Not Your Typical Coming-of-Age Book
In exploring This Is Not the Jess Show by Anna Carey, I’m going to do something I normally don’t do. I’m going to start with a very brief summary. I’m playing with the structure of the blog a bit, and I really think this post lends itself to lists. So you’ll see a lot of them this week.
Summary:
It’s 1998, and Jess is a junior in high school. She’s dealing with normal high school things:
- A crush on her best friend, Tyler
- An unwanted date to the Spring Formal
- Trying to get out of the house even though she’s grounded
Posted in Coming of Age
Tagged as: Coming of Age, Identity, The is not the Jess Show, YA Lit, YA Literature, young adult lit, young adult literature
Because Girls Aren’t Funny
I get a lot of book suggestions from podcasts. If a book comes up more than once on a podcast or is mentioned on a few different podcasts, it immediately becomes something I check out (if it sounds like a book for me).
So when listening to Novel Pairings and Sara mentioned the book Unscripted by Nicole Kronzer at least twice, I knew I needed to get this book for my classroom library. Unscripted intrigued me because it was about improv–a topic I know I have no books about in my class library. The front cover boldly states, “Some jokes cross the line.” I knew going in this was going to be about a girl heading into a male-dominated world. I didn’t quite expect the toxic masculinity to cross into abuse. I definitely could have used those trigger warnings before I started reading the book.
Posted in Coming of Age, Empathy
Tagged as: relationships, toxic masculinity, Unscripted, YA, YA Lit, young adult lit, young adult literature
Ben vs. Charlie
In my last post, I talked about Spy School, and I’m still wondering why there’s a definite gender slant towards this series. And that has led me to another question, what about Stuart Gibbs’ other books?
Last year, Stuart Gibs published Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation. I read and LOVED this book, and I’m really excited that the next Charlie Thorne book is coming out in March. Charlie is smart. She’s strong. She’s bold. She’s fierce. She’s not letting anyone push her around. She’s a girl who is not just smart, smart, but she’s also math smart. In a word, this is Spy School if Ben were a girl.
Posted in Guys Read
Tagged as: Charlie Thorne, Female Protagonists, Spy School, YA, YA Lit, young adult lit, young adult literature
I Wish Those Days
I think everyone has had at least one time in their life where they would like to have a wish granted. When I turned 40, I wanted a chance to stop “adulting” for a day. So that’s what we did. My (at the time) soon-to-be husband and I hopped on a train and headed into NYC. Our first stop was the NY Public Library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue—the branch with those iconic lions out front. Walking through the front doors always causes me to stop and take pause. It’s a building full of possibility. On this day, I had to pause and figure out how to get to the children’s room. Yep, I was taking this non-adulting thing seriously. Actually, I was on my way to see the original Winnie the Pooh (and the gang). We spent some time there looking at that “silly old bear;” I recounted my favorite Pooh tales and explained how one plays Pooh Sticks, and then we headed off down Fifth Avenue.
Posted in Words/Language
Tagged as: American Girl, As You Wish, families, Free to Be, Nanea Mitchell, Wishes, wishing, YA Lit, you and me, young adult lit
Preparing faces
“Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right.”
–This Song Will Save Your Life, Leila Sales
Full disclosure: I haven’t read This Song Will Save Your Life. I was merely looking for a quote about YA books, and of course, google gave me quotes from YA books, and a blog post from Barnes and Noble titled “12 YA Quotes that Perfectly Express the Teen Condition.” Now, I don’t know if the quotes do or not. It’s been a really long time since I was a teen. And while the biology of adolescence hasn’t changed, adolescent life today seems far more complicated than it was in the 80s.
Posted in Coming of Age, Mystery/Thriller
Tagged as: Before I Let Go, Identity, Nijkamp, YA Lit, YA Literature, young adult lit, young adult literature