Books shelved under “Young Adult”

Over Sea, Under Stone reminds me of that endless string of ’80s and ’90s movies featuring plucky groups of child protagonists outwitting bumbling adult villains. You know the ones I mean—The Goonies is probably the most famous example, but there are others. Children get into real danger and use a combination of courage and clever planning to defeat the bad guys and save the day. In this case, Simon, Jane, and Barney work together…

My Carnegie-nominated reads continue with Code Name Verity. This book cut me up. I thought it unlikely that any of the nominees could best Wonder’s worthiness for the award; I was wrong. I’m going to festoon this review with spoilers like they are going out of style, because I want to talk about what happens in this book and why that makes it so good.

Code Name Verity excels on multiple levels. It’s…

I did not finish this.

It’s a nominee for the Carnegie Medal, which is why I started reading it. Unfortunately, it didn’t engage me enough to make me want to keep reading.

Nick Lake does a good job creating character and setting, and he makes a fair stab at plot. In Darkness is split in two time periods: one follows the Haitian Revolution; the other is set during the most recent Haiti earthquake. Through…

Come with me on a journey to the isle of Blessed, a remote island somewhere above the Arctic Circle. On this island, and only on this island—only on its western half, in fact—grows the Dracula orchid, a dragon-like flower that bequeaths health and longevity. For centuries, the inhabitants of Blessed have cultivated this flower and reaped its benefits. They have also covered up a dark secret.

Got shivers? Good. You should. I don’t.

Midwinterblood is…

I really am not an adventurous person. Moving to England—having never lived on my own before—aside, I’m not the sort of person who enjoys embarking on “expeditions”. I took a trip up to Edinburgh back in October, and that was adventurous enough for me for a few months. These days, a train to Norwich is about as much adventure as I can muster. I read National Geographic and watch the Discovery Channel and soak up…

Supernatural creatures capture our imaginations for all sorts of reasons. Vampires are really very individualistic, singular monsters: they are an outward manifestation of our obsessions with mortality, sexuality, and appetite. Zombies, too, prey upon our fear of a loss of self and self-determination. Faeries, though, are a little different. Thanks to their firm grounding in folklore across Europe, with plenty of hints as to a larger society and hierarchy, faeries offer a reach source of…

So what if someone set us up the bomb, or several bombs, and instead of nuclear winter and all the survivors dying of cancer, they got fused to each other and bits of glass and animals and broken doll heads? Pure is a horror story about atomic detonations gone wrong. Yeah—if that isn’t a terrifying thought, I don’t know what is. Julianna Baggott postulates a post-apocalyptic world that is the fevered vision of a…

Oh, Mockingjay, I’m just not sure what to do with you.

I suppose that at this point the trilogy has taken on a certain trajectory. Katniss rebelled against the Capitol, inadvertently started an uprising, and now finds herself the face of that revolution regardless of her desires in the matter. It seems inevitable that the third and final book will feature the climax of this uprising, an assault on the Capitol, and one last…

Two years, almost to the day, have elapsed since I read the first book in this series. Since then it has gone from trendy young adult sensation to international book series phenomenon. My second student-teaching practicum is in a Grade 7/8 environment, where it seems like every student is reading one of these three books. I even got to accompany my Grade 7 and 8 classes to watch the movie when it came out in…

Our capacity for language is one of the attributes often cited as what makes humans so distinct from other animals. It’s a controversial distinction, because we’ve observed other species communicate in very interesting and effective ways: whales sing, dolphins whistle, birds do whatever it is they do to switch places while in formation. Parrots, of course, can be trained to mimic human speech! But there’s a difference between replicating instinctual sounds with fixed meanings and…

I was not sure how I would approach my review of The Stolen One until I came across this sentence: "My heart began to beat." This comes from the first-person narrator, Katherine "Kat" Bab, who is very much alive. From that point onward, it was open season on Suzanne Crowley and The Stolen One. Until I reached that fateful sentence, I was having difficulty forming any opinion about the book. It certainly wasn't great,…

Disclaimer: I won this in a Goodreads First Reads Giveaway. Loves me the free books.

There is really no question about it: adolescents and superpowers just go well together. After all, teenagers just want to be normal, and superheroes often just want to be normal. Can you guess what a teenager with superpowers wants?

Kelly Oram does not break any new ground with Being Jamie Baker, which hews very closely to all of…

I am ambivalent about how Specials concludes the original Uglies trilogy (yes, I know there's a fourth book, and I shall even read it one day). On one hand, it was much better than Pretties. On the other hand, it is still not as good as Uglies.

Specials just didn't grip me. It fell flat, in a quiet, unassuming sort of way. I persevered, poked and prodded at it, begged it to impress…

With Uglies, Scott Westerfeld creates a creepy adolescent dystopia where "pretty" is decided by committee, and everyone at sixteen receives an operation to become pretty. Until then, one exists as an "ugly," good only for learning and playing pranks, banned from the parties and glitz of New Pretty Town. Of course, being a dystopia, there's more sinister workings afoot. Being pretty isn't all it's cracked up to be.

In many ways, Uglies reminds me…

The perverse, contrary part of me enjoys panning books that receive wide acclaim. It's a calling (in the same way that being a creepy funeral home director is a calling). Giving a wildly popular book a bad review is almost as fun as giving a bad book a bad review. I'll be honest: it's an ego thing, a sense of smugness that comes from not succumbing to the hype.

So when I like a book,…

This is a birthday present for a coworker, who as far as I know reads only that other vampire series. I wanted something similar to give her, so I bought Night World No. 1 upon the recommendation of a friend. Now I've read it for myself, so I know what it is I'll be giving away.

The first rule of Night World: Do not talk about Night World.

The second rule of Night World: Do…

After not enjoying Elsewhere, I was hesitant to read this book, but decided to go through with it anyway. I'm not sure that was the right decision. While Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac isn't a terrible book, I finished it with a profound feeling of "So what?"

The premise is interesting: Naomi Porter is a teenage yearbook editor who hits her head when she falls down the steps at her school, causing her to…

Is it just me, or are books about dead characters living in an afterlife increasingly common? There must be something innately fascinating about making one's protagonist already dead. Fortunately, the eponymous afterlife known as "Elsewhere" is a pleasant, non-threatening environment where dead people age backward and then are born again as babies.

If I had a choice, reincarnation would not be my first choice of afterlife. The concept hinges on the idea that everyone has,…

Neil Gaiman is one of the world's leading storytellers, and The Graveyard Book great story--several stories, in fact, all bound up into one nice narrative.

I have great respect for Gaiman because he does not patronize children. The Graveyard Book is, in many ways, a children's book (although adults will enjoy it as well). Unlike much of the mass culture drivel produced for children these days, Gaiman does not treat children like they are idiots…

I finished this book in three hours. From page one, Larry Doyle creates an eerily familiar depiction of high school, specifically that moment when you look back during your graduation and realize you're finally free and have your whole life ahead of you--and it's scary.

Doyle's wit sets us off on a one-night odyssey that originates from the single question, "What if, instead of delivering an average graduation speech, the valedictorian head of the…