Looking for Alaska

Green, John. Looking for Alaska. ISBN-10: 0142402516, ISBN-13: 9780142402511. Graphia. 2007.

Plot Summary
"Pudge" has left his friendless life behind in Florida in hopes of a better life at the Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama. Things are immediately different when his roommate shows up and introduces Pudge to Alaska. She's beautiful, funny, rebellious, sexy and a mess. She fascinates him and makes him crazy with lust. That was all before what came after.

Critical Evaluation
All teens envision leaving behind bad times for what Pudge calls the "Great Perhaps" (from Rabelais). At his new boarding school, Culver Creek, he is able to shuck the boringness of the first 16 years of his life for the drinking, smoking and prank-pulling life with his roommate "the Colonel" and the Colonel's best friend, the beautiful Alaska. The two of them drag Pudge into the world and give him experiences beyond his wildest dreams. Interestingly, the book is in two parts (before and after), and further divided into the days "before" and the days "after." As the number of days before dwindles, readers wait with breaths held for what will happen. And when tragedy does strike, the characters and readers will realize that you can never go back, knowing what you now know. John Green weaves a story rich with the feelings young men have toward sex and love and friendship and how the three are vastly different. He ties humor into lives that are lacking any, and empathetic emotion where you least expect it.

Reader's Annotation
Pudge goes to boarding school to escape his boring life. He never expects to find the friends he does, or to fall in love with the funny, smart and {yet} sad Alaska, or to have to learn how to deal with losing her.

About the Author
John Green worked as a publishing assistant and production editor for Booklist during the years he wrote his first novel, Looking for Alaska. It was published in 2005 to excellent reviews—it went on to win the Michael L. Printz award in 2006, among many other accolades. His second novel for young adults, An Abundance of Katherines, was published in 2006, and followed by Paper Towns in 2008. Green also is working with David Levithan on the novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Green's books are full of feeling and hilarity while facing deep topics.

Genre
Boys/Men
Dating/Sex
Death/Dying

Curriculum Ties
no applications

Booktalking Ideas
Would you leave this life you're living now behind for another…
How would you cope with a friend's death…

Awards
Michael L. Prinze Award (2006)

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 15+

Why I included this title...
I have always heard good things about this book—it's a good one.

One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies

Sones, Sonya. One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. ISBN-10: 1416907882, ISBN-13: 9781416907886. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. 2004.

Summary
Ruby's mom has died. But that's not the only problem: Ruby has to leave her Boston home, her Boston friends and her Boston boyfriend to move across the country to live with her father. Her father is a famous movie star who left Ruby's mom before she was born, and Ruby has turned her grief for her mother to anger toward her father. She's hateful, ungrateful and refuses to show her father any love. But there is more to the story of her father, and it'll take an act of God to help Ruby see that.

Critical Evaluation
Sonya Sones uses epistolary (emails mostly) free verse to tell the story of Ruby. Her mother dies from cancer and she is forced to leave Boston and move to Los Angeles to live with her movie star dad. She's grief-stricken, and funnels that grief to fuel her anger at the dad she never knew because he took off before she was born. She tortures him at every turn—his famous friends, her beautiful room in his mansion, rejecting his endeavors to get to know her. Ruby relies on her emails to her best friend and boyfriend who she left back in Boston, as well as her dead mother and her father's live-in trainer/personal assistant. Young adult readers will side with Ruby over her misery of having to leave her friends, and may understand her anger toward her dad. She's a smart character who tells a great story that twists with an earth-shattering earthquake.

Reader's Annotation
Fifteen year old Ruby has just lost her mom to cancer, and is now living in her movie star dad's Los Angeles mansion—a world away from her best friend and boyfriend she left in Boston. She finds relief in her misery by writing emails to them and even to her dead mother, until an act of God shakes up what she thought she knew.

About the Author
Sonya Sones has spent most of her life drawing, animating or editing something or another. The Boston native was educated at Hampshire college, has taught a Harvard, worked in the film industry as an editor and painted baby clothes for Neiman Marcus stores before enrolling in a poetry class at the University of California-Los Angeles. She had an influential professor who guided her into writing her first book Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy in 1999. In over the last decade, she has written four young adult novels, three short stories and one children's picture book—Violet and Winston—with her husband Bennett Tramer.

In her young adult novels, Sones often incorporates bits and pieces of herself in each book. Inspired by her professor and the actual events surrounding her mentally ill sister, Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy was written first (1999). Sones was writing poems about her first love, and then started thinking about all of the "firsts" in a young girl's life, and she used many those thoughts for What My Mother Doesn't Know (2003). Next she incorporated her own story of an East coast girl relocating to the West coast for One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies (2004). What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know (2007) came from the copious amount of letters asking the author for what happened next in Sophie's story. Sones says she wanted to know what happened too, so she wrote the sequel. Sones is currently working on her fifth novel.

Genre
Poetry/Verse
Death/Dying
Adolescence

Challenges
Homosexuality

Curriculum Ties
English: writing a complete story in verse

Booktalking Ideas
How willing would you be to pick up and move across the country just because your mom has died and you're now forced to live in a Los Angeles mansion…
Do you think you can tell a whole story using free verse poetry tucked into emails…

Awards
Tennessee Volunteer State Teen Read Award (2006)
Iowa Golden Apple Teen Read Award (2006)
Rhode Island Teen Book Award (2006)
New Hampshire Isinglass Teen Read Award (2006)
South Carolina Mustang Book Award (2005)
Cuffie Award from Publisher's Weekly for Best Book Title of the Year (2006)
Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association (2005)

… and numerous nominations

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 14+

Why I included this title...
Sonya Sones' What My Mother Doesn't Know was recommended to me, and so I wanted to see if her other books were as good… this one was better!

Goth Girl Rising

Lyga, Barry. Goth Girl Rising. ISBN-10: 0547076645, ISBN-13: 9780547076649. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.

Summary
In this sequel to The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, Kyra (also known as Goth Girl) has just been released from the Maryland Mental Health Unit after a 6-month stay. She comes out just as angry as she was when she went in and is now looking for the one person she knows understands her. When she finds Fanboy, she's devastated by the change in him. He's unrecognizable, and her fury for her dad overflows over to Fanboy. She's set on destroying his new found confidence and popularity, by exposing that Schemata (his comic book) is nothing that his classmates think it is. Goth Girl's ire is rising, but will revenge quench it?

Critical Evaluation
This time around, Barry Lyga focuses in on Goth Girl, and goes deeper into explaining who she is and what made her. Her stay in the Maryland Mental Hospital has done nothing for her attitude. She's still angry at the world. She's especially livid with her father for putting her in the hospital, and with Fanboy who has transformed from the quiet loner she left behind into someone she doesn't recognize. Fueled with her rage, she emotionally tortures her dad, and plots to ruin Fanboy's popularity and expose his comic book. Kyra remembers Fanboy's book as an homage to a senior Fanboy had a crush on, but hasn't seen how it's change to reflect a very different heroine.

Kyra is a hard character to like, but readers will be able to relate with her feelings of isolation. Her alienation and loneliness is particularly hard to face for her, as life has gone on while she was away. And other readers will find that Kyra's friends to be irritating with their unoriginal thoughts, their replication of her all-white style, and their constant need to hook-up. Readers will see that the poem that grows throughout the novel shows that Kyra's anger goes very deep, and Goth Girl is an antihero you hope finds her way.

Reader's Annotation
Goth Girl has been in the mental hospital because she took his bullet and the gun. Now that she's been released, Goth Girl is searching for Fanboy and realizes he's not the same boy she left behind… and she remembers it was HE who called her dad, making him as much to blame as her dad for putting her in the hospital. And she's looking for revenge.

About the Author
Barry Lyga is the popular author of The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, as well as a collector and activist of comic books. After he graduated from Yale (with a degree in English) he went to work in the comic book world, and he was a major player in the development of Free Comic Book day*. He served as the spokesperson for industry and is well-quoted in numerous publications as well as penning a book on the topic on incorporating these graphic materials into schools and school libraries.

Lyga changed gears a bit when he jumped into the realm of young adult novels. He used his vast comic book knowledge to write the rave-reviewed young adult book The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl in 2006. Boy Toy followed in 2007, and it was garnered enthusiastic reviews. In 2008, Hero-Type was released, and then in 2009 Goth Girl Rising the sequel toThe Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl was published. He's also written books for middle school aged readers, short stories, a film and copious articles and essays. Lyga was named a "Flying Start" from Publisher's Weekly for his strong debut in 2006.

Genre
Girls/Women
Mental Illness
Death/Dying

Challenges
Sexual Content
Language
Parental Angst

Curriculum Ties
Psychology: teen depression and suicide

Booktalking Ideas
At what lengths would you go to extract revenge…

Awards
n/a

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 15+

Why I included this title...
After reading The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl I needed to know what happened to Kyra. And I'm adding Barry Lyga to my list of favorite authors.

Deadline

Crutcher, Chris. Deadline. ISBN-10: 0060850914, ISBN-13: 9780060850913. Greenwillow Books. 2010.

Summary
Ben is going to die. Not some day, but within the year. He's decided to keep that "little" secret to himself. Armed with this knowledge, he's decided that he's going to live the last months of his life to the absolute fullest—he's going to give up the safety of cross-country for the dangers and glory of football, he's going to speak up in class and press his opinions, and most importantly, he's going to ask the gorgeous Dallas Suzuki out on a date, rather than love her from afar. Unfortunately, not everything goes exactly to Ben's plans. He learns that keeping secrets isn't necessarily the best method to keep from hurting people.

Critical Evaluation
Deadline is a touching book that addresses the question of what would you do if you knew you had nothing to lose. Ben wants to make the most of his last days. While he enjoys the chances he's taking, he sees that withholding the truth to those he loves the most, hurts them just as much as the truth could. Young adults will like the idea Ben's philosophy of "having nothing to lose" during his last days, and will see how honesty improves Ben's short life. It's a book that could be very sad, and whereas it is sad, it's also got humor at work at the same time.

Reader's Annotation
Deadline is a book about living one's life to the fullest, as Ben is faced with his death during his senior year of high school.

About the Author
Chris Crutcher one of those rarities: an Idaho author. He was raised near Boise, in a small logging town that is similar to the town of Trout that appears in some of his novels. He holds a degrees in psychology and sociology, and a teaching certificate. He's taught in California and Washington, where he ending his teaching career at an alternative school for at-risk kids. He then started another career as a therapist and child protection advocate while looking for a way to help support his writing habit in Spokane.

He's still in Spokane, and he relies heavily on the experiences as a teacher and family therapist to give his fiction life. His writing style brings reality to the forefront with amazing humor. He's written ten novels for young adults in the last three decades; as well as a small series called Stotan, a short story collection, Athletic Shorts and a memoir, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography. He is also often challenged and/or banned due to the real subjects of which he writes and the real language of teens. His book Whale Talk (2001) deals with issues of child abuse and drug abuse, and was 41^st on the American Library Association of the Top 100 Banned/Challenged books for the last decade. Coming in at 44^th on the same list, is his collection of short stories (Athletic Shorts, 1991), and at 85 is Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (1993).

Crutcher was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award for a lifetime contribution to young adult literature in 2000.

Genre
Death/Dying
Frienship
Boys/Men

Challeneges
Death
Sexual Abuse
Language

Curriculum Ties
no applications

Booktalking Ideas
If you knew you had a fatal condition, would you tell everyone or would you keep it to yourself…
If you knew you had one year to live, what would you do…

Awards
n/a

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 15+

Why I included this title...
I heard Chris Crutcher speak at the Idaho Library conference, and couldn't believe I had never read his books.

More Information:
American Library Association. http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedbydecade/2000_2009/index.cfm

Tiger Eyes

Blume, Judy. Tiger Eyes. ISBN-10: 0440984696, ISBN-13: 9780440984696. Laurel Leaf Library. 1982.

Summary
When Davey's dad is shot in a random hold-up at their family's New Jersey shore convenience store, her world is in upheaval. Her mother can't cope, her little brother is behaving improperly, her aunt and uncle are too overbearing in her own house, and her boyfriend… she can't think about what she and Hugh were doing the backyard when her dad was shot. On top of all of that, her mom has let her aunt push the family into moving to New Mexico, where things get much worse and much more confusing. With the help of a stranger, Davey is able to pull her family back together.

Critical Evaluation
Not many young adults will experience something as brutal as this, but some will face losing a parent, an upheaval of their lives and even just moving to another high school, another town, another state. But in this often challenged book, Davey is alone in her misery as her mother is unreachable in her own desolation. Her younger brother has been completely absorbed by her aunt and uncle and doesn't feel like her brother anymore. Davey has to come to terms with her dad's death, the disappearance of her mother and the fear and isolation that threatens to consume her. She finds help in a canyon, from a quiet man who gives her strength to fight back.

Reader's Annotation
Davey's dad has been fatally shot, and now she's being forced to move from her home. A mysterious man she meets in n New Mexican canyon gives her the confidence and strength to pull her family together and work toward healing.

About the Author
Judy Blume was born in New Jersey, and has said that she was always making up stories in her head. It wasn't until her own kids were in school did she start putting them on paper. She has written more than 20 books over the years. In the last 40 years, she has written for children (The Fudge and Pain and the Great One series), for teens (Are You There Go? It's Me Margaret, Then Again, Maybe I Won't, and Forever) and for adults. (Smart Women and Summer Sisters).

To no one's surprise, her adult books have all spent time on the New York Times bestseller's list, while her books for children and young adults are often are challenged and/or banned. Five of her books (Forever, Blubber, Deanie, Tiger Eyes and Are You There God? It's Me Margaret) were on the American Library Association's list of Top Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-09. Because of that scrutiny, she became an advocate for intellectual freedom working with writers, teachers and librarians to protect the freedom to read.

Genre
Banned/Challenged Books
Girls/Women
Death/Dying
Romance
Violence

Curriculum Ties
no applications

Booktalking Ideas
Could you forgive yourself if you were making out with your boyfriend in the backyard, when your dad was fatally shot in a convenience store hold-up…

Awards
n/a

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 15+

Why I included this title...
This is one of those books I love to share with young adult readers, and I couldn't wait to reread it!

Before I Fall

Oliver, Lauren. Before I Fall. ISBN-10: 006172680x, ISBN-13: 9780061726804. HarperCollins. 2010.

Summary
Samantha is one of those popular girls, with perfect boyfriends and amazing friends, but she's also one of those girls so easy to hate because she is also very self-centered and ruthlessly mean. Unfortunately, she's dead. It seems her perfect life came to an abrupt end and she is given a chance—seven chances, actually—to change things in her life, to change the events that lead up to her death, and maybe to change her legacy for those she leaves behind.

Critical Evaluation
In the beginning of Before I Fall, Samantha is too perfect and too plastic. Most young adult readers will know someone like her, and will probably hate her. And that's why they should keep reading this book because, after her death, Samantha get a chance to become a better sister, better daughter, better person, as well as becoming a person that can die knowing she made better choices on the second, third… seventh time around. Readers will enjoy watching her mature and learn as her week progresses.

Reader's Annotation
Samantha is about to live the last day of her life again, and again. In one week, she will seduce a teacher, realize her dreamy boyfriend is less-than-dreamy, spend a ton of money using her parent's credit card, spend the day with her little sister and understand how actions and the reactions eventually lead-up to her death.

About the Author
Lauren Oliver is a person, and the actual writing of novels came after she received her Master's in Fine Arts from New York University. She worked in a major publishing house in New York before her debut novel, Before I Fall, was published in 2010. Oliver has written an second novel, Delirium, and it's slated to be released in early 2011.

Genre
Death/Dying
Girls/Women
Friendship

Challeneges
Alcohol Abuse
Sexual Content
Language

Curriculum Ties
n/a

Booktalking Ideas
How would you handle knowing you died, and had to live your last day over and over…
If you could one day over and over, what day would it be and what would you do different..

Awards
Silver Prize in the German Audiences Book Award (2010)

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 15+

Why I included this title...
Before I Fall was "recommended" to me by a young adult reader.