Tucson Festival of Books Author Spotlight: Jacqueline Woodson

If you like realistic fiction about teenagers with problems, like Crank by Ellen Hopkins or Monster by Walter Dean Myers, you should pick up something by Jacqueline Woodson. You're in for a treat. She'll be a guest speaker at the Tucson Festival of Books this year, which is a huge gathering on the U of A campus to celebrate books, authors, and reading. Here's their page for teens.              

The first book I read by her was If You Come Softly. It's a sad, kind of Romeo and Juliet-esque story. Jeremiah's black, and Ellie's white. They meet at a private school and fall in love without being prepared for how society views their relationship. On her website, she writes that it was inspired by a poem by Audre Lord, which begins:

If you come softly  

as the wind within the trees

you may hear what I hear 

         see what sorrow sees.

Bored with Teen Books? Try These!

If you normally stick with the teen shelves at the library, you might be surprised to learn that a lot of teens have favorite books from the adult or children's sections, too. Here are some that teens tell me they've loved, and that I might've snuck as a teen, myself:

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Yeah, teens usually say they're checking them out for a little brother or sister, but, busted! They're fun for any age. All the illustrations make them a really fast read, and a new book or movie seems to come out every couple of months, so you won't be bored.
• Jurassic Park (remember that movie about the dinosaur theme park that seemed like such a great idea, until they started eating people?) is a great mix of action, suspense, and science. And as a friend of mine put it, "Everything I know about chaos theory, I learned from Jurassic Park." Michael Crichton wrote some other books that are still popular, too, like The Andromeda Strain. 

Waiting for the World to End: Armageddon Summer

We're running out of time, if the world's going to end in 2012, as a few people are insisting. In this book, meet two ordinary teenagers like you, who both have parents who share a belief that the world's going to end, and drag them off to a remote mountain to greet the end of the world with their cult. I won't tell you if the world ends or not, but either way, you'll be in suspense about how Armageddon Summer ends!

A Teen-Approved eBook

Okay, yeah, I admit that sometimes it's hard to find a good teen eBook that doesn't have a ton of holds on it already. Here's one that shows up under the regular fiction eBooks that I bet you'll love, though: When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde. It's based on a short story called "The Man Who Found You in the Woods." Listen to a podcast of that story here. (If you don't want to read it on your computer, phone, tablet, or eReader, we also have some of her other books in the regular print format, including the one that inspired the movie Pay It Forward.)

I've done this special event for teens called Story Talk a few times now, first with our teen volunteers, and then with some inmates at the Juvenile Detention Center. It's kind of like a short story book club: we read a story out loud and then discuss it. This story has been one of the favorites both times: it starts with something straight out of the headlines: a man finds a newborn baby abandoned in the woods in the dead of winter.

Just Another Story About a Girl and Her Dragons

Menolly doesn't just love to play music -- she's really good at it. But on her world, only men are allowed to be musicians. Menolly's not good at things that are "women's work," but she's way better at playing the harp than most men. She hardly ever got to play, and at the beginning of the book, even that was taken away from her and she was forbidden from ever playing music again. Ever. I don't know about you, but I wasn't at all surprised when she ran away. I was surprised at what she found, though...Dragons!

Ender's Game: Earth is Losing...

After decades of battle against insect-like aliens, we still haven't found a general who can defeat them.We're running out of soldiers, we're running out of spaceships, and we're running out of hope. But maybe, with the right training, one special boy can be molded into a hero.

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, tells the story of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, who's only six when he's recruited to Battle School to learn strategies to defeat the aliens. I'm excited to see the movie adaptation next year, but you should definitely read it first, so why not now, before the hype starts and you hear spoilers?

Teen Volunteer Dystopia Picks

Here at Flowing Wells Library, our summer teen volunteers kept busy with an art project based on their favorite dystopian novels and short stories.

The Giver by Lois Lowry was a striking visual choice for the collage. Black and white with poignant bursts of color illustrate a tale of a boy who learns there is much more to life than he has been led to believe. If you like this classic, check out its sequels, too!

Read on for the rest of their picks...

Eve, Terrified of Adam

Okay, I just finished Eve by Anna Carey, and I don't know WHAT to think. It started out like such a happy, idealistic book about the future. Eve was the happiest girl at her compound, accomplished in many languages, subjects, and surrounded by beloved friends. But then, when she was about to give her valedictorian speech and head off to a bright future learning a trade and having a glamorous life in the city, she found out that the future she was looking forward to was a lie.

A Deadly Serious Cat and Mouse Comic

Maus, by Art Spiegelman, was the first graphic novel I ever read. I was about twelve, I think, and I snuck it out of my brother's collection of comic books. There was just something different about it that caught my interest: it was a real book, heavy, with binding and a hard cover. Yeah, it was a comic book. But it wasn't like the Spiderman or Superman comics that I'd glanced at and found boring. It was a new way to look at a sad, serious subject: the Holocaust.

Death: What Comes Next?

Have you ever used those funny-looking binocular machines on an observation deck, maybe on top of a mountain or bridge, where you can put in a quarter and peek at the landscape below? Well, imagine a sad teenage girl standing on an observation deck, a girl who will never get her driver's license, or go to prom, or college. Instead, she keeps peering through that machine to look down at the world she left behind when she died. She might be dead, but her life's not really over. In fact, it's just about the opposite of what you might expect. Meet that girl, Liz, and follow her to the end of a surprisingly uplifting story in Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin.

-Jenny

It is a truth universally acknowledged...

...That the month which contains so much love-themed commercialism leaves book lovers in want of Pride and Prejudice. One of my favorite light reads last year was Prom and Prejudice, which our Book Lady blogged about here. It's a modern-day update set in a prep school, with way more coffee.

Edgy Reads

I was going to do a best-of-the-year post, but when I looked back at the teen books I read in 2011, I realized that most had something in common: they were pretty dark and disturbing. Dark content in YA literature got a lot of press this year, but in the end, it's a personal decision. If you're searching for books that push the envelope and give you that unsettled, is-this-really-okay-to-read feeling, give these a shot!

• After by Amy Efaw is the raw, unflinching story of the person behind the headlines:  Devon did something terrible, something so bad she can't even quite remember or believe it, even in her cell in juvie, where she has all the time in the world to reflect.

When One Book Isn't Enough

Believe it or not, every single one of the favorite teen books in this year's Summer Reading Program was part of a series. This is a great time to be a fan of YA series -- there are so many excellent ones coming out, and the library has a great selection! So if you're going to be bored over winter break, or forced to head off on a holiday trip, why not grab a series or three to keep you entertained?

If you loved Harry Potter, give Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain a try! Think Harry Potter's life started out rough? Imagine if he'd been a lowly Assistant Pig-Keeper, who got all muddled up in magic, battles, royalty, and epic quests! Start with The Book of Three.

Life on the Refrigerator Door

Imagine this. You're Claire, an only child who's not a child, almost an adult, almost able to take care of yourself. Not that you have a choice about taking care of yourself, anyway. Your dad's not in the picture, and your mom's a big-shot doctor.

Cold and Furry!

DNA = dieofcute!

Ann Halam's Siberia doesn't just have the usual things I like in a YA novel: a grim, post-apocalyptic setting, a boarding school, a plucky, rebellious heroine, and a heroic journey through the snow (c'mon, I'm a Tucsonan, I need some vicarious cold). It also has an added bonus: cute fictional creatures!