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.

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.