Young Adult (YA) Novel Round-Up

There's nothing like a quick YA read to make me feel accomplished - though of course often they also make me feel incredibly old.  But, this is the price I pay to get closer to my book-a-week reading goal for the year!

The Gaither Sisters Trilogy by Rita Williams-Garcia:  This trilogy, made up of  One Crazy Summer, P.S. Be Eleven, and Gone Crazy in Alabama, is the coming of age story of Delphine and her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern.  In the summer of 1968, the Brooklyn-raised girls are sent out to Oakland, California to visit the mother who abandoned them when they were just little girls.  Once out there, their poet Black Panther mother doesn't seem much interested in them - and the girls, raised to keep their heads down and keep in their place, are suddenly forced into an environment where they are taught to speak up and recognize their own power.  In the later books, the girls return home to Brooklyn to deal with a lost uncle home from Vietnam, and later on to their grandmother's home place of Alabama - where they learn that being black in the South means something very different than back home in Brooklyn.  I absolutely loved these books.  I loved seeing these girls find their power and voices - and I appreciated the head-on manner this young adult series presented and challenged concepts of race and identity in the United States.  Hopefully required reading in all middle schools, I can't wait until my kids are old enough to appreciate and discuss these novels.

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson:  A co-worker left this book on my chair - mentioning that it was a fun creepy fast read.  I don't think this is anything I would have picked up on my own - but as long as you don't take it too seriously, it wasn't a bad form of entertainment.  When three teenage girls are found dead in a small town - the assumption is that they died by suicide. But the best friend of one of the girls knows better.  Mila, who has dabbled a bit in witchcraft, figures out a way to bring the girls back from the dead in an effort to learn how they really died - and to keep the town safe from any further murders.  As you might expect from a YA novel filled with teenage zombies - the dialogue is a bit too much to take at times - and obviously you have to lose yourself in the premise.  This reminded me a bit of the Sookie Stackhouse books in terms of the writing.  I wouldn't highly recommend it but nice for a quiet evening at home.

Wonder by R. J. Palacio:  I received so many recommendations for this book - from adults and young adults.  I appreciated the idea that it was helping younger students to learn and express empathy and perhaps to be more inclusive to students with differences.  For the most part, I enjoyed this book - I liked the way it was written and it tells a good story - albeit heartbreaking at times to read.  As most people know by now, Wonder tells the story of a boy (August) who is born with a facial difference - that causes other people to stare at him, and to often times be afraid of him.  As a result, he is ostracized, and there are even parents who do not want him at school because they believe he makes their children uncomfortable.  What is excessively emphasized throughout the book is how intelligent August is - far more intelligent than the average student at his school - which does go to prove the point that physical differences don't necessarily amount to intellectual differences.  But what if they do? This point was highlighted late in the book when August uses the r-word - as if to differentiate himself, or see himself as better than people who do suffer from intellectual disabilities.  While I found his use of the word perhaps realistic in his frustration and anger, it just didn't sit well overall with me since the use of the word was never addressed in the book.  And early on in a new school August is befriended by a student who is seen as somewhat popular in the school.  This helps him to acclimate somewhat to school and feel ok about everything - this seemed highly unrealistic to me - but perhaps it was the author's point to show the difference that once student could make.  To me the book was a bit overly-simplistic, BUT - as I say when I criticize books or movies by and about people of color - we have to start somewhere - and it seems like this book has gotten a lot of conversations started that are hopefully leading to more inclusion and acceptance.