Young Adult Novels

Hi everyone-

I just finished the first semester of my master's program in Information and Library Sciences. One of the classes I took was called Diversity in Children's Literature. For this class I had to read a YA novel and a picture book each week. That's the reason for my long absence in writing this blog. I've been reading and writing non-stop. As you can imagine, I didn't object to this. But, I'm happy to be getting back to my own to-read list. For this week's posting I would like to share some of the books that I've read for this class. I think you'll like them.

Happy Reading everyone!

Abby

George by Alex Gino

This is the story of George, a ten year old boy. George lives with his mother and big brother, Scott. His parents divorced when he was little and his father and now lives with a new wife a long way away. Scott and George only see him over the summer for a couple of weeks. George is a sensitive boy who has a secret. He has a bag he bought in a yard sale and filled it with girl magazines; Seventeen, Vogue and the likes. He likes to look at the magazines in private. But that’s not his big secret. George’s secret is that he is a girl. See, George is a she.

At school, George, her best friend, Kelly, and their class, just finished reading Charlotte’s Web and they are about to put on a class play of the story. George wants to be Charlotte, not Wilbur or Templeton. Charlotte. But George’s teacher won’t give George the part because she’s not a girl. George is devastated. But, Kelly, George’s best friend, will give George the best gift a girl could give her best friend (more than once!). The gift of truth and allowing George to be her truest self, Melissa.

There are many great themes throughout the story that are relevant to middle grade readers: self-identity, self-acceptance, friendship, family, divorce, single parent households, poverty, bullying, love. This is a story of growing up and learning that while the world out there might have a hard time accepting us for who we are, knowing ourselves and acting on that knowledge, is the only way that we will ever be really, truly happy. I highly recommend this one.

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds

This is the story of Rashad and Quinn, both in high school. Rashad is African American and Quinn is white. Rashad has a crush on Tiffany and Quinn really likes Jill. Rashad is member of the ROTC and Quinn plays basketball. Rashad’s father is very strict with him and Quinn’s father died while on military duty overseas. Rashad is a good kid and follows the rules. Quinn means well, but he has been known to do some hits off of stuff at parties and drink. Oh, and there was that incident with the boy at the basketball court. Both Rashad and Quinn have their posse. Both boys are heading to the same Friday night party at Jill’s house. But Rashad doesn’t make it there and Quinn gets to the party late. See, Rashad stops at a local market on the way to the party and is severely beaten by a police officer, for what he is told is resisting arrest. Quinn knows Paul, the police officer who did the beating and saw the whole thing go down. Paul is his best friend’s uncle and he’s also Quinn’s mentor. Paul was just doing his job right?

Quinn knows that something isn’t right with what’s happened, but his white friends tell him to stand by Paul. English, one of Rashad’s besties, and Quinn’s friend from the basketball team says to Quinn, “What do you know anyway? White boy like you can just walk away whenever you want. Everyone just sees you as Mr. all American boy, and you can just keep on walking, thinking about other things just keep on living, like this shit doesn’t even exist.”

This is a story about growing up and seeing, perhaps for the first time, that the world we grow up to accept as right isn’t quite so and learning that in growing up, the reality of life is not quite as simple as black and white.

Does my Head Look Big in This? By Randa Abdel-Fattah

This is the story of Amal, sixteen years old, living in Australia and is about to make the biggest decision of her life. Should she wear a hijab (a traditional head covering worn by Muslim women) and put herself out there for the world to judge, or should she forgo this traditional garb and blend into the world of teenagehood? Amal chooses the hijab. Born to Palestinian-born parents who immigrated to Australia and are now professionals and very liberal, Amal, first has to explain her decision to her school’s principal and then to her contemporaries, in particular the mean girls. But Amal is lucky. She has great supportive friends, including Leila. And then, there’s Adam, the boy whom she’s been crushing on forever. How will he feel about her new head wear? Amal is a strong, outspoken personality and comes out of this situation with both her feet firmly planted in her truth.

I think this story has two problems. First, Amal’s life is relatively simple in that she needs to make this decision about whether to expose herself to the world in a very vulnerable way. That said, Amal lives in a very supportive and loving environment. The real conflicts in the story come from her friends, Leila and Simone, and their very unsupportive families. I think it might have been more interesting to write the story from the perspective of a character who was living in an unsupportive family as it might have opened the door for deeper cultural and religious references and more empathy for the main character. Second, I read a little about the author’s, Abdel-Fatah, life and she, like Amal, grew up in a Palestinian family originally from Israel. I understand her personal beliefs in Israel’s political maneuverings around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, at one point in the book, Amal’s character loses her patience with one of her Christian schoolmates who wants her to give a speech about terrorists explaining their actions from a religious perspective, and Amal angrily objects to this by saying that her Christian friend should give a speech as well. She says, "...I'll give the speech if you give a speech about the Ku Klux Klan...yeah, they were really religious. So, obviously what they did was textbook Christianity, right? And how about those Israeli soldiers bombing Palestinian homes or shooting kids?..." (Abdel-Fatah, 2019, pg. unknown) This is one of two or three times that Abdel-Fatah introduces the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without explanation to the reader or, more importantly, no apparent reason for the storyline. This felt like a personal vendetta written into a book. I don’t care for it at all and it makes me lose respect for her as an author.

All that said, I think this story is important from the perspective of offering young Muslim girls a character they can relate to, but I think that from a literary stand point, the story was just OK.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez

This is the story of Julia (pronounced Hulia), a high school student, living in Chicago and wanting desperately to go to college. Her parents, though, aren’t entirely supportive of her dreams. See, Julia’s big sister, Olga, just died in a gruesome accident, leaving their mother shattered. Julia is more rebellious, opinionated and outspoken than her sister; all qualities that their mother wishes would be replaced with loving, homebody and nurturing. Julia, everyone has always said, is a “sensitive girl”, and Olga’s death is pushing her to the brink of stability. And then she finds Olga’s sexy underwear. Why would a girl who stays home with her parents every night and dates a homely boy need sexy underwear? Julia will soon find out. Julia will also find out that sometimes our dreams for ourselves don’t match the dreams our parents have for us, but that doesn’t mean they’re not the right dreams. This story of growing up and figuring our place in this world is woven beautifully with the culture, history and language of Mexican American families raising families in the United States and the fear mixed with hope they feel for the next generation.

I found the main character of Julia to be whiny and unlikable. Additionally, there were parts of the story that had me wondering throughout, namely some of the minor characters. It seems there are many aunts and uncles who treat Julia as less than her sister, but she loses it on one particular aunt. Why her? And what about the men in the car who were following her when she was alone (and she came across an older man who chased them away) and threatened her with “I’ll find you one of these days”? I kept waiting for the men to come back to the story. The author, I think, introduced characters or events that did not directly relate to the story that felt like white noise that was distracting and unnecessary.

All that said, I loved this story for Julia’s experiences and for her family’s culture, in particular when she briefly lived in Mexico. A good friend of mine lived a similar experience to Julia’s in that her parents wanted her to become a wife and mother, but she wanted to get her education and travel the world. I’m sure it would have been invaluable to her to read about this character with whom she could have identified so well. If I would have been the editor, I would have dialed up the story around family and culture and toned down the story around teenage angst. Because even in a YA novel, there are limits.

Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love (picture book)

Julian (pronounced Hulian) is a little boy who lives with his Abuela in what looks like colorful, energetic New York City. Julian travels with Abuela on the subway and sees women dressed in mermaid style dresses (tight throughout and then flaring on the bottom to mimic the mermaid tail) and imagines being a mermaid himself. When he arrives home with Abuela he pretends to be a mermaid by wearing a fern on his head for long hair and the curtain for the dress. When Abuela enters the room and sees Julian she excuses herself and then returns and hands Julian a special gift and takes him to some sort of a parade (I would guess the gay pride parade). When they arrive, she says, “Like you, Mijo. Let’s join them.”

If you haven’t read this book, please, please, please go to the library and pick it up or just buy it. Really. It is everything a childhood book should be about. It introduces the reader to different kinds of people (Julian is Latin X), different bodies (Abuela has a classically round Abuela body), different sexual and gender orientations (gay, transgender, cross-dresser). Additionally, there’s some drama (will Abuela be angry with Julian for dressing like a mermaid?) and that drama is resolved in the most loving, accepting way possible.

The artwork is magnificent. When I first read the book, I showed my eight year old son about foreshadowing and literary effects the author and illustrator used in the graphics. He was blown away that books hold such “tricks”. I cannot say enough good things about this book. It’s a very sweet read.

Walking the Choctaw Road: Stories from the Heart and Memory of the People by Tim Tingle

This is a collection of twelve short stories about the “Okla Homma”, a Choctaw word meaning, “Red People”. Tingle expertly melds his own family’s stories with his people’s stories of the past. Like the story about his grandmother; a strong woman and head of the family, who hosted the family regularly, and who was blind but Tingle never knew it. Or the story of the Choctaw family who is kicked out of their homeland and forced to march to their new reservation. Or the story of Tingle’s and his father’s relationship and how only at the end of his life, did the two become best of friends. This is a beautiful tale of a people, a nation, a culture. At the end of the book, there is an excerpt from one of Tingle’s appearances. He says, ““Someone always talks about how we came to be in America...we were kneaded out of this place...we are clay people. We are a people of miracles. We have survived the walking. It is behind us. We are people of this land. We are Americans and like all Americans we love our freedoms…” (Tingle, 2005)

To say that I enjoyed this book and the stories within it, would be an understatement. The language and its cadence is just like the beat of a drum. It lulls you. The stories themselves are written beautifully and give such insight into the Choctaw people. Mostly, what really stuck with me is that when a nation, a people, lives off the land, you begin to form a deep connection to it and its ebbs and flows, and it’s almost as though the land becomes another character in all of these stories. It struck me, that there is no time for gentility, there is an intense focus and that’s how the stories felt. But with focus and intensity comes real honesty and real authenticity that is charming and sweet. Tingle is definitely a new favorite! I highly recommend this one.

#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women

This book is filled to the brim with artistic expressions of Native American women who write poems, paint, draw, photograph life. Each an expression of life as a Native American woman who is part of a culture and people, who have not been allowed to practice their culture, religion and language. Here is where they find the definitions to femininity (like in Nahanni Fontaine’s story about finding her people’s culture, Reclaiming Indigenous Women’s Rights, where she says, “Indigenous women have always known and embodied beauty, independence, courage, strength, forgiveness, generosity, resilience, and authenticity...What we currently believe or fed as “feminine” characteristics or behaviors are firmly entrenched within the confines of western patriarchy.”); the understanding to homelessness (like in Zoey Roy’s story Freedom in the Fog); and what it’s like to be of mixed indigenous heritage (like in Shelby Lisk’s story, Invisible Indians). These are stories of young girls and women from different indigenous nations all coming together to tell the story of their people.

This was an enjoyable read with lots of great writing, beautiful artwork and photography. But, at the same time, these are stories of intense pain, loneliness and sadness. A theme that repeats is that these nations, these people, were soaring out in the great world and by being moved into reservations and poverty stricken areas, their wings were clipped, and unfortunately, for the most part, they have suffered great struggles trying to recover.

A Step from Heaven by An Na

This is the story of Young Ju, whom we first meet when she is four years old and living in Korea. Young Ju lives with her mother, Ama, and father, Apa, and is close to her grandmother (father’s mother), when she is told that she and her parents are going to live in America and that her grandmother cannot come with them. Young Ju and her parents live with a relative in California and then move out on their own into a small apartment. The family welcomes Young Ju’s brother, Jun, soon after they arrive. The story takes the reader through the family’s arrival, winds through the lives of the family, and ends with Young Ju’s last year of high school.

This is a story of immigrants trying to learn their way; a story of a family torn apart; a story of family bonds and the deepest of love; a story about growing up and trying to figure out the world around you; a story of abuse and trauma but mostly, this is a story about learning that being different isn’t so bad when you get to be different with the people you love most in the world.

What a great job Na does of providing the reader a window into the life of immigrants; the excruciatingly hard work, the going-without, the fear of missing work. But, into this tale of immigration, she weaves a beautiful tale about growing up and learning that sometimes we realize that our parents aren’t at all who we thought them to be.

Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly

This is the story of four characters, all 11 years old: Virgil, Kaori, Valencia and Chet. Virgil is one of four boys and he just doesn’t fit in with his family. All except his grandmother, with whom he has a very close bond. This is what we know about him. “In Addition to being afraid of the dark, carrying a guinea pig in his backpack and stuffing his pocket full of dandelions and rocks, Virgil had another secret. He weighed only 76 lbs. And even though he pretended to be 5’ tall, he was actually 4’11”.” (Kelly, 2017, n.p.) Kaori is psychic and has a business reading the signs for her friends. Valencia is terribly bright, but she’s deaf and her friends don’t really understand her. “When we raced, I could never exactly know when Megan Lewis called out, ‘Ready, set, go!’...When we played musical chairs, I couldn’t tell when the music stopped. With hide and go seek, I never knew when, ‘Ready or not, here I come’, happened. I always figured it out, but I was usually two or three steps behind everyone else. It slowed down the game.” (Kelly, 2017, n.p.) Chet is a boy in Virgil’s and Valencia’s school who really wants to get into the basketball team this year. But, Chet is a bully. These four characters' paths will overlap in a story of friendship, adventure and fun.

What a lovely story this is! The characters are all so unique and their own individuals and the story is written incredibly well. I highly recommend this book for readers looking for a good story and for diverse characters.

We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra

This is the story of Jonathan Hopkirk and Adam Kurlansky, both in high school and living in Minnesota. Their English teacher has assigned a pen pal project for her class and randomly put Jo and Kurl as partners. Jonathan (or JO as Adam refers to him) is a lover of Walt Whitman’s writing. He is gay and flamboyant in his dress and mannerisms, which makes him the target of the bullies at school. Adam (or Kurl as Jonathan refers to him) is the handsome, tall football player whose father has died and has become the target of his uncle’s bullying. The two find that they have much in common and slowly fall in love with each other and form a loving bond. Written entirely through letters to each other, this story has many themes that young adults could possibly relate to like: homosexuality, bullying, abuse, familial relationships, death. But, mostly, this very sweet (often erotic) story is a view of what young love for two gay boys looks like.

This story has many themes all teenagers have in common; namely trying to really connect with others, learning about themselves, learning about people around them, understanding families and falling in love. The surprising thing about this story is the erotic notes that appear throughout. Jonathan and Adam have intimate moments and also have sex throughout the story. I love that gay teenage boys can have the literary reference for what sex in a relationship will look like, but also that they can live their sexual fantasies in this very sweet story.

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

This is the story of Steve Harmon, sixteen years old, African American and on trial for murder. Steve befriends some unsavory characters in his neighborhood and is caught in the melee of the perfect storm: a theft, a murder and a lookout. Steve, a lover of film, tells his story through the scenes of a movie. He tells of the trial, what happens and some of his thoughts through scenes and dialogue. He says, “Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. Monster.” With all the uncertainty facing him, what Steve doesn’t need is a lawyer he can’t trust, no one to explain and support him through what is going on and the prosecutors bringing forward witnesses that are motivated by their own release from jail. Not everyone can relate to Steve’s specific experience, but we can all relate to being young, naive and scared. Add to it the reality of being African American in a system that is ready to judge him before the trial even begins, and what you get a story of growing up and figuring out that sometimes, one mis-step, one mistake, one moment and being African American can cost you your freedom.

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

This is the story of three African American sisters Delphine (age 11), Vonetta (age 9) and Fern (age 5). The story takes place in the 1960’s. Delphine, the oldest sister, is charged with caring for her two young sisters as they make the flight from their home in Brooklyn, New York to Oakdale, California. See, the sisters are on their way to meet Cecil, their mother, who abandoned them when they were very little. Delphine says, “Mother is a statement of fact. Cecil Johnson gave birth to us, we came out of Cecil Johnson and in the animal kingdom, that makes her our mother. Every mammal on the planet has a mother, dead or alive, ran off or stayed put. Cecil Johnson, mammal birth giver, alive, an abandoner is our mother. Statement of fact.” Cecil is not a warm character, to say the least, and the girls slowly learn that their poetry-writing mother is strong, but the three of them together, are even stronger. Cecil is involved with the Black Panthers and will ultimately get entangled with the law, but her daughters will be the ones to save her, in more than one way. The girls will learn why Cecil left them and what she’s been doing while she’s been gone.

This is a sweet story of growing up in an age where the freedoms allotted to young children are not what they are today and those freedoms sometimes came with heavy responsibilities.

This story will give the readers a glimpse into the African American political world of the 1960’s and west coast vs. east coast perspectives.

The Skin I’m In by Sharon Flake

This is the story of Maleeka, a thirteen year old, 7th grader who is African American. Maleeka’s father has passed away and she and her mom are trying to get by. The kids make fun of her because of her dark skin (one of the boys in her class, John-John has even made up a song, "Maleeka Maleeka we sure wanna keep her but she is so black we can't see her"). They make fun of the clothes she wears that her mother sews for her and, yes, Maleeka has come to think of herself as ugly.

This year, Maleeka and her classmates have a new English teacher, Ms. Saunders. Ms. Saunders, is a tall, large woman and it turns out she’s not a teacher after all. She’s an advertising agency executive who has been recruited by the school board in an effort to introduce professionals to the education system. Ms. Saunders doesn’t really know how it works at Maleeka’s school. She tells Charlese, a bully, to stop leaving class, has given the class very complicated writing assignments and talks to the kids about the world around them. Maleeka, while slow to warm up to her, begins exploring her writing assignments and discovers that she not only enjoys them, but is also really good at writing. And then Ms. Saunders crosses the line. She meets with Charlese’s mother and tells her that her daughter might not graduate from 7th grade. Will Charlese and her posse retaliate? Will Maleeka join is or stand strong?

This is a story about coming of age with the background of loss, loneliness and fear. But, also learning to love the person we really are and being determined enough to stand up for what we believe.