YA Thursday

The Possibility of Now by Kim Culbertson (Scholastic hardcover, 26 January 2016).

Mara James has been a perfectionist and over-achiever as long as she can remember. She's on track to be class valedictorian at her private school in San Diego, until she has a meltdown in calculus class.  

Not just any meltdown, a tear-up-the-test-paper-and-walk-out-of-class meltdown.  When asked to explain it, she really can't.  She just knows that she can't go back to school because someone recorded the whole thing on their phone and uploaded it to YouTube. The video has a gazillion views, and she needs to get away.

Mara's solution is to suggest to her mother and stepfather that she spend the next term in Lake Tahoe with her father, whom she hasn't seen since she was around seven.  She's hoping to kill two birds with one stone:  to escape from Ranfield Academy, and to get to know her father.

The school's condition is that she continue to do her schoolwork through their home study program; her mother's is that she see a counselor.  Mara doesn't think either of those will be a problem, since she doesn't seem to have much in common with the kids her age that she meets in Lake Tahoe.

As a high school teacher for over 18 years, Kim Culbertson is well-qualified to write about the pressures that today's teens (and even younger kids) are subjected to in their day-to-day lives:  to excel in school subjects, but still have enough extra-curricular activities that they appear "well-rounded" on their university applications. The Possibility of Now would be helpful for high school students and their parents, as well as their teachers.

FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

YA Wednesday

This is Where it Ends by  Marieke Nijkamp (Sourcebooks Fire hardcover, 5 January 2016).

The staff and students of the Opportunity High School in Opportunity, Alabama, are gathered in the auditorium for the principal's traditional "beginning-of-the-semester" speech.

Well, most of them are.  

The track team is outside, training.  Tomás and Fareed have broken into the administration office, looking for someone's permanent record. 

Principal Trenton always gives the same speech, and it always ends at 10:00 a.m. sharp. But this time, when the class bell rings and people begin shuffling towards the exits, they can't get out. 

At 10:05 a.m., a shot rings out.

This gripping story is told from the perspectives of four different students:  Tomás, his twin sister Autumn, her best friend  Sylv(ia), and track runner Claire. Each chapter contains a few paragraphs from the viewpoint of each, as well as screenshots of texts from others.  

The story unfolds in real time over the course of 54 minutes, and can almost be read that way.   

Marieke Nijkamp did extensive research on school shootings, reading investigators' reports and  first-hand accounts, listening to recordings of 911 calls, and studying the psychology of being held at gunpoint.  This has resulted in a piece of fiction that feels very realistic. It's a frightening reflection of the times we live in, and should be required reading for all high school staff, students, and parents. 

FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the e-galley of this book.

YAThursday

First & Then by Emma Mills (Henry Holt hardcover, 13 October 2015).

Devon loves Jane Austen.  So much so that almost all her thoughts go through the  WWJD (What Would Jane Do?) filter.  Of course, she doesn't always act on it, especially in her everyday speech patterns.

But she does keep her crush on her best friend Cas to herself.  She's pretty sure he doesn't know about it, seeing as he treats her almost like one of the guys.

In her senior year, her fourteen-year-old cousin Foster comes to stay with them.  Foster doesn't like Cas, but Devon doesn't like Foster.  He's a skinny geek who belongs to the Future Science Revolutionaries Club, and is relentlessly cheerful despite the fact that his father recently died and he's been more or less abandoned by his addict mother.  

Because she hasn't taken her required year of PE yet, she's forced to be in a class with a bunch of freshmen, including Foster.  But one other senior is in the class:  obnoxious football star Ezra Lynley, who seems to think Devon is a lower life form.

But when Foster unexpectedly displays an incredible talent for kicking a football, Ezra takes him under his wing, and Devon is forced to learn more about Ezra than she ever wanted to.

Vlogger Emma Mills' debut novel is a charmer, with believable characters and a sly wit that channels Jane.  It has been described as Pride and Prejudice meets Friday Night Lights, and was recommended in John Green's 2015 Holiday Book Giving Guide.  Green's fans, as well as Janeites will love this book.




FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

YA Thursday

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers (St. Martin's Griffin trade paperback, 5 January 2010).

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog about young adult books that deal with sexual assault.  One of the books I discussed as Courtney Summers' All the Rage, about a high school girl who is raped at a party, but no one believes her when she tries to report it.

A few weeks ago, Some Girls Are, also by Summers, was in the news when it was removed from a South Carolina high school reading list after a parent complained.  

There will be spoilers in the following summary of the plot.

The book is about high school senior Regina Afton, who barely escapes being raped by her "best friend" Anna's boyfriend.  She tells another member of Anna's clique about it, and when she gets to school on Monday, find that Kara has spread rumors that she seduced the boy.  Almost everyone in the school immediately ostracizes Regina.

She is bullied mercilessly by Anna and her followers: Regina is pushed down the stairs, and somehow her locker is filled with rotting raw meat.

Regina admits that she has been guilty of bullying and rumor-mongering herself; that was how she got into Anna's clique to begin with.  And despite now being able to see what truly horrible people are in this group, Regina still longs to be part of it.  

When she finally realizes that she'll never be accepted again, Regina attempts revenge, using tactics that are just as cruel as those that were used against her.

Some Girls Are received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.  It was a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick in 2011, a YALSA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, as well as a nominee for the Ontario Library Association's White Pine Award the same year.

The Charleston parent, who was reading the book along with her daughter, "got to page 74 – and a crude reference to oral sex – before she’d had enough. The next morning, she confiscated her daughter’s e-reader and called the school."*

After contacting the chairman of the school's English department and the district board, she filed a complaint with the district asking for a committee to review the book.  But before the committee could meet, the book was pulled from the curriculum and replaced by another, more innocuous title.  The parent also wrote a letter to the Post and Courier about the issue.

As a minister's daughter who was raised in a very strict household, I wasn't allowed to date or to go to school dances.  But I was allowed, and even encouraged, to read whatever I wanted to.  I  was also bullied in school, and the descriptions of bullying in Summers' novel rang true.  To me, Some Girls Are is more a story about bullying and its effects than anything else. 

Summers herself, in a Tumblr post, says 

The novel explores the consequences of hurting people and asks us to consider the impact our actions have on others. It’s about picking up the pieces of our mistakes and bettering ourselves. It’s about forgiveness.

And why wouldn't a parent want her child to read about that?

*Charleston Post and Courier, July 28, 2015


FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

Searching For the Truth

Hero Complex (Keaton School series #2) by Margaux Froley (Soho Teen hardcover, 14 October 2014).

It's the beginning of  the second semester of Devon Mackintosh's junior year at the prestigious Keaton School.

Just a week earlier, she'd spent New Year's Eve with poor little rich girl Cleo Lambert on Mr. Lambert's yacht.  Devon gets confused in the maze of corridors, and is struck on the back of the head, hard enough to knock her out.  Cleo's parents prefer to believe that Devon had too much champagne, fell, and hit her head, but both Cleo and Devon know that isn't true.

 She is no longer assigned to Mr. Robins, the  school psychologist who had encouraged her to be a "peer counselor" the previous term.  In his place is psychotherapist Dr. Jocelyn Hsu, who, though she drinks herbal tea and wears flowing dresses with thick socks, makes Devon nervous.  She's pretty sure the doctor is hiding something, and she plans to determine just what that something is.

Meanwhile, Devon's mother doesn't seem at all pleased when Devon unexpectedly goes home for a weekend, and behaves very oddly in general.

Devon is determined to find out what is going on, and how she -- who knows little about any of these people -- is involved.

Readers who enjoyed Escape Theory will be thrilled to share Devon's quest for the truth, but should be prepared for all the questions that arise when she discovers it.  Perhaps there's a third Keaton School book coming?




FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher for the Advanced Reading Copy.

Teen Tuesday

Conversion by Katherine Howe (G.P. Putnam's Son's Books for Young Readers hardcover, 1 July 2014).

In 1692, in Salem Village (now Danvers), Massachusetts, a young girl began to act strangely.  It didn't take long for the convulsions, tics and other bizarre actions to affect other girls in the village. Since doctors were able to pinpoint no physical cause, the symptoms were attributed to witchcraft.  During the course of about a year, nearly 200 residents of the Village were accused of  being practicing witches, and 19 were put to death.

Late in 2012, in Le Roy, New York, high school students began reporting unexplainable symptoms including Tourette's-like verbal tics, seizures, and other physical tics.  There were many theories as to what caused these problems, including environmental pollution (Erin Brockovich was even called in) conversion disorder, and PANDAS.

Katherine Howe has taken these two similar incidents, woven them together and created the riveting novel that is Conversion.

Senior year at the prestigious (fictional) St. Joan's Academy is tough.  As well as keeping up their grades, there are college applications, graduation (the battle for the valedictorian position is hard-fought) and extracurriculars.

Clara Rutherford, school "royalty", begins twitching in the middle of class.  Soon other students are convulsing, losing hair, and coughing violently.  Again, physicians and psychologists are stumped.  The students, faculty, and parents are in turmoil.  Blame is being passed around and around.

Howe alternates chapters of the present-day story with a similar one set in Salem Village in the Seventeenth Century.  The parallels are striking.

The conclusion of the historical story is predictable; that of the Twenty-first Century is unexpected.
Prepare to be enthralled, and provoked into investigating the true stories that inspired Katherine Howe.



FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

Teen Tuesday

Death Spiral (Faith Flores Science Mystery #1) by Janie Chodosh (The Poisoned Pencil trade paperback, 1 April 2014).

Faith Flores' mother, Augustina,  died the day after Faith's sixteenth birthday, and Faith went to live with her Aunt T in the suburbs.  The official cause of death was listed as a heroin overdose -- Faith's mother had been an addict, after all -- but Faith refuses to believe that's what it really was.  She knows her mom had been clean for a few months and was trying to stay that way, and that the dealer who turned up on that last day had set it up to look as though Auggie had shot up just before her death.

Aunt T tells Faith to stop obsessing about her mother; that the police know what they're doing and the case has been closed.  But Faith's certainty that her mother didn't overdose is reinforced when she gets a note from Melinda, one of Auggie's junkie friends, telling her they need to talk about her mom's death.

Faith only has one friend at her new school, a girl called Anj, and she's made sure not to tell her anything about her background, or otherwise get too close, certain that if Anj knew everything about her they would no longer be friends.  The New Boy, an odd character named Jesse, who has decided he wants to be Faith's pal, somehow manages to get her to break this rule, but when he goes along with her to visit Melinda, things get a little scary.

Faith's ingenuity at digging out the truth is marvelous, as is the loyalty and assistance of Anj and Jesse.   Ms. Chodosh has created a  protagonist, who, along with her friends, is smart and believable.  The fact that they use the information they've learned in school, particularly in science class, to help with their investigation, is included adroitly and fit seamlessly into the narrative.  I look forward to more books in this series.

Teen Tuesday

Don't Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski (Delacorte Press hardcover, 11 March 2014).

In this quirky story, most of the members of Bloomberg High School homeroom 10B go to the school nurse for 'flu shots at lunchtime.

Of the 23 students in the class, only one refused to get the shot for reasons of disbelief.

The next day shy Olivia Byrne is due to give a speech in her public speaking class, and she's terrified. Standing in the front of the room, she feels dizzy and ill.  Suddenly she hears her friends saying things like "Is she going to pass out?" and "What's wrong with her?"  That's when she realizes that they are not actually speaking.   She can hear what they are thinking.  She faints.

Slowly, the remaining students in 10B come to the same realization:  they can hear other people's thoughts.  Pi Iamaura, so dubbed because she could quote the first thirty-nine digits of π, realizes it first while doing her morning swim at the community pool.  She thinks that the person in the lane next to her is talking to her, but when she responds, he just looks at her strangely.  When she realizes that his lips weren't moving, it dawns on her that she actually heard his thoughts.

Arriving at school, she discovers that other kids in the class are experiencing the same phenomenon.  They get together after school and decide not to tell anyone about it for the time being.  Over the next few days and weeks, all the students from 10B (except for doubting Renée) are telepathic.

Afraid of what might happen if the news goes public, they decide to keep it to themselves, and discover that knowing what other people -- even strangers -- are thinking is not necessarily a good thing.

The story does not resolve as expected.  At least, not as this reviewer expected.  And although there  are so many characters, a cast list would be helpful, it's a quick, enjoyable story that keeps the reader guessing until the very end.



FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-galley.