It's the first day of school again, and Emoni Santiago tells her young daughter Emma, more commonly called Babygirl, "make sure you're nice to the other kids and ...
Constant corporeal manifestations aren't mandatory for certain souls in David Levithan’s Every Day series: waking up in someone else's body is 'normal' for some. A and X are two such wanderers, albeit with diverging agendas: A's a respectful temporary visitor, X a parasitic usurper. Rhiannon...
*STARRED REVIEW The cover calls this a novel, but the autobiographical overlaps are many: a gay Vietnamese American poet, an October birth outside Saigon, an other-side-of-the-world escape, a biracial single mother, a Hartford, CT, upbringing, a New York City education. In his prose debut, T.S. Eliot-prized,...
Mr. K is one of those remarkable teachers who is memorable for what he's not: "He doesn't act like it's his job to shape [students] into considerate and well-behaved individuals who'll fit harmoniously with the rest of society." His final assignment for his middle-school music...
Steely and controlled, narrator Gabra Zackman embodies a young woman’s harrowing crisis, ensuring not a single moment of the brief production can be ignored. At 15, Jo’s unremarkable life as just another teen in her suburban Maryland town is forever shattered when she kills her best friend...
“It is always funny to me when I show up to readings and people expect me to be my characters”: Q&A with Carrianne Leung She arrived in Toronto at age 6, when her family immigrated from Hong Kong in the mid-1970s. At 7, they moved to...
*STARRED REVIEW “That whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,” one character admonishes another in Susan Choi’s fifth, and finest, novel. Returning to the multi-layered teacher-student power struggles seared into My Education (2013), Choi’s Trust Exercise should immediately put readers on alert: it will appear...
Sixteen-year-old loner Darius Kellner is an easy target at his Portland, Oregon, high school. He’s clinically depressed, a diagnosis he shares with his “Teutonic Übermensch” father. His nurturing comes mostly from his Iranian immigrant mother, and he’s close to his 8-year-old sister. For all that,...
Writer Huda Al-Marashi and narrator Jeed Saddy make their respective debuts in a captivating memoir about a marriage that’s not so much arranged but destined. Al-Marashi is 6 when she meets Hadi, the son of family friends. She’s 9 as she watches him pretend-wed her 4-year-old...
Twenty years since its original French publication, Edmond Baudoin’s autobiographical homage to his older brother, Piero, and their shared childhood makes its English-language debut, admiringly translated by cartoonist Matt Madden. Growing up between Nice, where their father worked, and Villars-sur-Var (“our Mom’s village, our village”),...
*STARRED REVIEW Toronto’s suburban Scarborough becomes home to diverse families ready to build a neighborhood together. Initially, everyone invited everyone else to “planned things like fireworks and barbecues,” observes 11-year-old June – the only daughter of Hong Kong Chinese immigrants – until “people decided who their...
"Beyond this door,” Rina Ayuyang warns as she guides readers to her suburban Pittsburgh childhood home, “lies a story of dread and woe, despair and sadness.” But no, turn the page, and amid technicolor walls, carpets, and toys strewn everywhere, she admits, “I’m kidding. It’s...
*STARRED REVIEW For those of us in need of a few hours of joyful catharsis, listen up. Despite a narrative driven by impending separation, the gratifying delight is well worth the tears. Narrator George Blagden effortlessly embodies this charming man-and-beast love story, so guilelessly gentle as...
*STARRED REVIEW Already a best-selling fantasy YA author (the Shatter Me series), Tahereh Mafi firmly roots herself in familiar reality with her latest, a can’t-turn-away timely story about teens falling in love despite intolerant peer pressure, difficult family situations, and vast cultural divides. Sixteen-year-old Shirin has switched...
*STARRED REVIEW Only the back, front, and inside covers show color here, in muted pastels. Within are black-and-white panels so disturbing and brutal that any further vibrancy might prove overwhelming. And yet, despite the horrifying, can’t-turn-away abuse, Korean comics creator Ancco manages to infuse her extraordinary...
Without glossing over more difficult subjects – fat shaming, homophobia, parental (non)acceptance, matters of consent – Amy Spalding's (The New Guy [and Other Senior Distractions]) latest is a charming contemporary love story, complete with blogs, social media, rating apps, and more. For the summer before senior...
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s dozen stories are disturbingly spectacular, made even more so by how he magnifies and exposes the truth. On first reading, the collection might register as speculative fiction, but current headlines about racism, injustice, consumerism, and senseless violence prove...
*STARRED REVIEW At 12, Artemisia Gentileschi loses her mother, but not before "Prudentia Montone spent/ the last of her strength/ to burn into [Artemisia's] mind/ the tales of women/ no one else would/ think to tell" – including biblical heroines Susannah and Judith, who thwarted male...
Narrators Joy Osmanski and Jacques Roy prove to be convincing partners in propelling two awkward misfits toward each other. Osmanski’s Penny Lee is slightly detached. UT-Austin might be less than 80 miles away, but 18-year-old Penny imagines she’s headed for a whole new world –...
*STARRED REVIEW French singer/rapper Gaël Faye transforms his own background into an impressive, searing coming-of-age first novel about a Burundian family's implosion during the 1990s. What seemed like an idyllic, privileged childhood for 10-year-old Gabriel – made memorable by mischievous adventures with close friends – begins...
