I look out for great stories for younger readers that also happen to normalize mental illness. This YA novel is about Alberto, a sincere and kind undocumented young man from Mexico who lives with his sister in the US and works long hours for her dodgy boyfriend.
Alberto has auditory hallucinations due to increasingly severe bipolar disorder, and then is accused of a grisly crime. Stork shows us how easily the mentally ill are victimized and preyed upon versus the converse, and we fear the predators may pull it off as Alberto is indeed ill. However, with the help of friends and community, heās got a chance in this high-stakes YA thriller.
Alberto's life isn't easy: He's an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who lives with his sister's abusive boyfriend, but he'd always accepted his place in the world. Until he starts hearing the voice of a man called Captain America, a voice that wants him to achieve more, no matter the cost. Grace has it all: She has a supportive boyfriend, she's on track to be valedictorian, and she's sure to go to the college of her dreams. Still, nothing feels right to her any more after the divorce of her parents, and feels she needs something more. When Alberto and Graceā¦
Iām an author of Young Adult Fantasy fiction. When my oldest was six, I started reading Harry Potter to him. It was such a bonding experience that we both cherish. We still talk about the stories, even though he's all grown up and lives away from me most of the time. The thing about fantasy is that stories set in worlds or with people that donāt actually exist make it easier for us to swallow deep meanings, storylines with which we can identify, and that crawl deep down into our souls and nest there. Itās not just about escaping into a fantasy world, but about finding human experience in otherworldly situations and characters.
Have you ever met someone for the first time, and felt like youād known them forever? I have. On multiple occasions. Not just love interests, but friends, mentors, and others who have come and gone from my life at times when they were most needed. This particular story struck me hard as something I can identify with in this way, as it explores that phenomenon, and takes it one step farther toward the possibility of reincarnation, and the idea that we all have a single soulmate who we are meant to meet in every lifetime. I loved this idea, and it was well done enough toāagaināstill stick in my memory years later.
Haven Moore can't control her visions of a past with a boy called Ethan and a life in New York that ended in fiery tragedy. In our present, she designs beautiful dresses for her classmates with her best friend Beau. Dressmaking keeps her sane, since she lives with her widowed and heartbroken mother in her tyrannical grandmother's house in Snope City, a tiny town in Tennessee. Then an impossible group of coincidences conspire to force her to flee to New York, to discover who she is, and who she was.
In New York, Haven meets Iain Morrow and is sweptā¦
I do not remember a time when I wasnāt captivated by stories about adolescence. This was the case when I myself was a teenagerāwhen I sought in these overwrought sagas the sort of sentimental melodrama that eluded the banality of my own lifeābut curiously itās no less true at thirty, for reasons that are fundamentally the same but somehow more urgent. Becoming an adult is an exercise in hardening; to grow up is to forget what itās like to be beholden to oneās own autobiographical romance.The following titles offer a respite from the cynicism that is adulthood; as a writer and a human, I'm forever in their debt.
This is another novel written expressly for teenagers, and all the better for it.
Inflected by the authorās own autobiographical experiencesālike Craig, the novelās narrator, Vizzini spent a week in a psychiatric hospital as a teenagerāItās Kind of a Funny Story was the first work of fiction Iād read that articulated the adolescent experience through the language of mental health. It was here that I learned ādepressionā isnāt an abstracted emotion but the very real neurochemical imbalance that impels Craig to call the suicide hotline after abandoning his SSRIs.
Thereās an uncanny familiarity to the circumstances of Craigās breakdownānamely in how he struggles to remain above water at a famously rigorous college preparatory high schoolāand a fundamental earnestness to his storyās confessions that gilds even its grimmest moments with a fifteen-year-old's sense of impressionable wonder.
Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattanās Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at lifeāwhich means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right jobāCraig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. Thatās when things start to get crazy.
At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; heās just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away. The stress becomes unbearable andā¦
As a doctor, writer, and mother of middle schoolers, I was ready to scintillate the sixth-graders when I volunteered for the chicken wing dissection class, demonstrating the exciting connection between muscles, tendons, and bones. I opened and closed the wing, placed it in their hands, and showed them the thin strips of tissue coordinating all the action. Did I see fascination? Excitement? Feigned interest of any sort? Sadly, no. They were much more enthusiastic about a different topic I volunteered for. Mythology. Greek gods. Beasts with multiple heads. They knew everything, and I knew books like Rick Riordanās The Lightning Thief series were the reason. Books can entertain and educate.
Set in 1920s New York City, the story follows a girl with a hidden gift: the ability to read objects. She chooses to use her power for good and helps to solve a series of murders.
The setting is a character, and we learn all about the seamy side of Roaring Twenties New York, the fun and the feared.
It's 1920s New York City. It's flappers and Follies, jazz and gin. It's after the war but before the depression. And for certain group of bright young things it's the opportunity to party like never before.
For Evie O'Neill, it's escape. She's never fit in in small town Ohio and when she causes yet another scandal, she's shipped off to stay with an uncle in the big city. But far from being exile, this is exactly what she's always wanted: the chance to show how thoroughly modern and incredibly daring she can be.
I remember finding an old Edgar Rice Burroughs book on my grandfatherās bookshelf when I was nine years old. I opened the pages and started to read. From that moment, I was hooked on anything that had to do with fictional worlds. Books became my passion, gobbling them up by the hundreds. Also, attending a private Catholic elementary school, I constantly heard the tales of Revelations and the End Times. These two reasons instilled in me a passion for post-apocalyptic books and led me to write in the same genre. I hope you enjoy these books on the list as much as I have!
The new version of Maximum Ride is fantastic!! I ate this book up in one weekend. I haven't read like this since I read the Maximum Ride series. I think there were some parallels drawn from real life into the book. With everything over the last few years, a lot of things seem hopeless and lost, just like in Hawk. I canāt wait for the next book!
1
author picked
Hawk
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
12,
13,
14, and
15.
What is this book about?
Maximum Ride lost her fight to save the world. But from the ashes of the old world, a phoenix has risen... she calls herself Hawk.
Hawk doesn't know her real name. She doesn't know who her parents were, or where they went. The only thing she remembers is that they told to wait on a street corner until they came back for her.
That was ten years ago.
The day that she finally gives up waiting is the moment her life changes for ever. Because the promise becomes reality: someone is coming for her.
I am a multicultural published author from California. I attended different schools growing up, reading classic literature that I couldn't relate to, resulting in becoming a reluctant reader. I didn't live in historical time periods. My skin was a lighter shade of brown. In my world, I met kids from diverse backgrounds, who spoke slang and had personal hardships. Where were the books like that? That's why I wrote Graffiti Girl. To share a realistic, multicultural approach so the reluctant reader could have characters they could see themselves in. That's why I chose these books, in no specific order, that share contemporary, urban stories involving people of different cultures, who face unique hardships.
Luz Cordero lost her brother in a police shooting. Anger and grief burn within her for her brother's tragic death, and this young girl must battle through her emotional pain toward forgiveness during her stay at a Boys and Girls home. This is one girl's story as she pulls herself from the life of gangs and violence toward forgiveness and ultimately peace. I couldn't put it down.
Luz Cordero is on fire. Sheās burning up with rage. She was there the night her brother got killed. She saw the cop pull the trigger. She tried to do something positive about it by going to protests, but all her anger got her into trouble. Now Luz is living at the St. Therese Home for Boys and Girls, working to turn her life around.
Sister Ellen and Luzās three fellow residents are helping. When Sister Ellen gives Luz a journal to write everything down, Luz is finally able to face the truth about what happened that night. And sheāsā¦
Growing up, I never saw myself fully represented in fiction. I only glimpsed pieces of my younger self reflected in novels about queer or queer-coded characters, and so I made it my lifeās mission to give teenage me exactly what he wanted. As a YA author whose queer male readers are not always young adults, the message I get the most is, āI wish I had this as a teen.ā While I often feel this way as well, I still know that reading the five books I recommended (as well as my own) at any age is life-affirming for queer men like myself.
Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time
"A book for warriors, divas, artists, queens, individuals, activists, trend setters, and anyone searching for the courage to be themselves.āāMackenzi Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Gentlemanās Guide to Vice and Virtue
Itās 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.
Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. Heās terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows heāsā¦
Teaching middle school made me painfully aware of the disparity in our studentsā lives. Some kids have every advantage, while others struggle to survive without enough food, clean water, or a safe, dry place to sleep for the night. All these kids, with their diverse backgrounds, sit side-by-side in class and are expected to perform at the same academic and social levels. In my novels, I feature ordinary teens that are strong, smart, and resilient, like so many of the students who taught me as much as I taught them.
Canāt Get There from Hereis another stark look at the realities of kids living on the street. Strasser quickly drew me into the life of Maybe and her tribe of friends Maggot, 2Moro, Rainbow, and Tears. Their day-to-day existence is one of scrounging for food, looking for a safe place to sleep for the night, and avoiding those who would harm them. Adults have hurt these kids so many times and in so many ways that their reluctance to trust the police for help is totally understandable.
She lives with a tribe of homeless teens -- runaways and throwaways, kids who have no place to go other than the cold city streets, and no family except for one another. Abused, abandoned, and forgotten, they struggle against the cold, hunger, and constant danger.
With the frigid winds of January comes a new girl: Tears, a twelve-year-old whose mother doesn't believe her stepfather abuses her. As the other kids start to disappear -- victims of violence, addiction, and exposure -- Maybe tries to help Tears get off the streets...if it's not already too late.ā¦
Stories of migration journeys and their knock-on impact through the generations are part of my family history. Like Jacques, the key protagonist in Austerlitz, I too wasnāt told the whole story of my familyās past. Stumbling on stories of colonialism, migration, and racism as an adult has opened up an understanding of a very different world to that of my childhood. The books I have recommended are all excellent examples of migration stories and through the use of beautiful prose pack a punch in a āvelvet gloveā.
This is a book I have been recommending to teenagers and adults alike.
This is no ordinary romantic tale of girl meets boy; it is a very much contemporary take on the notion. Two very different protagonists, from two very different backgrounds are brought together in the immigrant āmelting potā of New York City. In what could be seen as a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, the characters are much more self-aware than in Shakespeareās original and thankfully this leads to a more enlightened outcome, for them, and the people they meet on their journey.
Using deceptively simple short chapters which chart the course of one day, it cleverly deals with so many of life's big issues (including migration) primarily through the two teenage narrators.
The internationally bestselling love story from Nicola Yoon, author of Everything, Everything - coming as a major film starring Yara Shahidi in 2019.
The internationally bestselling love story from Nicola Yoon, author of Everything, Everything. Now a major film starring Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton!
Natasha- I'm a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny.
Or dreams that will never come true. I'm definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him.
Fantasy has always been a passion and an escape for me. It started with copious amounts of reading, then I found anime when I was only a child as Cardcaptors began to air on TV. Iāve watched hundreds of anime shows since then and continued my penchant for reading and writing almost exclusively in the fantasy genre. In college, I obtained a BA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing, so I have a good grasp on literature analysis and many works. In addition, I studied Japanese for two years, lived in Japan for six months, and held a position at the anime club while I was in college.
Valiant is a great example of why I love the morally gray so much. Like in many anime, the characters are all shown to be dysfunctional to some degree and really stand by their choices with a good amount of agency that I adore. The MCās loss and addiction make her a relatable lead as she struggles to navigate this dark, mysterious underworld she has ended up in. As with the anime Kakegurui, her and her friendsā addictions skew their judgment and make everyone susceptible to influence if they can get what they desire. The love interest was my favorite part of this book. He is rough, but he knows what heās talking about and helps guide the MC to a better path.
A companion novel to Tithe, from bestselling author Holly Black!
When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.
But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends areā¦
