Wright, Bil (2011). Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy. NY: Simon and Schuster. Sixteen-year-old Carlos (sometimes “Carrlos”) discovered his talent for applying makeup at an early age. Now nearing graduation, he is looking for a way to pursue his calling and achieve his dream of becoming a famous makeup artist. After a little creative editing…
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds (2011). Incredibly Alice. NY: Atheneum. 278 pages. I had always enjoyed Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s series of books about Alice McKinley, the seemingly average Maryland girl living with her widower father and her older brother. The first novels cast Alice and her family in Quimby-esque terms: the McKinleys were neither rich nor poor…
Smith, Andrew (2009). In the Path of Falling Objects. NY: Feiwel and Friends. 326 pages. I decided to read this slightly older Andrew Smith novel because I had been so taken by his 2010 novel, The Marbury Lens. Although In the Path . . . was decidedly different in genre, the tone was similar and…
Nelson, Blake (2011). Recovery Road. NY: Scholastic. 320 pages. I’m a pretty big fan of Blake Nelson–I still think that his 1994 novel Girl is one of the best at capturing the 90s zeitgeist–and so was pretty psyched to read his latest novel. Recovery Road returns the author to a female voice and some of…
Schrefer, Eliot (2010). The Deadly Sister. NY: Scholastic. 310 pages. Schrefer’s novel begins with a bang when its eighteen-year-old narrator, Abby, discovers the body of Jefferson, one of her high school’s most popular and most hated boys, in the woods. As she tentatively examines the crime scene, Abby discovers evidence that her younger sister, a…
Smith, Andrew (2010). The Marbury Lens. NY: Feiwel and Friends. 368 pages. A former student of mine recommended this one to me last fall and I’m only sorry I waited so long to hunt it down. The Marbury Lens, the third novel by YA author Andrew Smith, is the epitome (and probably the prototype) of…
Roy, Jennifer (2010). Mindblind. NY: Marshall Cavendish. 248 pages. All of a sudden, there seems to be great interest in autism and autism spectrum disorders among folks who work for and with youth: librarians, teachers, authors. Perhaps it is a symptom of our increasing desire to label and categorize in an effort to understand what…
Benoit, Charles (2010). You. NY: Harper Teen. 240 pages. After reading a couple of my students’ reports of this novel, I was curious to check it out for myself, if only because it is narrated from the second person perspective, a technique that is rarely employed and even more rarely employed to great effect. You…
Kerbel, Deborah (2009). Girl on the Other Side. Toronto: Dundurn Press. 151 pages. This short novel by British ex-pat and Canadian Kerbel is a lighter, more Northern Define Normal (Peters, 2003) with a definite anti-bullying message. Told in alternating chapters from the perspectives of the wealthy and popular Tabby and the nerdy and unpopular Lora,…
Halpern, Julie (2007). Get Well Soon. NY: Feiwel and Friends. 193 pages. I’m going to come right out and say it: I didn’t like Get Well Soon–Julie Halpern’s first novel–nearly as much as I liked the funny and fresh Into the Wild Nerd Yonder. That said, Get Well is not a bad book. Loosely based…