Parachuting

Those who are avid readers often fondly remember the books that seemed to have changed our lives. Many of the books that have stuck with me, I read during my teenage years. Adolescence is a time in life when people struggle with identity and seek to be understood. The books we connect with at this time can be an extremely powerful influence—sometimes as powerful as a friend, a counselor, or a family member. Not much time has passed since I was a teen, but young adult books seem a lot different to me now.

XVI

XVI is not a feminist novel. I’m opening my review with this caveat because, as someone who owns a dog-eared copy of The Feminine Mystique, whose heroes are Margaret Atwood and Ursula Le Guin, and who has, at times, stopped shaving her armpits (sometimes one just can’t be bothered), accounts of feminist content in Julia Kar

A Home For Mr. Easter

Tesana is a teenage girl lacking love. Her mother belittles her behavior, and the kids at school make fun of her. She is huge—both very tall and very overweight. She feels like a walking target, so it’s understandable that she has learned to escape into her imagination. When the bus ride home sucks, she dreams up a unicorn to carry her across the city. But daydreams can’t make everything better. When the popular jocks and cheerleaders try to make a victim of a bunny rabbit, Tesana unleashes all her pent-up anger on them. This is no ordinary bunny. He lays Easter eggs! He talks!

The Solitude of Prime Numbers

My best friend often teasingly tells me that the books I recommend to her are all too depressing and sad. I always counter that I recommend books that make me laugh. Now, that either means that I have a sick sense of humor, or it simply illustrates that the stories I most enjoy reading combine painful topics and awkward characters with humor, sarcasm, and witty writing. Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers is exactly such a book.

Mathilda Savitch

Despite years of being told not to, I immediately judged Victor Lodato’s novel Mathilda Savitch by the cover. I opened it expecting to speed through a mature version of Harriet the Spy with a twist of Tim Burton’s eccentricity.

Louder Than Words: Emily

There were two things that drew me to this book. Firstly, the title is Emily and, hey, that’s my name, too! Secondly, and more importantly, the story revolves around a young girl called Emily whose life is plagued by physical illnesses, which she endearingly calls “Emily flu.” Could this book possibly be written about me? Alas, whilst I just suffer from chronic hypochondria, literary Emily has a genuine disease; the rare and incurable West Nile Virus.

Louder Than Words: Chelsey

Chelsey is a thin volume dealing with a heavy topic: it's the first-person account of a teenager in Cincinnati, Ohio who loses her father to violence and her journey of grief, adjustment, and self-discovery over the ensuing few years. Chelsey Shannon is a week shy of her fourteenth birthday when she learns that her father, who'd been working and vacationing in the Caribbean with his girlfriend, has been shot and killed by a would-be burglar who broke into h

She's Shameless: Women Write About Growing Up, Rocking Out, and Fighting Back

Shameless is the magazine I needed as a teen. Instead, I relied on zines picked up from all-ages shows and record shops, with Ms. to fill in the gaps. Zines and Ms. have their place, but it’s heartening to see a need being met so well. In Shameless, young women have a chance to read (and write) about issues of real importance.

Skunk Girl

Skunk Girl is Sheba Karim’s first novel. It is told from the point of view of sixteen-year-old Nina Khan, self-described as “a Pakistani Muslim girl” and from a small white town in upstate New York. Although published in 2009, the story is set in approximately 1993. In a fast-paced, entertaining read, Nina narrates her life and drama as the only Pakistani and Muslim girl in her high school.

Ten Things I Hate About Me

I was excited when the book Does My Head Look Big in This? came out a few years ago. In that book, author Randa Abdel-Fattah tells the story of Amal, a young Australian Muslim woman who decides to wear hijab and navigates the challenges of expressing her identity as an Australian Muslim.

Throw like a Girl

After being asked what she wanted for her readers to take away from Throw Like a Girl, Jean Thompson answered that she hoped they appreciate the “transforming power of literature, how can it remove us from the everyday world and let us see with new eyes.” And this book does just that: it takes us away from the everyday world and then painfully drops us back with the suspicion that this fiction is actually very real. The horrors of normalcy and the tedium of

Dairy Queen

The word “charming” is too vague, and it makes me think of smarmy real estate descriptions, but…I…can’t…stop…myself. Dairy Queen is just so darn charming that I am forced to momentarily succumb. Catherine Gilbert Murdock has taken a traditional coming-of-age story about a tomboy in a small town and wrung some feisty new life out of it.

Zodiac Girls: From Geek to Goddess

Zodiac Girls: From Geek to Goddess by Cathy Hopkins is a re-telling of one of the oldest stories around. Girl goes to new school where she doesn’t know anyone, gets picked on by the school bully and fails to make the team, or in this case, the school play. Eventually, through misadventures and valuable life lessons, she comes to love herself, make friends and stick it to the aforementioned bully. What makes this re-telling different from all the others?

Me, Penelope

Writer Lisa Jahn-Clough presents a deteremined character named Penelope who deals with her life bit by bit and rants while finally facing her proverbial dragons. While finishing high school in her own way, Penelope attempts to accomplish feats she thinks necessary before heading into the college world. Her living situation with her mom Viv (who dates a younger man and detests being called "Mrs." at any point) and a college student, who only appears some of the time, seems to be the ultimate in any high school student's dream.