The Year of Secret Assignments is a fun novel about tenth graders at rival schools who begin a pen pal assignment for school. Lydia, Emily, and Cassie are each paired with a boy from Brookfield High. They exchange letters that soon lead to pranks, mysteries, love, and a major fight. Will their friendships survive this assignment?

Feed by MT Anderson looks at life in a frightening near future, where people have the Internet imbedded in their head, and the hottest new thing are oozing lesions caused by environmental toxins. Titus is comfortable with his life until he meets a girl who decided to fight the feed.

Pirates! by Celia Rees is about a merchant’s daughter and a plantation slave who escape on a pirate ship called Deliverance. Nancy Kington is escaping an arranged marriage to a brutal plantation owner, while Minerva Sharpe is escaping slavery. The lives of Nancy and Minerva are linked in more ways than they know. Kids who like adventure stories with a conscience will love this fast-moving and exciting story.

In Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes, 12-year-old Martha Boyle finds out she was mentioned in the diary of a classmate who died a month ago. Olive Barstow’s mother brings her the page from the journal just as Martha and her family are preparing to leave for the coast. This coming-of-age novel is written in very short vignettes, making it a quick and easy to read, but ultimately, it’s not a very satisfying read.

When school weirdo Christopher Creed disappears without a trace, he leaves behind a note mentioning several students by name. Privileged, happy Torey Adams is on the list. As Torey tries to figure out why Creed mentioned him and where Creed disappeared to, he starts to see a side of life he never imagined existed. He starts to notice the hypocrisy of his friends and wonder why he didn’t treat Creed better. Author Carol Plum-Ucci does a very good job capturing a teenage boy’s thoughts in her first novel. Although they’re probably going to make a movie out of this one, do yourself a favor and read the book first.

REVIEWS BY ADULTS:

A review by a librarian in Chandler, Arizona
Short Review by Teenreads.com
Reviews by teens and adults at sff world

RELATED LINKS:

Carol Plum-Ucci’s query letter (might be of interest to aspiring writers)
An article about Plum-Ucci in a New Jersey community paper
Young adult novels set in New Jersey (I include this link because my family is from New Jersey.)

Have you read this book? What do you think of it?
If you’ve reviewed this book, send me a trackback!

Life in the Fat Lane by Cherie Bennett reads like the Sweet Valley twins decided to tackle eating disorders and health problems. Lara Ardeche is a beauty queen who thinks she’s also a nice, sweet person. However, when she starts to gain weight unexplainably, she finds out she’s not so nice after all. in fact, she’s angry, judgmental, and kind of mean. She keeps gaining weight as doctors try to figure out what’s wrong with her and her parents keep insisting that if she would just diet and exercise, she could get back to her perfect weight. Meanwhile, her boyfriend feels alienated and her family is falling apart. As I read this, I thought several times that I could figure out why she was gaining weight (midnight binge eating and denial of her anger at her parents) but that’s not the direction Bennett took this novel.

Praise for this book has been nearly unanimous, and it does do a pretty good job of capturing the rage and helplessness of gaining weight in an image-obsessed society. The light tone might make it easier for kids to relate to Lara’s problems.

If you’ve been the new kid or the fat girl, you might like this book.

Reviews by Students:

A review by a student in Illinois
A review by a student in Missouri
A review included on a page from a Rhode Island school

Reviews by Adults:

Annotation from the New York University Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database
Children’s Book Page review
Teenagers Today review

Related Links:

All Consuming page about the book (This site is not YA specific.)
Teen CyberCenter list of books about food and weight
A Kansas school’s list of books about eating disorders

Have you read this book? What do you think of it?
If you’ve reviewed this book, send me a trackback!

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin is a fun puzzle of a book about eight heirs (and a mistake) trying to solve the mystery of a man’s death so they can inherit his millions. The heirs, who live in the same apartment building, are paired up and given bits of clues to try to find out who killed Sam Westing. Meanwhile, strange messages are left on the building’s impromptu message board, and someone appears to be trying to blow the heirs up. Who will solve the mystery? Who killed Sam Westing?

Although this is a book for younger readers (age 10 and up), it has several teenage characters. Trying to solve the mystery could be fun for teens as well. Just when you think you’ve solved it, Raskin throws in a twist. It doesn’t take very long to read, so it’s great for those times when you don’t have the time or energy for a long, complicated book.

Reviews by Students:

A review by a student in New York

A review by a student in Texas

Reviews by Adults:
Teenreads.com review

Related Links:

All Consuming page about the book (Not YA specific)
A Thinkquest about the book

A Books-n-Bytes page about Ellen Raskin
Wisconsin authors and illustrators page about Ellen Raskin

Have you read this book? What do you think of it?
If you’ve reviewed this book, send me a trackback!

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher is about the Cutter High School Mermen, an unlikely swim team of misfits trying to earn their letters. The team is put together by The Tao Jones, better known as TJ, one of the three mixed-race people in his town, and coached by a teacher who started the team to avoid having to be the assistant wrestling coach. Along with being an unlikely group of athletes, the swimmers don’t even have a pool of their own. They swim in a too-small pool at a local rec center. They also face the harassment of a town where football rules everything and star players never move on from their high school glory.

Whale Talk is worth reading, and then it’s worth reading again. It tackles race relations (TJ’s parents are white, as is most of the population of his small Washington state town), the obsession over high school athletics, drugs, violence… but Crutcher does it with a light touch and an appealing, realistic, teenage narrator.

Reviews by Students:

Review by a student in Virginia

Reviews by Adults:

Teenreads.com review
Review at a Pennsylvania library

Related Links:

Allconsuming page about the book (Not YA specific)
Booksense.com interview with Chris Crutcher about Whale Talk
Chris Crutcher, hero or villain?
Detroit News article about a ban on Whale Talk being lifted
Parents question language in Whale Talk (St. Joseph, Missouri article from 2001)

Have you read this book? What do you think of it?
If you’ve reviewed this book, send me a trackback!

When My Name Was Keoko is a compelling look at life in Korea under Japanese occupation before and during World War II. The book follows a brother and sister through several years at the end of the occupation. This is a great read for people interested in Korean history, life, and culture.

Robert Cormier’s The Rag and Bone Shop tackles some huge issues in its few pages, including showing how far some people are willing to go for personal gain… to the extent of destroying someone else’s soul. It’s a heart-breaking story of an evil crime made worse by greed.

Like every Cormier book I’ve read, I recommend this one highly.