Check out these 7 authors of young adult literature and a good reads!
1. Acevedo, E. (2020). The poet x. New York, USA: HarperCollins.
Blog: Poetry helps first-generation Dominican-American teen Xiomara Batista come into her own.Fifteen-year old Xiomara is used to standing out: she’s tall with “a little too much body for a young girl.” Street harassed by both boys and grown men and just plain harassed by girls, she copes with her fists. In this novel in verse, Acevedo examines the toxicity of the “strong black woman” trope, highlighting the ways Xiomara’s seeming unbreakability doesn’t allow space for her humanity. The only place Xiomara feels like herself and heard is in her poetry—and later with her love interest, Aman. At church and at home, she’s stifled by her intensely Catholic mother’s rules and fear of sexuality. Her present-but-absent father and even her brother, Twin (yes, her actual twin), are both emotionally unavailable. Though she finds support in a dedicated teacher, in Aman, and in a poetry club and spoken-word competition, it’s Xiomara herself who finally gathers the resources she needs to solve her problems. The happy ending is not a neat one, making it both realistic and satisfying. Themes as diverse as growing up first-generation American, Latin culture, music, burgeoning sexuality, and the power of the written and spoken word are all explored with nuance. Poignant and real, beautiful and intense, this story of a girl struggling to define herself is as powerful as Xiomara’s name: “one who is ready for war.”
Summary: Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers'especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.
Similar Titles: The shadow girls by Henning Mankell; The young landlords by Walter Myers; With a star in my hand: Ruben Dario, poetry hero by Margarita Engle
2. Alexander, K. (2020). The crossover. London: Andersen Press.
Blog: Alexander uses the structure of a basketball game to divide the story into segments. Narrator Josh Bell's lyrical rap introduces his twin brother Jordan, his exact opposite in everything except love of the game. Dad is a retired professional player, and Mom is the rock that keeps the family grounded. Complications arise and each poem presents a vignette of the Bell family's life. Family conferences abound as Dad's health worsens and budding romance causes division between the twins. Dad collapses playing three on three, and is rushed to the hospital in a coma. The book is filled with hard questions, frank honesty, and profound exchanges that reveal the complexity and depth of characterization created by Alexander in his seemingly simple free verse poems. It is a story about loyalty, friendship, family, and love.
Summary: Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story's heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family.
Similar Titles: Booked and Rebound by Alexander (With Crossover, it is a 3 book series.); Dough boys by Paula Chase; Garvey's choice by Nikki Grimes
3. Cormier, R. (2004). The Chocolate War. New York: Knopf.
Blog: The masterful account of freshman Jerry Renault's own lonely battle against the ruling powers of his school is as provocative and disturbing today as it was to readers over twenty years ago. And instead of being about a simple school fundraiser, reveals a complex battle of wills and politics among the students, the prankster gang, and the faculty. The dark cruelty that manifests in the form of manipulation and violent bullying is made more horrible in the setting of a high school, a place of learning and youth and supposed innocence. There is language, sexual content, and violence present in this novel. But the presence of these elements adds to the novel by giving the audience a sense of the psyche of the characters and the culture of the school. Overall, The Chocolate War is a well-written novel that portrays two polar opposites of humanity: the light side of persistence and courage, and the dark side of manipulation and violence.
Summary: A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.
Similar Titles: Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia; Black confession by Pete Hautman; Big mouth and ugly girl by Joyce Carol Oates
Blog: Annie Boots, a talented white teen athlete in long-term foster care, employs an innovative strategy to over-ride an order prohibiting contact with her birth family. The Howard family (Pop, Momma, and son, Marvin) meet Annie’s needs, but she refuses to sever contact with her half sister, Sheila, and their biological mother, Nancy. Annie knows they’re violent drug abusers but hopes to at least help protect Sheila’s disturbed 5-year-old son. She recalls her own miserable early years of repeatedly being removed from, then returned to, Nancy’s custody, skilled as she was at cheating on drug tests. The title references Annie’s practice of combining basketball tournaments with secret birth-family encounters, deliberately losing early games so that more must be played in order for the team to advance. Physical fitness, good looks, and intelligence signal worth in the story, while Annie’s mother and half sister are portrayed as sullen, slovenly, and criminally inclined, repeatedly betraying the children who trust them. The characters deliver didactic pronouncements, among them Annie’s social worker, who rails at a broken child protection system, its failures vaguely attributed to generations of irresponsible parents and incompetent dupes. At a time of growing income inequality and widespread drug addiction, the judgments rendered here appear harsh and simplistic. A portrait of a troubled family that falls short.
Summary: When a family argument turns into an urgent hunt for a missing child, seventeen-year-old Annie Boots must do everything in her power to bring her nephew home safely. When it comes to family, Annie is in the losers bracket. While her foster parents are great (mostly), her birth family would not have been her first pick. And no matter how many times Annie tries to write them out of her life, she always gets sucked back into their drama. Love is like that. But when a family argument breaks out at Annie's swim meet and her nephew goes missing, Annie might be the only one who can get him back. With help from her friends, her foster brother, and her social service worker, Annie puts the pieces of the puzzle together, determined to find her nephew and finally get him into a safe home.
Similar Titles: Turtles all the way down by John Green; Crazy by Han Nolan; Little red lies by Julie Johnston
5. Green, J. (2018). The fault in our stars. New York: Dutton.
Blog: This novel focuses on how two intelligent, mature teens grapple with very adult issues. Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus "Gus" Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. He's a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. She's smart, snarky and 16; she goes to community college. They bond over Hazel's favorite book, in which the main character also has cancer. The book ends in the middle of a sentence, and Hazel and Gus become consumed with locating the author to find out what happened to the characters. Their search leads them to Amsterdam, where they discover a drunk, miserable man who refuses to answer their questions. Though they never find the resolution, Gus and Hazel learn much about themselves. The story contains some sexual content and coarse language, understandable given the context in which it appears. Intelligent vocabulary, generous references to literature, and witty cultural commentary make this a delight to read. A beautiful story about life and loss.
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.
Similar Titles: Every day by David Levithan; Love and other unknown variables by Shannon Lee Alexander; Second chance summer by Morgan Matson
6. King, A. S. (2021). Switch. Penguin Young Readers Group.
Blog: On June 23, 2020, Earth became trapped in a fold in time, and time stopped. A temporary solution was found as humanity kept keeping artificial time using a website called N3WCLOCK, but high schools across the world continued to task their students to find a permanent solution to the crisis. Tru Becker is one of these students, but she doesn't think that she is the best person to solve this problem. She has enough problems at home. That problem being that her father is obsessed with building boxes around a mysterious switch in the middle of their house. Her mother, as far as Tru knows, is in rehab. Her brother Richard spends most of his time teaching himself Portuguese, and her sister, who Tru shouldn't think much about. But then two things happen that make Tru think she might actually be the perfect person to solve the time issue. She accidentally stops time by taking a nail out of one of her father's boxes, and she breaks the world record javelin throw at her first track meet. But being the center of attention is the last thing Tru wants. King perfectly captures a feeling of listlessness with this surreal and experimental novel. Highly conceptual with a unique writing style, feelings of isolation are intertwined with explorations of how it feels to connect with another human being. Tru is an interesting and inquisitive main character and acts as the perfect vehicle for readers' own explorations of isolation, especially in these times of a global pandemic!
Summary: Switch tell the story of Tru Beck, a girl who lives in a house with a single mysterious switch at its center. No one knows what the switch controls, but Tru's father spends all his time building progressively larger boxes around the switch, until each of his children is safely isolated in their own box.
Similar Titles: Some quiet place by Kelsey Sutton; Silent echoes by Carla Jablonski; Gateway by Sharon Shinn
7. Smith, A. (2016). The Alex Crow. New York, NY: Speak, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
Blog: Ariel, a fifteen-year-old war refugee from an unnamed country who survived the bombing of his village by hiding in a broken refrigerator, is newly adopted into the family of Jake Burgess. He and the Burgesses’ son, Max, have been sent to a camp for boys addicted to electronics. They are not actually, but the company pays and requires it. The camp, owned by the company where their father works as a scientist in the Alex division, an arm of the company dedicated to, among other things, resurrecting extinct animals and creating biodrones, animals (people included) implanted with surveillance hardware. Ariel is reluctant to speak out loud, fearing that he will burden others with his painful stories, but his stark narrative, both of life at camp and of the harrowing details of how he came to the U.S., reveals a startling depth of character. Interspersed with Ariel’s story are the nineteenth-century journal entries from one of the founding members of the Alex division and his first experiments in “de-extinction,” and the bizarre narrative of the crazily unraveling Lenny, one of the first biodrones, whose hallucinations lead him to commit grotesque acts. This novel of science fiction, depicts the horrors of war, the cruelty of violence, ribald humor, and the vagaries of memory combine in a deeply affecting, sometimes disturbing, but ultimately hopeful way.
Summary: The story of Ariel, a Middle Eastern refugee who lives with an adoptive family in Sunday, West Virginia, is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber, the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late nineteenth century, and a depressed, bionic reincarnated crow.
Similar Titles: Denton Little's deathdate by Lance Rubin; Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman; Gathering blue by Lois Lowry
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