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The fourteen true stories of survival in Hidden Like Anne Frank are emotionally charged and moving.  Editors Marcel Prins and Peter Henk Steenhuis have collected incredible accounts of what it means to live in hiding, when a ticking clock can remind a survivor of the darkest days of his life. Storytellers not only reveal what it means to be Jewish, but what it means to be a survivor.  They tell of the “years of tears” and the difficulty of loss—the loss of possessions, loved ones, family bonds of affection, and one’s very identity.  At a time when people were persecuted for even looking Jewish, manyRead More →

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  Luc, orphaned when his mother dies from HIV, is in debt to Monsieur Tatagani, a moneylender and crook in Franceville, Gabon, who paid his mother’s medical bills.  For the tips and wages to repay Tatagani, Luc works at a hotel bar in the city, but he is always certain to be “home” before dark, recalling the days when his mother would tell tales of the “mock men,” chimpanzees whose screams foreshadowed violence in depths of the jungle, the “Inside.” These are the conditions and the setting as Eliot Schrefer’s book Threatened opens, and so it goes until Professor Abdul Mohammed arrives.  The Prof, who wishes to be Africa’s Jane Goodall, is anRead More →

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Half Native and half White, seventeen-year-old Trent doesn’t understand his native language, Hitchiti, nor how to play stickball.  He did not go through a naming ceremony and receive an Indian name from his Miccosukee tribe in Florida.  As he tries to figure out where he belongs, he drinks to turn down the volume in his brain and to escape the dark energy that he allows to identify himself.  School has become meaningless to him—more a place for robotic behavior.  Like a metaphor for his life, his skateboard deck is chipped and the bearings caked with dirt.  Even blasting tunes on his Gibson guitar stops workingRead More →

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For a fast-paced, suspenseful, and engaging read, Nick Lake’s Hostage Three won’t disappoint.  That Lake was the Winner of the 2013 Printz Award is apparent in his writing style—which captivates with its pacing and imagery-richness. The book’s protagonist is seventeen-year-old Amy Fields fromLondon.  Struggling to deal with her mothers’ death and craving her father’s attention, Amy has taken acting out to a self-destructive level: swearing at teachers, taking drugs, insulting her parents, going to all-night parties, and intentionally failing her high school exit exams.  Hoping to block out the world or simply wishing to disappear, she is snarky, sullen, defiant, and without charming personality quirks.Read More →

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I’m not sure what to say about Matt de la Pena’s The Living.  I’ve been wrestling with how to review this book for a couple of weeks now and I still haven’t really found a place to start.  The blurb on the back of the ARC says “genre-bending” and I think that’s the best I can come up with too; that’s not because I wasn’t engaged by the story, didn’t care about the characters, and wasn’t thinking about Shy and his unbelievable 8 days long after I closed the back cover, it’s just that The Living is . . . different. Shy’s taken a jobRead More →

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Fred Hiatt‘s Nine Days is so much more than an action-packed thrill ride.  Don’t get me wrong, it is an action-packed thrill ride: a story that zips along at a breakneck speed, fueled by a cliff hanger at the end of every short chapter, rife with danger, and near death scrapes. But at the same time, Nine Days is also a story that explores freedom, social justice, human rights, and complex, real world problems.   I found it completely engaging and unexpectedly thought-provoking, enjoying the successfully executed thriller inspired by Ti-Anna Wang, the real daughter of a jailed Chinese dissident. 16 year old Ethan has beenRead More →

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Two young men, one white and one black, are coping with  life shattering events in the only ways they can.  For Finley, basketball has been his life-saver; he lives in a run down neighborhood ruled by drug violence, the Irish mafia, and racially charged conflict.  Emotionally and verbally reserved since his early childhood, Finley survives high school by keeping his head down, trusting his girlfriend Erin and Coach, and playing basketball. When Finley puts on his #21 jersey, he becomes another person: focused, confident, determined, and whole. When Coach asks him to spend time with Russ, a rising basketball star whose parents have been murdered and who willRead More →

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Padma Venkatraman’s newest work for middle grade readers, Island’s End, is both a coming of age story and an homage to a way of life that has almost disappeared in our 21st century world.  Set in the Indian Andaman Islands off the coast of Burma, a fictional tribe of aboriginals exists in harmony with the ebb and flow of the jungle and sea of their home.  Uido has lived her life apart from the modern world and is deeply connected to both the natural world of her island and the spiritual world of her tribe’s belief system and so is called upon to train as the spiritual leaderRead More →

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Even with all of the “multicultural” young adult novels published every year, there really isn’t much that takes place in Sub-Saharan Africa.  And those stories taking on the plight of the refugees, the disenfranchised, and the desperately poor are even harder to find.  Michael Williams’ recent publication, Now Is the Time for Running, tells the staggering story of a 14 year old boy, Deo, fleeing from Zimbabwe into South Africa seeking safety and a chance at a decent life for himself and his mentally disabled older brother, Innocent.  Inspired in part by Williams’ work with homeless refugee youths in his home country (South Africa) as well asRead More →