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Which five words best describe Dream On, Amber? Oh boy. That’s tricky. How about warm, witty, heartbreaking, upbeat and booyakasha.

This post is part of a series on the blog where I share some of the nuggets of wisdom and inspiration — related to writing and/or life — that I find steeped in the pages of novels that I’ve read.



From Jude, twin sister of Noah and one of the narrators of the novel I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Because who knows? Who knows anything? Who knows who’s pulling the strings? Or what is? Or how? Who knows if destiny is just how you tell yourself the story of your life?

Winner:

I’ll Give You the Sun
by Jandy Nelson
High School   Dial   375 pp.
9/14   978-0-8037-3496-8   $17.99   g

In her much-anticipated second book, Nelson (The Sky Is Everywhere, rev. 3/10) delivers another novel of romance, tragedy, grief, and healing, told in poetic prose with the barest hint of magical realism. Jude and Noah are fraternal twins; once very close, they now barely speak to each other. The reasons for their estrangement gradually come to light over the course of the novel through the twins’ alternating voices from different points in time. Thirteen-year-old Noah narrates the story’s beginnings; an extremely talented painter, bullied for being gay, he finds himself attracted to the new boy next door. The later story is revealed from sixteen-year-old Jude’s point of view. Too focused on art school — including why she was accepted and Noah wasn’t — to think about boys, and haunted by the tragic automobile-accident death of their mother, she finds solace in conversations with their grandmother’s ghost. Despite some minor flaws — Noah’s voice never quite rings true as an adolescent male; and the present-tense stream-of-consciousness narrative occasionally dilutes the powerful imagery of the writing — the novel remains a compelling meditation on love, grief, sexuality, family, and fate. JONATHAN HUNT

From the November/December 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Honor books:

And We Stay
by Jenny Hubbard
High school     Delacorte     225 pp.
1/14     978-0-385-74057-9

After her ex-boyfriend’s suicide, sixteen-year-old Emily Beam is sent to an Amherst, Massachusetts, boarding school to start anew and heal. And through a friendship with her sympathetic roommate, connecting with local legend Emily Dickinson’s work, and blossoming as a poet herself, she starts to. Hubbard thrives in both prose and verse storytelling: interspersed within emotionally astute third-person-omniscient narration are Emily’s moving poems.

From the Fall 2014 issue of The Horn Book Guide.

The Carnival at Bray
by Jessie Ann Foley (Elephant Rock)

Review to come.

Grasshopper Jungle
by Andrew Smith
High School     Dutton     390 pp.
2/14     978-0-525-42603-5     $18.99

Unfortunate coincidences involving sixteen-year-old Austin and his best friend Robby lead to the unleashing of gigantic, ravenous praying mantises related to a diabolical scientist’s decades-old experiments. Austin’s love for and attraction to both his girlfriend and to Robby is the powerful emotional backbone of this intricate, grimly comedic apocalypse story, in which Smith proves himself a daring and original wordsmith. KATRINA HEDEEN

From the Fall 2014 issue of The Horn Book Guide.

This One Summer
by Mariko Tamaki; illus. by Jillian Tamaki
Middle School    First Second/Roaring Brook    320 pp.
5/14    978-1-59643-774-6    $17.99

Rose Wallace and her parents go to Awago Beach every summer. Rose collects rocks on the beach, swims in the lake, and goes on bike rides with her younger “summer cottage friend,” Windy. But this year she is feeling too old for some of the activities she used to love — and even, at times, for the more-childish (yet self-assured) Windy. Rose would rather do adult things: watch horror movies and talk with Windy about boobs, boys, and sex. In their second graphic novel — another impressive collaboration — the Tamaki cousins (Skim, rev. 7/08) examine the mix of uncertainty and hope a girl experiences on the verge of adolescence. The episodic plot and varied page layout set a leisurely pace evocative of summer. Rose’s contemplative observations and flashbacks, along with the book’s realistic dialogue, offer insight into her evolving personality, while the dramatic changes in perspective and purply-blue ink illustrations capture the narrative’s raw emotional core. Secondary storylines also accentuate Rose’s transition from childhood to young adulthood: she’s caught in the middle of the tension between her parents (due to her mom’s recent abrasive moodiness and the painful secret behind it) and fascinated by the local teens’ behavior (swearing, drinking, smoking, fighting, and even a pregnancy; the adult situations — and frank language — she encounters may be eye-opening reading for pre-adolescents like Rose). This is a poignant drama worth sharing with middle-schoolers, and one that teen readers will also appreciate for its look back at the beginnings of the end of childhood. CYNTHIA K. RITTER

From the July/August 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

The post Reviews of the 2015 Printz winners appeared first on The Horn Book.

So what is with all the hullabaloo about young adult literature these days? Do we have John Green to blame for getting us sucked in to the tragic sagas in coming-of-age children's books? I am in the fourth decade of my life, and I found myself pulled into the throws of YA lit this year, [...]

How did twins Jude and Noah lose the tight bond they once shared? Jude's story unfurls in the present while Noah narrates from the past, weaving a complicated story of art, family, and what it means to give up something you love. Books mentioned in this post I'll Give You the Sun Jandy Nelson New [...]

Over at The Book Scoop, Rowena talked about our friend Jandy Nelson’s book The Sky is Everywhere when she asked, “What’s Up with all the Dead People?” She wondered why so much death is popular in YA books these days. But really, fascination with death is nothing new. Mexicans built a holiday around celebrating the dead--Día de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), November 2^nd. And while the Mexicans have the artwork of Jose Guadelupe Posada to capture the spirit of the holiday, Americans prefer death to be a little less... skeletal.

Here in America, our “dead” is chic, trendy. We make death look good.

(Penguin Group, 2009) (Hyperion Books for Children, 2010)

And truthfully, we’re more obsessed over the un-dead.

1 Comments on The Day of the UnDead, last added: 11/1/2010