Home | All Fiction and Nonfiction Young Adult Books
A Daughter of the Seine: The Life of Madame Roland by Jeanette Eaton (published by 1929) is a fictionalized biography of a significant French woman during the violent French Revolution. Marie-Jeanne “Manon” Phlipon was a woman of Paris. As a child, her brightness was soon discovered. She studied every subject, including history, mathematics, agriculture, and …
Candace Fleming’s The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets and Helped Win World War II (Scholastic Focus, 2024) is well worth the buzz that has been spreading about it. Although labeled a young adult nonfiction book, The Enigma Girls will interest anyone interested in the intellectual challenges to defeating Germany during World …
The Leadership Journey: How Four Kids Became President by Doris Kearns Godwin (Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers; September 3, 2024) is a fantastic nonfiction volume with four presidential biographies, all tied together with a focus on the qualities of leadership that these presidents portrayed and how they developed these qualities from childhood. The …
In Newbery Honor book The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani (Kokila, 2018), the partition of India has a profound effect on the life of twelve-year-old Nisha, who is half-Muslim and half-Hindu and now must figure out where she is welcome. Along with her twin brother and her widower father, now Nisha finds she must leave their …
The ANNEthology edited by Judith Graves (Acorn press, May 2024) is a new collection of young adult stories by Canadian young adult authors, subtitled “A Collection of Kindred Spirits Inspired by the Canadian Icon.” I adore Anne of Green Gables, so I was excited to revisit this lovely creature with new stories. I was so disappointed, …
Buried Beneath Us: Discovering the Ancient Cities of the Americas by Anthony Aveni (illustrated by Katherine Roy; Roaring Brook Press, 2013) covers the basics of four early American civilizations for the middle school and high school reader in less than 100 pages. With emphasis on the Aztec, Maya, Inca, and Cahokian civilizations, Aveni describes the …
Louder Than Hunger by John Schu (Candlewick, 2024) is a novel-in-verse about a boy overcoming an eating disorder within the walls of a mental health clinic. Sometimes the novel-in-verse format is a forced one for a story. For this book, it is an essential and masterfully done format. Because of the novel-in-verse narration, the reader …
With alternating stories, Just Like That by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion Books, 2021) tells the story of two 14-year-olds in 1968 who are coming to terms with something big that happened, which changed their lives completely “just like that.” Meryl Lee Kowalski (a name familiar to those who have read The Wednesday Wars) has been …
Adam and His Kin by Ruth Beechick (published by Mott Media, 1990) is titled to be a book telling a narrative story of the early patriarchs of the Earth, beginning with Adam and going through Abraham. Unfortunately, it really feels like a paraphrase retelling with very little narrative. It seems unfair to say: there was …
It is quite rare to see a disease like cystic fibrosis depicted in an historical fiction novel, let alone historical fiction that takes place during the middle ages! In Breath (Atheneum, November 2003), creative storyteller Donna Jo Napoli retells the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin with a twelve-year-old boy that has cystic fibrosis …
It is not often that I hear of a “new” book by a classic author, but Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston never was published during her lifetime due to the subject matter: interviews from the 1920s with one of the last enslaved people from Africa. Finally, it was published in 2018. Now, Ibram X. Kendi …
With a long list of accolades, including the Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King Award, and Printz Honor, young adult novel-in-verse Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum, 2017) provides me with a window into a different culture and life from my own as I watch this unique teenager wrestle with internal struggle after his older …
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