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Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2021) Nominees Round Up, May 8 Edition

Published May 8, 2020

Click here to see all of the current Best Fiction for Young Adults nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Quill Tree Books / HarperCollins
Publication Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN:  978-0062882769

Camino’s father spends summers with her family in the Dominican Republic, while Yahaira’s father lives with his family in the Bronx during the school year. Two places, two families, one father… until one plane crash and one big secret change everything. After Papi’s death, the girls discover that he has been living a double life, and find sisters in each other.

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Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers (#QP2020) Nominees Round Up, October 29 Edition

Published October 29, 2019

Click here to see all of the current Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Simon & Louise by Max de Radiguès
Conundrum Press
Publication Date: August 6, 2019
(Originally published 2017 in France, Éditions Sarbacane)
ISBN: 978-1772620351

Young love is tested in this (translated) French graphic novel told from a “his” and “hers” perspective. Louise is heading to Montpelier for the summer with family, and the day after she leaves Simon receives a break-up text from her. In Simon’s story, he sneaks away from home and hitches a ride to Montpelier to find Louise and win her back. Her story reveals that her decision to break up with Simon was less black and white and more about testing out her feelings and what she wants in relationships.

The clean art style makes it easy for young adult readers to visually follow the plot, and the accompanying text is easy to read and often humorous. The dual narrative makes this story interesting and accessible to teens, who will want to learn more about Louise’s perspective after reading Simon’s story. This is a quick, compelling read that deals with common themes in adolescence. Teens will appreciate the honesty in this book: that figuring out who they are in relation to others isn’t usually easy. Continue reading Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers (#QP2020) Nominees Round Up, October 29 Edition

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Foodie Companions for With the Fire On High

Published July 8, 2019

 

2019 Printz Winner for The Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo’s much anticipated sophomore novel With the Fire On High, is a book about embracing your passions, and charting your future. Emoni Santiago, an Afro-Boricua high school senior has had a gift for cooking since she was young. She and her toddler daughter live with her supportive grandmother, but Emoni needs to decide where she wants to go to school and what she wants to do after graduation. When her school offers a new class, “Culinary Arts: Spain Immersion,” Emoni has a chance to immerse herself in cooking in a way that she can start to see what is possible with her gift.

Foodie readers will swoon over Acevedo’s writing on food and cooking, and it will leave them hungering for more.  Here are a few delicious titles about food and cooking to pair With the Fire On High:

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Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2020) Nominees Round Up, June 21 Edition

Published June 21, 2019

Click here to see all of the current Best Fiction for Young Adults nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Girls on the Verge by Sharon Biggs Waller
Henry Holt & Company / Macmillan
Publication Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1250151698 

This book confronts a controversial topic in a highly readable narrative, while not leaping into preaching or teaching mode. With the Roe v. Wade court decision under attack and more states passing aggressive anti-abortion laws, this book offers up pathways for discussion for teens to think about how they would handle the situation, as well as how they would handle it if a friend finds themselves in the same place as Camille. The emphasis is on friendship and supporting one another, while also tackling the leaps that women have to proceed through to exercise their right to choose what happens to their body.

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#ALAAC18 Recap: #BFYA2019 Teen Feedback Session

Published August 1, 2018

The Best Fiction for Young Adults feedback session is one of the best parts of every ALA conference. Local teens get the opportunity to read books that have been nominated for #BFYA and give their feedback about the titles. It’s always interesting to hear the perspective of real teens, and the group in New Orleans were particularly amazing. They all sounded like professional book reviewers, and I wish there had been time to talk with them at length about the books they enjoyed.

Here are some of the titles the teens particularly liked from this year’s #BFYA nominees list along with a little of their feedback and a link to each title’s nomination post (when available.)

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#AA2019 Nominees Round Up, May 30 Edition

Published May 30, 2018

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, narrated by Elizabeth Acevedo
Audio Published by Harper Audio
Publication Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 9780062822499

Xiomara Batista is struggling–in school, where she is getting noticed in a way she never wanted to, ever since her body got curvier; at home, where her parents don’t understand her and her twin brother is growing distant; and at church, where Xiomara’s mother is forcing her to go to confirmation classes even though she’s not sure of her religious beliefs. What does make Xiomara feel seen is a boy in her biology class, Aman, and a teacher, Ms. Galiano, who invites her to join a slam poetry club. But to forge a relationship with Aman and to become a poet requires lying to her mother. And though Xiomara knows that her mother’s rules are hurting her, she doesn’t want to outright hurt her mother in return.

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#BFYA2019 Nominees Round Up, April 13 Edition

Published April 13, 2018

Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
Simon and Schuster BFYR / Simon and Schuster
Publication Date: January 9, 2018
ISBN: 9781442472457

This thrilling sequel to Scythe finds Citra and Rowan both gleaning in hopes of preserving the Scythedom. However, there is an increasing divide between the new and old orders of scythes putting both Citra and Rowan’s lives in danger. Will the Thunderhead be forced to intervene to save them and all of humanity?

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#QP2019 Nominees Round Up, March 27 Edition

Published March 27, 2018

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
HarperTeen/HarperCollins
Publication Date: March 6th, 2018
ISBN: 9780062662804 

Xiomara can’t be the perfect Dominican daughter that her parents expect her to be, so she pours out her frustrations in a secret poetry journal. Her mother expects her to be confirmed and marry a good Dominican boy. Instead, she questions the teachings of her church and falls in love with her chemistry lab partner, Aman, who is definitely not parent-approved. But she can’t hide her secrets from her parents forever.

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