Bill Konigsberg – The Hub

Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2021) Nominees Round Up, December 16 Edition

Click here to see all of the current Amazing Audiobooks nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

We Are Not Free by Traci Chee; narrated by: Scott Keiji Takeda, Dan Woren, Ryan Potter, Ali Fumiko, Sophie Oda, Andrew Kishino, Christopher Naoki Lee, Grace Rolek, Erika Aishii, Brittany Ishibashi, Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa, and Terry Kitagawa
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release date: September 1, 2020
ISBN: 9780358343561

Fourteen Japanese American teens are cruelly taken from their San Francisco homes to internment camps purportedly to protect the U.S. west coast from Japanese espionage or sabotage during World War II. The Nissei’s stories start the same, but have many different outcomes as they make their choices and too many choices are made for them.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2020) Nominees Round Up, August 16 Edition

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.

When the Ground is Hard by Malla Nunn
G.P. Putnam’s Sons / Penguin Publishing Group
Publication Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0525515579

Swaziland in 1965 is a difficult place with defined social hierarchies. Adele knows this, just as she knows that her white father has another white family, that he pays her full tuition at Keziah Christian Academy, and that he loves his second mixed race family more. It isn’t much, but that makes her better than Lottie whose relatives are from a tribe and don’t pay Lottie’s tuition. Adele’s world is shaken to the core when she is ousted from her insulated clique and is forced to room with Lottie. In such close proximity, Adele finds herself rethinking her assumptions and priorities.

Continue reading Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2020) Nominees Round Up, August 16 Edition

Foodie Companions for With the Fire On High

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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What’s Trending in YA?

I’ve had the opportunity to attend a few publisher previews recently and have noticed a few recent trends in YA publishing. Since I haven’t been able to attend all the previews it’s not a completely comprehensive list so I welcome any suggestions for those I’ve missed.

Road Trips:

Kissing in America by Margo Rabb (5/2015). Teenaged girl still grieving over her father’s death a few years before contrives with her best friend to enter and win a teen game show to win a trip to CA to follow her crush.
The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg (5/2015). Two teens embark on a road trip to uncover the root cause of three generations of family estrangement and solve their difficult family issues.
Drive Me Crazy by Terra Elan McVoy (4/2015). Two girls who don’t really like each other, now related due to their grandparents’ wedding, try to get along as they accompany their grandparents on their California road trip honeymoon.

Mental Illness:

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (4/2015). Caden, 14, is gradually descending into schizophrenia and lives in two worlds – the real one and the one in his delusions.
One Thing Stolen by Beth Kephart (4/2015). Girl who steals things then weaves them into elaborate nests is also losing the ability to speak due to a mental disorder.
Made You Up by Francesca Zappia (5/2015). Girl with paranoid schizophrenia

Death/Dying:

The Last Leaves Falling by Sarah Benwell (5/2015). Seventeen-year-old Japanese boy dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease) wants to die on his own terms.
Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider (5/2015). Two teens with terminal TB

Kidnapping:

Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway (6/2015). Teenaged Emmy’s friend and neighbor Oliver disappeared when they were in 3rd grade and she’s been overprotected by her parents ever since. Oliver returns years later after he finds out he was kidnapped by his father and must try to adjust to life with Emmy and his community again.
Shackled by Tom Leveen (8/2015). Teenager suffering from severe panic attacks ever since her best friend disappeared six-years ago determines to find her after thinks she sees her again.
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller (3/2015). Seventeen-year-old Peggy recounts how when she was 8, her mentally ill survivalist father kidnapped her from London and took her to an isolated forest where they survived off the grid after he told her the world had been destroyed.

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Wilde Reads

Happy 160th birthday, Oscar Wilde! In honor of this most fascinating and talented writer, I’ve rounded up some great YA that definitely owes a debt to Wilde’s work – or his life.

Readalike for The Picture of Dorian Gray
It shouldn’t be surprising that Wilde’s novel would resonate with teens – who doesn’t think from time to time about youth and beauty and the fear of growing old? While Wilde’s novel itself is already great for teens, this book may also resonate with them, and it fits into the popular paranormal genre by making what is clearly a supernatural occurrence in the original Wilde work more blatant:

Darker Still: A Novel of Magic Most Foul by Leanna Renee Hieber
Natalie is mute, but she is observant and sensitive, which is why she is the one who notices that a new portrait of Lord Denbury has a bit too much life to it. It turns out that the young, handsome man’s soul is actually trapped behind the painting, and Natalie is the only one who can access it and help him escape the magic that binds him there.

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