emma mills – The Hub

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey

A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey
Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: November 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1534471245

Cuban-American Lila Reyes is grief-stricken after the death of her abuela and breakups with her best friend and her boyfriend. Her parents send her from vibrant, sunny Miami to gloomy old England for a change of scenery and a chance to heal, but Lila has a plan for her life, and it involves running the family bakery with her sister after high school instead of summer at her cousins’ English inn. Determined not to enjoy herself, Lila nevertheless cannot resist the call of the inn’s kitchen, which dares her to mix Cuban spice with traditional British baking. Soon, a group of friends (including the cute, thoughtful boy whose family owns the village tea shop) makes life in England not only bearable but thoroughly enjoyable. Now Lila is doing more than falling in love with her new home — she’s questioning everything she thought she knew and everything she thought she wanted.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2021) Nominees Round Up, September 11 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.

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron
Bloomsbury YA
Publication Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1547603879

Two hundred years after Cinderella gets her “happily ever after,” not much has changed in Sophia’s village. Every eligible maiden is required to attend an annual ball, after which they are either chosen by a suitor or never seen again. Headstrong Sophia would much prefer to marry her childhood friend Erin, but either way she has no intention of marrying the first man who claims her. While fleeing the ball, she discovers Cinderella’s last remaining descendant, Constance, and together they devise a plan to tear down the carefully built patriarchy that imprisons them.

Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers (#QP2021) Nominees Round Up, April 30 Edition

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

Lucky Caller by Emma Mills
Henry Holt / Macmillan
Publication Date: January 14, 2020
ISBN: 9781250179654

Nina’s senior year elective–radio broadcasting–forces her into an unlikely group project with a diverse cast of students, including her neighbor and childhood crush, Jamie. Meanwhile, she navigates group work and these blooming romantic feelings for her sort-of friend while also trying to resolve family issues: a difficult relationship with her somewhat estranged father and her mother’s looming remarriage. Nina’s relationship with her sisters features as a prominent force in the novel, one that keeps her grounded and helps her sort out the deeper issues in her family.

#ALAMW19 Recap: Best Fiction for Young Adults 2019 Top Ten

During the Teen Feedback Session at ALA Midwinter, teens from Seattle and Oregon shared their opinions about the books on the Best Fiction for Young Adults 2019 list. With their input, the BFYA 2019 Blogging team determined the BFYA 2019 Top Ten:

Continue reading #ALAMW19 Recap: Best Fiction for Young Adults 2019 Top Ten

#ALAAC18 Recap: #BFYA2019 Teen Feedback Session

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.)

Continue reading #ALAAC18 Recap: #BFYA2019 Teen Feedback Session

#BFYA2019 Nominees Round Up, May 11 Edition

Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills
Henry Holt and Company
Publication Date: December 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1627799379

Claudia prefers to stay on the periphery of the social scene at her private girls’ school, where no one knows how remarkably funny, caring, and wonderful she truly is. That is, until she accidentally witnesses the very awkward breakup of the school’s “It Couple” Iris and Paige, an incident which triggers a series of events that culminates in her forced participation in the school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in conjunction with adjacent boys’ school Danforth. Thus thrust into the thick of all the things she had tried to avoid, Claudia must learn to navigate new dramas of her own, from her tentative, grudging friendship with prickly Iris to her budding feelings for Gideon Prewitt, the goofy, kindhearted, larger-than-life boy who is friends with everyone, but might want to be more than friends with her. Outside of school, Claudia is lucky to have the support of a wonderful family and a loyal best friend, with whom she nerds out over her favorite MMORPG and shares a lifetime of inside jokes. But when cracks begin to appear in her relationships, Claudia must reconcile her two worlds and realize, at long last, the profound value and worth she brings to them both.

Continue reading #BFYA2019 Nominees Round Up, May 11 Edition