ttyl by Lauren Myracle

Three best friends deal with boys, school, and their changing friendship as they navigate their first semester in 10th grade. Told entirely in IMs.

Highly Recommended

Bad Boys (Rush Hour Volume 2) edited by Michael Cart

The second volume in a new literary journal for young adults. The theme is bad boys and it has a mixture of shart stories, novel excepts, essays, and non-fiction excerpts by Jacqueline Woodson, Ron Koertge and Robert Lipsyte, just to name a few.

Highly Recommended

Margaux with an X by Ron Koergte

Margaux is beautiful and that is all guys seem to notice, until dorky Danny comes along and shows her that she has more to offer.


Highly Recommended

monkey business by Sarah Mlynowski

A great, funny novel about four business school students making their way through their first year in a dorm dubbed The Zoo. Sex, cheating, lying on applications, all in a years work for Kimmy, Russ, Layla, and Jamie.

Highly Recommended

Playing With Boys by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Chick-lit with some substance to it. I didn't like it as much as Dirty Girl's Social Club but it was well-written.

Follows the lives of three very different Latinas (one Tejana, one former telenovelas star, and one from El Salvador) who become friends and help each navigate life, work and (of course) love. Also has a Cuban rapper.

Recommended

Girls in Pants: the third summer of the sisterhood by Ann Brashares

Another great installment in the traveling pants series. This one takes place in the girls' summer between high school and college. It focuses more on the girls and less on the pants.

I can't wait for the movie.

Highly recommended

Stuck in Neutral
Cruise Control by Terry Trueman

The same story told from two different perspectives. Shawn McDaniel is a 14-year-old with Cerebral Palsy and everyone thinks that he is a total vegetable but only he knows that he's not. Also, he thinks that his dad is planning to kill him. Cruise Control tells the story from the perspective of Shawn's successful, jock brother.

Fast-paced, good writing, believable.

Recommended

Girls' Night In Edited by Lauren Henderson, Chris Manby and Sarah Mlynowski

A great collection of short stories by some of the great chick-lit writers of the day.

Wonderful and light

Highly Recommended

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

A beautiful and bittersweet love story about the relationship between an artist and a time-traveling librarian. Wonderfully written, not very sci-fi.

Highly Recommended

My Scrumptious Scottish Dumplings: the Life of Angelica Cookson Potts by Cherry Whytock

The second installment of a charming series. In this episode Angel must deal with her father's protest against Harrod's for selling inferior haggis and her best friend moving to Florida.

Highly Recommended

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher

When you have a name like The Tao Jones and you're a mixed-race adoptee of white parents in an extremely white, rural community you learn to be tough real quick. This is T. J.'s story.
It's about bringing together outsiders, becoming a team and what it means to be man.

Hilarious, heart-wrenching and real.

Highly Recommended

Every Boy's Got One by Meg Cabot

Another great chick-lit read from Cabot. Done in the style of compiled e-mails, journal entries, etc. it chronicles Jane Harris and Cal Langdon's trip to Italy to be the witnesses to their respective best friends elopement. Attraction and hilarity ensue. Made me want to visit Italy or at least eat at an authentic Italian restuarant.

My copy came with a bit at the end about how the story was based on the author's own elopement in Italy.

Highly Recommended

Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini

What if you could take a pill that would make you cool? What if it embedded a quantum super computer in your brain to give you instructions? Would you still want it? Well, Jeremy Heere does and this is his experience.

Very funny, realistic (with a sci-fi twist) story of what it means to be "cool".

Highly Recommended

Beyond The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Takes place at the end of the Spring semester, details the aftermath of the events in The Chocolate War.

Eh, I wasn't sucked in by it but I don't recall really liking the first one either. Just indifferent.

silent to the bone by E. L. Konigsburg

When Branwell's half-sister Nikki is rushed to the ER with head injuries, he stops speaking. It is up to his friend Connor, with the help of his half-sister Margaret Rose*, to find out what happened and clear Branwell's name. An engrossing mystery that you don't want to put down.

Highly Recommended

*from The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place

the first part last by Angela Johnson

A beautiful, sad, very real story of a teenage father starting to raise his daughter as a single father.

Winner of the Printz Award

Highly recommended

Feed by M. T. Anderson

Imagine a future where part of your brain is a connection to tv, radio, and the internet. Then imagine that everything is controlled by corporations, including School tm.

This is the future that Titus lives in and he can't imagine anything else, until he meets Violet. Their relationship causes him to question everything.

Highly recommended

Hilarious line: "It has to be understood that when the President referred to the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance as a 'big shithead,' what he was trying to convey was, uh- this is an American idiom used to praise people, by referring to the sheer fertilizing power of their thoughts."

Fat Kid Rules The World by K. L. Going

When fat kid Troy is saved from committing suicide by homeless, punk-rock legend, Curt McCrae, their journey to form a band changes both their lives in surprising ways.

Wonderful characters, wonderful writing

Highly recommended

echo by Francesca Lia Block

Echo is jealous that her mother is perfect AND has the complete attention and adoration of her father. This is her story told in chapters that have different viewpoints, including herself and her parents.

I found the story very confusing and the loose ends unsatisfying.

Wasteland by Francesca Lia Block

A brother and sister's love for each other has tragic consequences. Set in LA in the 70s.

Recommended