E. Lockhart’s latest YA-novel–wherein Frankie Landau-Banks infiltrates her boarding school’s all-male secret society–is a lot of fun. The book is also a love letter to teenage girls asking them to value their own worth. As an antidote to the swooning of the Twilight crowd, Frankie’s gutsy determination is a welcome dose of a different kind of romance.
Cashore’s debut is an engaging, action-driven fantasy that will please young adult and adult readers alike. In a genre populated with Gossip Girls and A-Listers, Graceling‘s heroine Katsa–who struggles with a terrible gift–stands out for her strength, intelligence, and will to live life on her own terms.
I picked up Chris Crutcher’s Stotan! on an early-morning flight to Boston, ready to mock both the book and the 10-year-old version of myself who loved it. Starting with the exclamation point in the title and some early cumbersome exposition (which includes a very excellent and totally non-ironic mention of Tom Selleck as a sex symbol), I was sure the book would be dated and ridiculous and that I was in for a very good time. Of course, 180 pages later, I was in tears as I returned my tray table to the upright position.
I’d already planned to curl up with Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and get into the mood. And things, it appears, are getting better all the time. The author’s 9-city video tour concluded on October 9, and now, as I read, I can go here to watch and listen to Gaiman — in a fetching leather jacket, no less — read the entire book to me. To learn more about the much-acclaimed The Graveyard Book, listen to this episode of All Things Considered. The NPR page also features a review by Laurel Maury, some of the book’s haunting artwork, an […]
Most of the stories from Kelly Link’s second collection, Magic for Beginners are now available in a free download. Link’s first foray into YA lit, Pretty Monsters (illustrated by Shaun Tan), published earlier this week; I’m excited to get my hands on a copy.
The head of the MacRinnalch clan is dead, and Kalix MacRinnalch might be responsible. Relentlessly pursued by hunters and by her family, the lonely werewolf girl makes her way through modern-day London, downing laudanum as a temporary escape from her troubles.
