Based on the 1899 lynching of five Italian immigrants, this thought-provoking book draws its power from vivid depictions of late-19th-century Louisiana and little-known historical facts. Settled in smalltown Tallulah, 14-year-old Calogero and a handful of other Sicilian immigrants find themselves isolated: by law they are not "white," but white people discourage them from mixing with Negroes (the sheriff, forbidding Calogero to attend the town school, advises him that he'd be better off uneducated than attending the Negroes' school). But social pressure doesn't keep Calogero from a budding romance with smart, pretty Patricia, even after he's almost beaten up for "fraternizing with them cotton pickers." Napoli (Hush) sketches out some economic and political roots of racism as the white citizens' resentment of the Sicilians builds.

Abandonment and feeling as though one doesn't fit anywhere is a common feeling among teens in any place or time. Essa is a young teen who has traveled among the tribal lands of Britain with his father Cai for many years. Britain in the 7th century is a savage place, especially for someone without family. One morning Essa wakes up to discover that his father has left him without a word of explanation. His mother is dead and he finds that he doesn't really fit into any of the tribal groups--he is neither fully Wolf Folk nor Wixma nor Northumbrian. After several years, Essa begins to feel a small kinship with the other people in his village but his sense of self-confidence and belonging has been thoroughly shattered by his father's abandonment. Essa gains the trust of a local king and is sent out on a routine errand--a reconaissance mission of sorts. The errand takes on catastrophic elements far beyond its routine purpose and Essa finds that he might hold the key to preventing a ful-blown tribal war. This story is full of rousing adventure (complete with sword play and political intrigue) that will richly reward its readership with a compelling window into the past. Review by Sue-Ellen Jones, Teen Services Librarian, Poudre River Public Library District

One day, something’s going to snap. . . . Ernie doesn't have a lot of friends at school. Just Will. They have stuff in common—like fishing. But more important, they have common enemies: the school jocks, who seem to find bullying just another sport. For the most part, Ernie and Will take life at high school in stride. Until Will has one very bad day. Now nothing is remotely funny. Ernie finds himself a witness—to loss, to humiliation, and to Will’s anger—an anger that’s building each and every moment. Ernie doesn’t want to believe his best friend is changing, but he can’t deny the truth. Soon he has a choice: join or die. Or can he find another way? Praise forThe Day I Killed James: “Teens who have experienced crushing rejection or who have laughed at the ardent feelings of a classmate will devour this original, gripping story."

The third anthology in the Firebirds series is even more expansive, with 19 stories that range from fantasy to futuristic to historical to genre defying. The latter includes some stand-outs, like Carol Emshwiller's poignant The Dignity He's Due, about a homeless family living off the Appalachian Trail, the mother of which believes her son is heir to the throne of France; or Candas Jane Dorsey's disquieting Dolly the Dog-Soldier, about a litter of human puppies adopted from the arfenedge and trained as assassins. Margo Lanagan's Ferryman and Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple's Little Red reimagine familiar figures in unusual ways. Ellen Klages, Kara Dalkey, and Marly Youmans also contribute strong pieces. At the center of the book is Nina Kiriki Hoffman's short novel, The Ghosts of Strangers, a story about dragons and ghosts and a little girl who is integral to both. Despite the variety, similar themes echo throughout the stories and, along with Dringenberg's smoky, evocative graphite illustrations, make the collection cohesive while still encompassing the depth and breadth of speculative fiction.

Valerie is Nick's girlfriend. Both of them have suffered at the hands of the jocks and popular students at their high school but Nick takes things a step further when he brings a gun to school and starts shooting students on the "hate list." The hate list is a list of names that Valerie started--they are students who have injured she and Nick in some way. Valerie knows that she never intended harm to anyone on the list--or did she? Nick shoots Valerie in the leg when Valerie protects another student--a popular girl on the hate list--by getting in the way of the bullet intended for her. Nick then turns the gun on himself and commits suicide. After some intensive therapy, Valerie decides to return to the same high school wher the shooting occurred to finish her senior year. Is she a heroine? A victim? Something in between? You'll have to decide for yourself. This book has obvious Columbine High School overtones; it is one of the most gripping, page-turning books that I've read this year.  Review by Sue-Ellen Jones, Teen Services Librarian, Poudre River Public Library District

Trevor, a seventh-grader, lives in a tough, run-down housing project, but his school is in a rich neighborhood nearby, and it is hard for him to fit in. He is thrilled to join the soccer team, even though he cannot afford cleats, and his spoiled, rich classmate, Xander, won't pass him the ball. With his father in jail and his mom searching for work, Trevor has to balance soccer practice with babysitting for his beloved, irritating younger siblings. A gifted artist, he finds escape from his life's pressures when he begins to keep a required notebook for science class, which he fills with drawings, facts, and observations. With its exciting mix of soccer, science, art, friends, and enemies, Trevor's first-person narrative will pull in readers, and the story's class differences, a topic infrequently addressed in youth fiction, dramatize the invisible lines of the title. Without heavy messages, Trevor's anger and tenderness are heartbreaking, and readers will appreciate that he is realistically flawed, especially in his attempts to get into the rich crowd.

How long does it take for hysteria to overtake an entire town? Not long--especially when a dead body is discovered in a place that already has an unsavory reputation. This is exactly what happens in the apple-growing town of Banesville, New York when a dead body shows up in the orchard of the abandoned Ludlow farm, a place that is reputed to be haunted. Hildy Biddle is a reporter on her high school's newspaper, the Core. Hildy and the newspaper's advisor are determined to report the truth behind the goings-on while the new editor of Banesville's general newspaper, Pen Piedmont, seems bent on escalating the fear and tension in the town by inventing ever more sensational stories. Just what is the truth? Hildy has her own agenda of truths to livel up to, following in the footsteps of her reporter father who has recently died. This is a fast-paced book with equal parts of humor and suspense. Author Joan Bauer also takes a serious look at what is happening to the economies of small rural towns and the tough choices that farming families have to make. Very "appeeling!"  Review by Sue-Ellen Jones, Teen Services Librarian, Poudre River Public Library District

Cody Laredo's life would seem to be going smoothly at the start of the summer before his junior year at a Little Bend, Colorado high school. He is a highly-regarded football player and now that he has passed all of his classes, he knows that he'll be able to start as quarterback when the fall season starts. He plans to spend his summer working for his father, who owns a landscaping business. Cody's girlfriend Clea Weston is a lovely, intelligent girl who is the daughter of a wealthy man. Cody's first bit of bad luck occurs when Clea's father decides to send her on a trip to the other side of the world for the summer. At the end of the summer, Clea's father forces her to transfer to an elite boarding school in Vermont for her junior year. Cody feels that she is growing away from him and his working-class background and after several heated arguments, Cody breaks up with Clea. Then tragedy strikes him during a football game--after a particularly hard tackle, he suffers from a torn ACL. Cody knows that the devastating injury has destroyed his chances to earn a Division 1 football scholarship. Cody's downward spiral continues when he drops out of school and starts working at a mindless job. Now that he is no longer an athletic star, Cody gives up on himself. His aimless existence comes to an abrupt halt when he learns that Clea has disappeared from her boarding school after a horseback ride in severely cold winter weather. Searchers have been unable to find a trace of her and police are baffled about where to search next. Back in Colorado, Cody has a clue to her disappearance, a letter that Clea wrote to him on the very day she disappeared. Without thinking too much about it, Cody sets off on a road trip to Vermont, convinced that he will be able to find Clea because of his close connection to her. What he discovers on this journey puts his own life at risk. This is a suspenseful read with an interesting mystery and even more interesting characters. Review by Sue-Ellen Jones, Teen Services Librarian, Poudre River Public Library District 

 

This heady mix of ghost story and mystery, drenched in the languid, humid atmosphere of a small Louisiana town, should appeal to the core audience of the Twilight series: adolescent girls who like a little sexiness in their ghostly pursuers. Ennui can get people into all sorts of trouble, and the kind of blank summer days staring down 14-year-old Iris and her friends lead them to casting spells in the town cemetery. A masculine whisper in Iris' ear shoots them into true ghost-hunting, with a Ouija board indicating that the whisperer belongs to the town's only mystery, a 17-year-old boy who disappeared almost 20 years ago. Mitchell skillfully segues from gothic romance to prosaic mystery as the friends examine microfiche records and question the boy's relatives and friends. As the ghost becomes increasingly insistent that his mystery be solved, Iris discovers unnerving connections to her own family. Highly atmospheric, with pulse-pounding suspense and an elegiac ending.

High school senior Karl Shoemaker just wants to be normal. Since fourth grade, Karl has been unable to escape the stigma of the Madman Underground, a school therapy group for screwed-up kids (he earned the nickname "Psycho" after cutting up a classmate's rabbit in seventh grade). But with a drunken, hippie mom who believes that Nixon is in cahoots with aliens and who steals Karl's hard-earned money, a horde of pet cats that leave droppings everywhere and a claustrophobic hometown that still worships his deceased father (the former mayor), Karl's quest for normalcy seems doomed. In his YA debut, Barnes masterfully turns what should be a depressing tale about teenage misfits who are regularly abused, molested or neglected into a strangely heartwarming story about a kid who refuses to suck the lemons life keeps handing him, the bonds of friendship and the lengths a son will go to protect his mother. The language is R-rated, but with Breakfast Club-like realism, Barnes delivers scenes from which, like a car wreck, readers will be unable to look away.

Dade Hamilton is at a dead end.  He lives in a dead-end town and works at a dead-end job. He is certainly suffering through a dead-end relationship with Pablo, a popular football hero with a girlfriend. Pablo uses Dade for his own forays into homosexual sex: it's furtive, hurried, and highly unsatisfying for Dade because Pablo completely ignores him in front of his jock friends. Dade's parents are playing out the death throes of their failing marriage when Dade discovers that his father is having an affair. Things couldn't look more blead EXCEPt that Dade is going to college in August. Dade meets a mysterious teen named Alex at a party and wonder of wonders, Alex is attracted to him. For the first time Dade discovers just what a really equal relationship might look like. He has a close friendship with a young woman who encourages him to be his best self and inspires his self-confidence. While Dade's homosexuality is central to who he is as a person, it is not the central focus in this book. This is a book written with glowing, evocative language and such vivid characters that they really will people your mind for a long time. Review by Sue-Ellen Jones, Teen Services Librarian, Poudre River Public Library District