From the moment Glory O’Brien and her friend, Ellie, drink beer mixed with petrified bat ashes, an incredible transformation occurs. “We could see the future. We could see the past. We could see everything.” Narrator Christine Lakin makes the magical sound reasonable. When Glory was 4, her mother committed suicide. Now, with high school graduation near, Glory is listless, with no plans for her future. Lakin delivers Glory’s first-person narration with all her teenaged poignancy and pathos in place. Glory foresees a dystopian future, a rigid, restrictive nightmare in which a misogynistic government is in power, young women are sold, and women have few rights. Glory writes it all down, determined to awaken society from its lethargy. Lakin’s sincere, intelligent performance makes it believable. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
We’ve devoted a great deal of time and energy thinking about this year’s Nebula Awards, but even after reading all six of the best novel nominees and handicapping them based on a combination of merit, voting trends, and gut feeling, we still managed to walk away from Saturday’s awards presentation surprised.
Now more than ever, we record the present through cameras instead of living in the moment—a detachment that brings with it the benefit of being able to recall our best (and worst) moments with more clarity than our memories can provide. Even before smartphones and social media, YA protagonists used cameras as shields, as masks, as […]
Today Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun became 2015’s Printz Award winner. Nelson’s gorgeous sophomore novel is about twins Jude and Noah, once as close as could be. She’s a fearless surfer girl, he’s a passionate artist who sees in Technicolor—and is falling helplessly in love with the boy next door. But their mother’s sudden death, and the events […]
Pushing back against the misconception that YA lacks moral complexity (or lacks anything, for that matter—YA’s house has infinite rooms) is like shooting grooslings in a barrel. The protean nature of YA means you can present a dozen examples on the fly to counter any arguments against it. Though often classified as a genre, YA is more than […]
Recently my first niece was born, and judging by the brilliance she has already displayed in her first six months of life, I can only assume she’s destined to be the next Leslie Knope, or maybe the founder of a NASA competitor. I’m already curating the list of books I want to give her throughout her […]