from graphic novel guest blogger, Francisca Goldsmith:
Among the modern classics teens are set to read as school texts, George Orwell’s Animal Farm resonates with most without rankling. Classrooms across the nation tear the text apart and readers across the nation feel rightfully bright and smug that they get this clever fable, that they have suspected something very similar going on in their own lives.
Mush! is the Farm’s heir, but the political sphere is set aside and instead we are at the level of the neighborhood: there’s the pretty girl (Venus), the not so bright rich kid (Winston), the guy whose crotch rules his mouth and daydreams but who, really, has his scruples together (Buddy), the troublemaker, more schemer than bully (Guy), the plain girl who really gets things done (Dolly), and the kid who seems to live up in his head instead of with the gang (Fiddler). We have the sled dog team’s point of view so thoroughly that, as in Orwell’s masterpiece, we come to identify more with the animals than with the human couple who appear at interludes (although, in the end, they do prove to have a sense of very human humor). When the time comes to go for a run, we are in that whir of kicked up snow as the six pull and run together. Peace breaks down in the dogs’ yard when they converse in pairs. Rumors, misunderstandings, presumptions, and wise words fly and we, like the dogs (who are pretty much acting like teens), root for one dog and then another, depending on the interchange of the moment.
And that is the mark of a great read, no matter how popular: it jumps off the page and into our lives at the same time that we see our lives on that page.
EICHLER, Glenn. Mush!: Sled Dogs with Issues. 120p. First Second. Nov. 2011. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-1-59643-547-8. LC number unavailable.
Adult/High School–The half dozen sled dogs comprising Frank’s team in a remote corner of Alaska are a delightfully complex lot. Frank’s own life is as simple as he can make it: he’s irascible when the only other human about–his hard suffering girlfriend or wife–has anything at all to say. That’s fine because Eichler and Infurnari have a story to tell about the dogs, not those under-evolved creatures called humans. Delightfully distinct in appearance and character, the team really is a team only when it is running; during down time, mischief and worse come to roost. Buddy, who has the sexual preoccupation of a 13-year-old boy, lusts after Venus, but he’d be just as content to get it on with the lead dog, Dolly. Guy doesn’t want sex with Dolly; he wants her job. Winston, the only purebred among the pack, can’t figure out when he’s being used by Guy, but Fiddler, the big guy with his brain on existential questions rather than either sex or power, sees right through Guy’s deviousness and Dolly’s lost confidence after a sledding accident. The painterly palette shows the world from the dogs’ viewpoints, with intermittent visits to the dark world of the humans’ cabin. Activities outdoors and in are depicted actively and on the premise that dogs are much more aware of both the weather and their need for activity than are humans. Perfectly paced and replete with subplots, this is a true graphic-novel companion to Orwell’s Animal Farm: when readers see and hear what the animals are really doing and thinking, they see the roots of many human problems.–Francisca Goldsmith, Infopeople Project, Ca
First, I would like to alert you all to an SLJ Best Books Twitter Party this afternoon, 4-5pm EST. The hashtag is #SLJBB11. I’ll be there — looking forward to sharing a few sneak peeks at our best of the year list!
Now, on to the business of the day. I am excited to share the results of my latest round of booktalks. For the last couple years, I have had the opportunity to booktalk to the 11th grade students during their English classes right before both Thanksgiving break and Spring break. I enjoy using it as a chance to test the appeal of adult books for teens, especially since the point of this exercise is to make sure our students have great books to talk about during college interviews.
I booktalk first, then turn it over to the students, who recommend books to each other. There is always plenty of time at the end of each period for students to browse and check out books. I place books on display all around the room, so they have plenty of choices at their fingertips.
The books that were checked out are starred. (And a quick reminder–this is an all-girls school.)
My booktalks:
Section 1
When She Woke by Hillary Jordan*
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern *
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer *
Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington *
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson *
Section 2
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh*
Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern *
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht*
Little Bee by Chris Cleave *
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston *
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
Section 3
Little Princes by Conor Grennan
Room by Emma Donoghue *
How I killed Pluto and Why it had it Coming by Mike Brown *
Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh *
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer *
Student recommendations:
Divergent by Veronica Roth *
If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (twice) *
The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Richard Heinberg
Crank and Glass by Ellen Hopkins
The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan *
Rafa by Rafael Nadal and John Carlin
Bossypants by Tina Fey (twice)
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Crashing Through by Robert Kurson
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor *
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl *
The Tipping Point & Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Other books checked out:
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey through his Son’s Addiction by David Sheff
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
New Boy by Julian Houston
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie King
Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children by Joel Bakan
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies by Sonya Sones
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Among Others by Jo Walton
One thing I learned — I need to get a copy of Bossypants asap!
Brooke Hauser has written for several major publications, including The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The New Kids is her first book.
Hauser spent a year at the International High School in Brooklyn getting to know the students from day one, learning about their (for some) harrowing journeys to the United States, and the challenges and joys they faced during the school year.
Two articles do a particularly good job of reflecting the book. First, Rachel Simmons’ interview with Brooke Hauser, which begins with the criteria for being accepted to the school: “The purpose of the International High School is to teach English to recently arrived immigrants and refugees from around the world. To be eligible, students have to meet a few basic qualifications. They must have lived in the United States for fewer than four years. Prospective students take an English-language assessment test, and the joke is that they have to fail to get in. Once they do get in, students of all different ethnic backgrounds and academic levels are mixed together in classes.”
There’s also an excellent Huffington Post article about the book and especially the uncertain fate of the school’s graduates.
The extraordinary personal stories will draw teens into the issues of education, immigration and international relations that the book illuminates.
HAUSER, Brooke. The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys for Immigrant Teens. 320p. Free Pr. Sept. 2011. Tr $26. ISBN 978-1-4391-6328-3. LC 20100051302.
Adult/High School–In the tradition of Patricia Hersch’s A Tribe Apart (Fawcett, 1998) and Meredith Maran’s Class Dismissed (St. Martins, 2000), Hauser chronicles a year at International High in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. All of the students are newly arrived in the United States, and the author tells amazing stories of how they came to be here and how they struggled not only to learn English and other academic subjects, but also how they sometimes struggled just to stay alive and safe in a strange culture. Ngawang was spirited out of Tibet folded up in a suitcase. Mohamed from Sierra Leone was brought to a tony Connecticut town by a church as part of its outreach program. Jessica arrived from China alone only to be rejected by her father’s new family. All of these teens have a story to tell, and the author provides a lot of detail on their daily lives, their dreams, and their disappointments as they go through a year in an American high school that is staffed by teachers and staff who are extraordinarily caring and supportive, often providing “a second home.” Hauser “tried to see the students through the lenses they have provided,” and readers will be rewarded with a richer understanding of how our current immigration policies affect the futures of teens who are different from those born here and yet share so many similarities with teens everywhere.–Vicki Emery, Lake Braddock Secondary School, Fairfax County, VA
As a reader, I am always looking for that “wow” factor, something in a book that knocks me from the perch of expectation and into a new reading experience that entertains and moves me or presents a new perspective on the familiar. I have encountered perhaps a couple of dozen such books. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak is an example. The author’s skill had me in awe and marveling at his narrative inventions. Ismet Prcic’s debut novel, Shards, definitely has a place on my shelf of books which had me saying, “Wow!”
Prcic had a story to tell: surviving the Bosnian war, defecting during a student trip to Scotland and his eventual relocation to the United States as a Muslim refugee made for an exhilarating tale. It would make a terrific memoir, except memoirs have been getting a bad rap. Although fake memoirs are nothing new (Davy Crockett penned one), all memoirs have been suspect by association since Oprah confronted James Frey about the falsehoods in A Million Little Pieces.
Prcic has taken up the issue brilliantly in his first novel, Shards. About twenty pages in, the author, (or the character with the author’s name), writes that his memoir has begun to sprout ‘little fictions’ which he has conscientiously tried to eradicate, only to discover that deleting them made his story ‘less true’. When he confesses to his therapist that his memoir is becoming more fiction than fact, his therapist advises, “Don’t worry about what is true and what is not, you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
Unleashed to the imagination, his story emerges from the cloud of skepticism that surrounds current memoirs (the title seems a playful nod to A Million Little Pieces) and Prcic is able to creatively restructure the story of his experience in order to communicate a deeper truth.
What makes this accomplishment unique is that the reader becomes aware of the author as a performer, here echoing Günter Grass, there paying homage to Faulkner, and throughout invoking Brecht’s challenge to the audience to consider where representation stops and reality starts. It is as if Prcic is using the page as a stage for his talent, which is not surprising since he has acted since childhood. By masking and unmasking his own persona and voice, he has exposed not only truth, but his profound talent as a writer.
Shards may be limited in appeal to teen readers who are studying literary criticism or enjoy comparative literature. The voice is remarkably true to an adolescent sensibility and marked by a wry humor, but the structure could challenge even a sophisticated teen enough that it would be more fully appreciated with the guidance of a good teacher in a classroom.
Prcic briefly discusses the fine line between fact and fiction and reads from Shards here.
PRCIC, Ismet. Shards. 391p. Grove/Black Cat. 2011. pap. $14.95. ISBN 978-0-8021-7081-1. LC number unavailable.
Adult/High School–The exploration of lives shattered and forever altered by war has sustained literature since Homer. The best writers reveal the broken pieces of war-torn lives as mirrors that reflect the beauty and horror of humanity. With his debut novel, Prcic deserves a place among the best of such authors. Shards is a non-linear compilation of diaries, letters, and therapeutic reflections of an aspiring author (named Ismet Prcic) that tells of his coming of age in Tuzla as the Bosnian war erupts around him. A Muslim, he seeks asylum while on a drama club visit to Scotland and eventually arrives in America, alone, displaced, frightened, and depressed. At the urging of his therapist, Ismet writes to heal his trauma. Sometimes memoir and sometimes fiction, this complex story challenges readers’ perception of reality and truth in much the way that war transforms the normal into the surreal. The effect is at times disorienting, as humor and hope percolate amid despair and terror, yet the exceptionally accessible voice and wry insights of the narrator make this a far less formidable read than the subject matter and structure would suggest. Most teens will relate to the adolescent confusion and vulnerability of young Ismet as he endures battles within his family and struggles to connect with girls, but this novel will be best appreciated by sophisticated readers comfortable with an unreliable narrator and ready to be captivated by an imaginative literary style.–John Sexton, Greenburgh Public Library, NY
Kyle Garlett is the first man to complete the Ironman World Championship with a donor heart. Teens will be amazed by his story, from his initial cancer diagnosis at age 18 through to the present, which he relates with humor and optimism. For more about Kyle, try a few of the media links on his website.
This is a great recommendation for teen athletes and those who enjoy inspiring stories.
GARLETT, Kyle. Heart of Iron: My Journey from Transplant Patient to Ironman Triathlete. 253p. photos. index. Chicago Review. Nov. 2011. Tr $24.95. ISBN 978-1-61374-005-7. LC number unavailable.
Adult/High School–At 18 years old, Garlett was ready for his senior year in high school. He was not ready to hear his mother tell him: “You have lymphoma.” Five months of radiation and it looked like he had it beat. But it came back. This time he had chemotherapy treatments, and while one of the medicines nearly killed him, he recovered and re-created his busy and fulfilling life. But… it came back. This time, the chemo was extreme, ravaging the cancer cells as well as Kyle’s most essential organs–his lungs, his bones, his heart. This was followed with stem-cell therapy. Weakened but alive, the teen gathered back the pieces of his life. Until he was diagnosed with cancer for the fourth time. If this were the end of Garlett’s story, it would be incredible. But there’s more. Hip replacement, shoulder replacement, and finally, heart transplant. If his story ended here, it would be miraculous. But there’s more. Eleven months after his heart surgery, Garlett completed the Nautica Malibu Triathlon. He tells his story as he has told it before audiences across the globe, and it is particularly moving for young adult readers, given how old he was when he was diagnosed. And for teens battling cancer themselves, he is a beacon. He is a Survivor, with all the honor and grace the word bestows.–Diane Colson, Palm Harbor Library, FL
Caroline Preston’s beautiful novel is in the format of a scrapbook full of 1920s ephemera. Not only is every page a colorful, dynamic collage of historical artifacts, but the paper is wonderful. While I’m sure this would be fun in an Ebook format too, turning each luxuriously heavy page is an experience not to be missed.
The author started collecting antique scrapbooks when she was in high school, and has been accumulating them ever since. Learn more from Preston herself, including highlights of her favorite pieces.
PRESTON, Caroline. The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures. unpaged. Ecco. 2011. Tr $25.99. ISBN 978-0-06-196690-3. LC number unavailable.
Adult/High School–In June 1920, Frankie receives a scrapbook as a high school graduation present from her mother. She fills every page with full-color collages of photographs, advertisements, tickets, letters, playing cards, catalog cut-outs, and even an image of her dried prom corsage, to name only a few. Frankie intersperses her story on bits of typed text. Growing up in rural New Hampshire, she wants nothing more than to be a writer. This small-town girl of very modest means goes to Vassar on scholarship, does well, and moves to Greenwich Village to pursue her dream. Disappointed in love, she moves to Paris where she successfully works for a literary magazine until she returns home to care for her ailing mother. And falls in love with the boy next door. There are complications, such as the dashing married man who nearly derails her plans more than once. There are nice intersections with literary history. A close friend works at a startup magazine Frankie is certain will fail, which ends up to be The New Yorker. In Paris, Frankie rents a room over the Shakespeare & Company bookstore from Sylvia Beach. The traditional plot is nearly beside the point. This book is all about its visuals, and every vintage piece is carefully selected and perfectly arranged on the page. The paper itself is heavy and smooth and colors are brilliantly reproduced, all of which help the art, style, fashion, and mores of the 1920s come alive.–Angela Carstensen, Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City
With the latest entry in our series of teen opinions, welcome guest blogger Jess deCourcy Hinds:
This fall, my teen library patrons and I discovered a new literary phenomenon: the Quiet Book in Disguise.
The Quiet Book in Disguise masquerades as a dramatic, high-concept title, but its actual execution is subtle, slow and cerebral.
My team of teen book reviewers read a number Q.B.I.D.s with patience and insight, and were kind enough to share their thoughts with me.
According to a 10th grade girl, Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber (Norton) will “definitely” hold teenagers’ interest even though it is “very slow.”
From the book jacket, it appears to be a compelling story about a teenage girl running away from home and living on the streets of Miami. But once you start reading, you find that the girl’s story is less of an adventure and more of a gradual unfolding of secrets. Much of the book concerns the girl’s middle-aged parents, Miami real estate and politics, and gourmet baking. “There are moments of shock and passion,” my student wrote in her book review, but overall, the book just leaves you “feeling content.” It’s a mellow read, but as my student said insightfully, “it leaves your heart soaring and satisfied.”
It is difficult to imagine a more dramatic event in history than Hurricane Katrina. Nevertheless, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury) manages to explore the subject in a soft-spoken way.
Focusing on the weeks before the storm—the build-up rather than the eye of the storm—the novel is a portrait of a fractured, impoverished family who are anticipating yet another crisis. One 9th grader said he would have rather have read about the hurricane itself, while a 10th grader said she loved the pre-storm premise, and story of siblings. “This book shows you always have the love of family, no matter what,” she said, hugging the book to her chest.
A story about a librarian who kidnaps (i.e. “borrows”) her young, sensitive, possibly gay patron to save him from homophobic parents sounds like a rip-roaring read. However, Rebecca Makkai’s The Borrower (Viking), is as ruminative, plodding—and charming—as the librarian heroine herself. It is a thoughtful book that celebrates the literary life, and intellectual freedom.
One 10th grade girl said she “stayed up thinking about this book all night.” She also said she felt “attached” to the characters and loved the complexity of characters’ and their different points of view. She also loved that the book was realistic, without an artificially happy ending.
Discussing these three books with my patrons reminded me how lucky I am to be a librarian of sophisticated teen readers.
Librarians: do not fear the Quiet Book in Disguise!
Jess deCourcy Hinds is the library director of Bard High School Early College Queens and a freelance writer. Her essays, stories and reviews have appeared in Newsweek, Ms., Reuters.com, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, School Library Journal and literary journals.
Today’s review is for a self-published, high-appeal personal story. Kemba Smith went from college student to drug dealer’s girlfriend to federal prison. Now she is determined to use her experiences to teach others.
As stated in her bio, Kemba’s story has been featured on CNN, Nightline, “Judge Hatchett,” Court TV, “The Early Morning Show,” and a host of other television programs. It has also been featured in several publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Emerge, JET, Essence,Glamour, and People magazines. Her book was featured at the NAACP Convention in July of this year.
You can purchase Poster Child on the author’s website or on the Kemba Smith Foundation website. The author is working with Ingram to make her book available there in the near future.
SMITH, Kemba & Monique W. Morris. Poster Child: The Kemba Smith Story. 332p. photos. IBI. 2011. pap. $19.95. ISBN 978-1-934922-45-3. LC number unavailable.
Adult/High School–Young adults who loved Morris’s runaway hit debut novel, Too Beautiful for Words (HarperTrade, 2001) and Cupcake Brown’s internationally best selling memoir A Piece of Cake (Crown, 2006) will find, thankfully, another book to keep them reading. Teens will relate to the words on the cover, “It was easy falling in love with a drug dealer. The hard part was paying for his crimes.” Smith became the “poster child” for the issue of federal mandatory drug sentencing laws, which have placed many low-level, nonviolent, and even inadvertent offenders behind bars for 25 plus years while their drug dealing, murdering, and abusive boyfriends are on the outside continuing their criminal activities. Readers will be hooked from the beginning, which finds 23-years-old Smith giving birth to her first child in jail. The strongest part of the book chronicles how she fell in love with, was seduced and mesmerized by Khalif, the man who ultimately caused her imprisonment. Smith actually made it out: she was granted clemency by President Bill Clinton in 2000 after serving 6 1/2 years of her initial 24 year sentence. Short on analysis and reflection, there isn’t as much depth to the book as some would like, but it is true to the events of her life and story, and provides a good read. Piper Kerman’s memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison (Spiegel & Grau, 2011) is better written, and brings to stark life the reality of many women remaining behind bars, but doesn’t have the teen appeal of Smith’s story.–Amy Cheney, Alameda County Library, San Leandro, CA
from graphic novel guest blogger, Francisca Goldsmith:
The biography of Tintin’s creator under review below is not, although sharing a similar title, to be confused with the 2008 coffee table style presentation of the artist and his characters. Instead, this translation of a somewhat older French study serves as a contemplative vehicle as well as an informative one. It helps to know the rudiments of Georges Remi’s life: his devotion to scouting, his predicament as one who earned his living as a writer in Occupied Belgium, his concern that no one but Spielberg produce a Tintin movie and that it be live action. But readers who don’t know these details will have their curiosity sufficiently piqued by passages here to investigate—as would Hergé’s intrepid boy reporter with a quiff.
What makes this book a rare find is how it mirrors the subject’s own best known work without either mocking or aping it. From the front cover, showing Hergé and an associate meeting in front of a gloomy mansion, we are faced with echoes of the man’s work and his time. In this cover illustration, Hergé is not only holding fast to a portfolio, but—in keeping with the times, which were the mid-1940’s—smoking a cigarette. This alone should serve as a clue that the book isn’t for contemporary children.
At 64 pages of sequential art panels, the book is sized to the same specifications Hergé placed on his Tintin novels. Perspectives, crowd scenes, dream sequences, even dogs have their places in the telling of his life’s work, just as he employed each of these to detail the stories he told. Teens who loved, or may still love, Tintin will discover that this approach sparks an interest in them in what embedded details each of his own stories included. In short, this is a meta-Tintin almost as much as it is a solid work about Tintin’s creator and keeper.
BOCQUET, José Louis & Jean-Luck Fromenthal. The Adventures of Hergé. tr. from French by Helge Dascher. illus. by Stanislas Barthélémy. 64p. Drawn & Quarterly. 2011. Tr $19.95. ISBN 978-1-77046-058-1. LC number unavailable.
Adult/High School–This homage to the complex life of Tintin’s Belgian creator is an excellent overview of both Georges Remi’s comics style and how politics and his social life were necessary aspects of Tintin’s development and promotion. In chapters that examine key moments between 1914 and Remi’s death in 1983, readers see Remi’s development from youth to artist; from husband to faithful flirt; and in friendships with fellow artists, publishers, and the priest who helped him get Tintin into print. Readers also have a direct view into the effects of his continuing to publish during the Nazi era, how that affected him and culture in the aftermath of World War II, and promotional activities for the very first “Tintin” stories on the moving screen. The creators of this biography are faithful to showing Remi’s personality flaws in a context that is both respectful and insightful. This is truly the story of Remi the man, not of Tintin—although readers see where a number of inspirations for storylines and characters appeared in his life. The “index” provides brief essays on many of the individuals who shaped Remi’s life and legacy, further bolstering the panels in which they are referenced in the text.–Francisca Goldsmith, Infopeople Project, CA
This exemplary collection includes stories by Garth Nix, Peter Beagle and Margo Lanagan, authors that teens will recognize. Check out this “Browse Inside” from HarperCollins for a full list of contents and a few full stories.
DANN, Jack & Nick Gevers, eds. Ghosts by Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense. 389p. Harper Voyager. Sept. 2011. pap. $14.99. ISBN 978-0-06-199971-0. LC 2011028916.
Adult/High School–As Dann and Gevers explain in their brief but excellent introduction, the Victorian age holds a unique place in the imagination as a period when the supernatural and technology (the ghosts and gaslight of their title) were held in almost equal esteem, and the permeable boundary between the two powers the 17 extraordinary stories in this compilation. From James Morrow’s opening tale “The Iron Shroud,” through exquisite stories by John Langan and Richard Harland, the collection again and again questions how much control humans have over the machines they create and how much they truly know about the world. And lurking just beneath this primary theme is the classic Victorian ambivalence towards sexuality, expertly drawn out in Theodora Goss’s “Christopher Raven” and Lucius Shepard’s “Rose Street Attractors,” in which blind faith in science and ghosts lead the characters to shocking revelations about their desires. Though the stories just named are excellent examples of the themes in the collection, each story deserves equal attention, as Dann and Gevers have accomplished the very rare feat of compiling an anthology of almost uniformly high-quality selections. Not every story fits neatly into the subtitle’s promised steampunk, but more than enough do, and hopefully teen lovers of that currently fashionable genre will be drawn into this magnificent book.–Mark Flowers, John F. Kennedy Library, Vallejo, CA
Angela Carstensen is Head Librarian and an Upper School Librarian at Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City. Angela served on the Alex Awards committee for four years, chairing the 2008 committee, and chaired the first YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adult committee in 2009. Recently, she edited Outstanding Books for the College Bound: Titles and Programs for a New Generation (ALA Editions, 2011). Contact her via Twitter @AngeReads.
