Young Adult

Teaching a lot of Latino students, I am always on the lookout for compelling stories for Latino teens. Saldaña’s short stories will make a great addition to your classroom library.

Teens are familiar with the movie, and I often can entice students to read books whenever they are related to movie versions. Classic tales retold in different ways always make for good class discussions.

Great female protagonist in this thrilling time travel tale of a girl who discovers that the life she thinks she leads in the 1840s is really a tourist attraction for 1996.

I have a habit of opting for young adult books that deal with historical events that I know little about. Ashamed by my lack of knowledge of Uganda’s Idi Amin, I grabbed this incredible story of a 15-year-old’s family and how they deal with Amin’s proclamation in the early 1970s to “weed out” all the foreign Indians. The number of “ethnic cleansing” episodes to take place in just the last hundred years disgusts me, and books like this need to be read early and often.

I have found that this “Gossip Girl” series is practically addictive among middle school teens. This is the latest in the series, and new readers may want to pick up the first episode to become familiar with these preppy New York teens.

Let’s just say that this book is about a girl who becomes a “wereowl” at night. Yes, it is a funny book, and there is a lot more depth to it than that. My students, especially the girls, love this book.

What a wonderful book with quirky characters. Your students will breeze through this set of tales from a small island town in Maine. A great read aloud for all ages, as the book reminds me a lot of Tom Bodett’s End of the Road. Glin Dibley’s illustrations are an added treat, the way Quentin Blake’s drawings add to Roald Dahl’s books.

A stirring look at racism in a 1920s Vermont town, written entirely in verse. Many thanks to Tacy Trowbridge for the recommendation.

I very rarely use the word “poignant,” but I think that is the best description of this important inner-city tale. True, I used to teach in inner-city Los Angeles, so I found the book particularly powerful for my “peeps” (translation: my “people”). Woods is such a wonderful storyteller, though, that I think it would be pretty difficult for anyone to finish this book with dry eyes.

One of the most popular books read by middle school girls in the schools I speak at. Why? They relate to the two young girls in the book and empathize with the struggles of the main character, a recent West Indian immigrant to Harlem named Phyllisia.

True story of the Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre of 1871, this compelling and quick read follows 12-year-old Ming and his family as they deal with this shameful incident in American history. Be sure to get plenty of Angie Ma Wong’s books in your library, as she writes stories that delight audiences of all ages.

Miles Halter lives a dull teenage life until coming to an Alabama boarding school and meeting the girl of his dreams. She and his roommate introduce Miles to a world of mischief and meaning that makes for a story that all students can easily relate to and discuss.

I am sort of irked by the popularity of vampire literature, as it is severely over-represented on bookshelves. That said, I find that if I want to relate to middle schoolers, I need to read what they read. I found myself actually enjoying the vampires in this story. What I like about Robar’s writing is she is very funny, and I hope she writes outside the vampire genre (I’d like to read more of her work).

Let’s face it: every teenager is messed up. That’s a fact. The world collapses for every teenager, regardless of the degree of seriousness. Popularity contests, bulimia – this book has everything your middle school girls will love to talk about in literature circles.

I was saddened to recently hear of Sutcliff’s passing, as she was a master of bringing alive Greek mythology in ways that students could easily comprehend and enjoy. She was a highly gifted storyteller.