Young Adult

I’ve had four different friends go on missionary trips to Guatemala in the past year, and I was excited to read this tale of life there. Your students will gain healthy perspective by looking into the realities of others their age in economically poorer regions of the world.

Harry Potter meets Mary Poppins in this fascinating fantasy, the first in a series.

Thank goodness for Walter Mosley. When I was teaching 8th grade boys in South Los Angeles, Walter Mosley was our savior. He has written so many great books that speak to so many of my students (e.g. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Devil in a Blue Dress). This book represents his foray into young adult literature, and it is great. Whether he realizes it or not, Mr. Mosley has quite a fan base among teenage boys. A great author!

What wonders await the bored and curious? Four separate stories highlight how a magic library card changes the lives of disenfranchised youth. I LOVE books that promote the wonders of reading!

At least once a year I have to remind folks that a great writer to get boys hooked on reading is Philip K. Dick, as his books are always short, engaging and haunting!

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.