The new edition of my book, What's New in Young Adult Novels? and Ideas for Classroom Use is now available on Lulu.com. at https://tinyurl.com/whatsnewya2020 . As we say goodbye to 2020, I would like to recommend several books I didn't review during the calendar year. Dig by A.S. King, the new Michael Printz Award winner, is a surrealistic story about five unknowingly connected teens, who struggle with family dysfunction. Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam is a novel-in-verse about a black teenage poet in prison for beating a white youth and leaving him in a coma. We Are Not Free, a critically acclaimed novel by Traci Chee, is about 14 Japanese American Teens in internment camps during WWII. Finally, Rebel Spy, a historical novel by Veronica Rossi, is a reimagining of the story of Agent 355, a New York society girl who was a spy for George Washington.
Dig introduces five estranged cousins, whose dysfunctional family includes wealthy grandparents Marla and Gottfried Hemmings, who have left their 5 children and teenage grandchildren to flounder in various state of illness and poverty. David-The Shoveler, Katie-CanIHelpYou?, Loretta-Flea Circus Ring Mistress, First-Class Malcom, and the Freak are brought together by tragedy. Trauma and abuse cause the teens to find security in their self-defined roles. David, who frequently moves with his mother, carries a snow shovel to protect himself from bullies, Katie works at Arby's where she deals drugs from the drive-through window. Loretta finds solace in a family of fleas she carries in a lunchbox, as she struggles with her violent father's abuse. Malcom takes frequent first-class flights to Jamaica with his widower father, who is batting cancer. The Freak appears supernaturally between locations, checking in on her cousins and trying to help. The narrative deals with the issues of racism, white power and privilege and class as the teens' stories are revealed and come together. Can this generation of Hemmings dig its way out of the toxic environment that their grandparents created?
In Punching the Air sixteen-year-old African American Amal is convicted of violence against a white teen, who is in a coma as a result. Amal, an aspiring poet and artist is sent to prison, protesting his innocence. In speaking of testimony against him, he says, their words are "like a scalpel/shaping me into/the monster/they want me to be." While in prison, he experiences the worst of prison life, complete with abuse from guards and fellow prisoners. Working on his GED, he finds a way to express himself through a poetry class and painting murals on the prison walls. The first-person narration allows the reader to experience his anguish, as he waits for his alleged victim to regain consciousness and hopefully set him free. In an author's note Zoboi details her connection with Salaam, who was a member of the "Central Park Five," now known as the "Exonerated Five."
We Are Not Free chronicles the lives of fourteen young Japanese Americans during WWII in this semi-autobiographical story about the incarceration of families in internment camps. Teens who have grown up together in San Francisco's Japantown are taken to Topaz Internment Camp in Utah, where they experience harsh conditions and injustices. When they are forced to enlist and/or swear allegiance to the US, those that refuse, the "no-nos," are taken to Tule Lake Camp. Between 1942 and 1945 the families that pass a background check are allowed to relocate. The stories are told in varying styles, including first and second person, verse and letters. Historical photographs and documents add to the text.
Rebel Spy is the reimagining of the story of a New York society girl, Agent 355, who was a spy for George Washing during the Revolutionary War. Frannie Tasker, who lives with her abusive stepfather on Grand Bahama Island escapes when a shipwreck presents her with the opportunity to assume the identity of a young woman floating in the sea. She dons the woman's clothes and is rescued by a British merchant ship that heads for New York. She meets Asa Lane, a dashing young patriot who lends her Thomas Paine's Common Sense and teaches her to act like a lady, before he is press-ganged into His Majesty's navy. When she gets to NYC she poses as Emmeline and is swept into a world of wealth and luxury. For three years Frannie lives as Emmeline Coates and is courted by a British lieutenant. Access to some of the crown's highest officers gives her the opportunity to provide valuable information to Washington's Culper spy network. She believes in the fight for American liberty and risks her life to aid the revolutionaries. Part swashbuckling adventure, part romance, this is a riveting read.
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