Publications about books for children and young adults
Ask the Passengers by A. S. King High School Little, Brown 295 pp. 10/12 978-0-316-19468-6 $17.99 Astrid would be the quintessential Q-for-Questioning girl in her high school’s LGBTQ support group if her small-town, small-minded school had such a thing — and the gay question is only one of many weighing her down. When her humanities [...]
It feels like everyone (the Horn Book included) is talking about Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park (St. Martin’s Griffin, February 2013) — and for good reason. I recently read it when it up was for starring in the May/June issue (it was a shoe-in), and mourned the fact that Rachel Smith and I hadn’t come [...]
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell High School St. Martin’s Griffin 328 pp. 2/13 978-1-250-01257-9 $18.99 e-book ed. 978-1-250-03121-1 $9.99 It’s the start of a new school year in 1986 Omaha when sophomores Eleanor and Park meet for the first time on the bus. They are an unusual pair: she’s the new girl in town, [...]
Poison by Bridget Zinn Middle School Hyperion 280 pp. 3/13 978-1-4231-3993-5 $16.99 g Sixteen-year-old Kyra is a girl with more than her share of secrets. Living in the world of witches, dwarves, potion masters, shape shifters, and the like, she is reluctant to trust anyone, even her best friend and the future queen, Ariana. Readers [...]
Never Say Die by Will Hobbs Intermediate, Middle School Harper/HarperCollins 212 pp. 2/13 978-0-06-170878-7 $16.99 Library ed. 978-0-06-170879-4 $17.89 e-book ed. 978-0-06-222384-5 $9.99 Set in the Yukon Territory hard by the Beaufort Sea, Hobbs’s latest turbocharged wilderness survival story has heavy weather, savage river waters, treacherous trails, and, as chief antagonist, a “grolar bear.” Just [...]
Etched in Clay: The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet by Andrea Cheng; illus. by the author Intermediate, Middle School Lee & Low 143 pp. 1/13 978-1-60060-451-5 $17.95 g Readers familiar with Laban Carrick Hill and Bryan Collier’s 2011 Caldecott Honor–winning picture book Dave the Potter will appreciate Cheng’s interpretation of the man’s life [...]
Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor High School Little, Brown 517 pp. 11/12 978-0-316-13397-5 $18.99 Star-crossed lovers Karou and Akiva, torn apart by unforgivable betrayal at the end of Daughter of Smoke & Bone (rev. 11/11), are now engaged in the renewed war between the chimaera and the seraphim. Both are repulsed by [...]
The Archived by Victoria Schwab Middle School, High School Hyperion 324 pp. 1/13 978-1-4231-5731-1 $16.99 g Mackenzie is a “Keeper”; her job is to return the wakeful dead (or “Histories”) to the Archive, a repository of all human memory. Persuading the dead to return to their rightful resting place often involves kick-ass combat, but never [...]
From the November/December 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Reviewer Christine Hepperman asks author and editor David Levithan about writing gender (and the lack thereof) in his YA novel Every Day. Read the full review of Every Day here. Christine Hepperman: Were there specific challenges in writing a character who is both genders and [...]
Every Day by David Levithan Middle School, High School Knopf 325 pp. 8/12 978-0-307-93188-7 $16.99 Library ed. 978-0-375-97111-2 $19.99 e-book ed. 978-0-307-97563-8 $10.99 “A,” the narrator of Levithan’s brilliantly conceived novel, wakes up in a different sixteen-year-old’s body every morning and has to adjust to different physical characteristics, a different family, a different school, different [...]
