Check out the Hunger Games movie poster. Click here to see and hear it in action. Give it a chance to upload–it may take a minute. What a cool riff on the theme of Katniss, the girl on fire.
I can hardly wait: March 23, 2012.
Meanwhile, I’ve bought more copies of The Hunger Games for our library. You’ve got to read all three books before the movie comes out!
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell 
First the confession: I think if Karen Russell wrote a manual on how to put a bicycle together, I’d pretend not to understand the assembly process, so that I could read it over and over. Her language is so fresh, original and creative, I just want it to last.
I know that starling language alone doesn’t make a book interesting for many students (or many adults for that matter). But we are all lucky in that Russell’s wild imagination extends to the plot of her story as well as to the language. This is one of the most fascinating and weird novels I’ve read.
Much of the narrative is told by Ava although her brother, Kiwi, leaves home and then his story is told in alternating chapters. Ava, Kiwi, and their sister Osceola Bigtree are the children of a couple who own a tourist attraction called Swamplandia! on an island off Florida. They raise and wrestle alligators (which they call Seths). When the mother, Hilola Bigtree, dies at thirty-six from ovarian cancer, the family loses its star and Swamplandia! loses most of its business. The attraction’s doom appears to be sealed when a macabre version of a Disney-style attraction opens on the mainland—The World of Darkness.
Family members try to save their business with Kiwi off to the World of Darkness to work; Ava raising a red alligator, hoping that its coloring will fascinate new tourists; and the Bigtree dad going off to seek backers for his Darwinism feature idea. But with their father gone, Osceola’s (Ossie’s) obsession with ghosts appears to become a possession. She has a spectral boyfriend who seems to inhabit her body. When she disappears, Ava, alone on the island, must face the Underworld and its inhabitants to save her.
It’s hard to explain why this book is so fascinating because it doesn’t fit the typical teen supernatural genre at all (or maybe that’s why it is fascinating). It’s hard to know when ghosts are real; when adults are friends rather than predators; when the past is inhabiting the present; who is in danger and who is safe. Add to this that throughout the story, there is much irony and humor derived from the siblings’ antics, from their utter unfamiliarity with the mainland and behaviors that are common in ordinary lives.
Swamplandia! is another book you could use to impress your teachers by comparing it to the classic works you are reading in school. The most obvious comparison would be to Heart of Darkness, but I saw some of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in the way that the characters were losing everything and even a bit from a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Young Goodman Brown”) when a hair ribbon from a lost girl floats out of the sky and is caught by the seeker.
I’d recommend this weird, wild story broadly, but if you are a teen who likes to write creatively and seeks good examples, Swamplandia! is a must.
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
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Another really fun and funny book from one of my all-time favorite YA authors. If you haven’t read any John Green yet, you must! And although I thoroughly enjoyed An Abundance of Katherines (despite it’s unfortunate and ugly cover!—the paperback has a different cover and that was wise of the publisher), I’m going to ask that this not be your first John Green book. Try any of the other three I’ve reviewed and come to this one afterward.
An Abundance of Katherines is about Colin Singleton, child prodigy who is: just realizing that being a child prodigy doesn’t mean he’ll be a genius in adult life; always dumped by his girlfriends, nineteen of them, all of whom are named Katherine and the last of whom just dumps him on graduation night as the book opens; great at anagrams; trying to create a mathematical theorem about romantic relationships that will accurately predict how long the relationship will last and who will dump whom (with the hope that said theorem will boost him into genius status and make him memorable).
Since Colin has just been dumped, he and his best friend, Hassan, decided to go on a road trip in a car they have named Satan’s Hearse. Hassan, like Colin, is very bright, nerdy, and speaks multiple languages; unlike Colin, he is very lazy. His goal is not to go to college but to watch Judge Judy every day and do as little work as possible. His dad agrees to the road trip if Hassan will find a job. Luckily, both guys do find jobs—in Gutshot, Tennessee, they are hired by the owner of a factory that manufactures tampon strings to interview residents for a local history project.
Green makes a lot of the action very nerdy—on purpose. When the boys say something in Arabic or French, there are footnotes translating, and these are laugh-out-loud funny. These characters are just very witty. (The scene where they two are taken on a wild pig hunt is hilarious—worth the price of admission.) And even though they are nerds, they appeal to the girls with their clever jokes and gags as well as they sense of honor when that becomes necessary. So in Gutshot, Colin meets Lindsey. Can he find true romance with a girl who isn’t a Katherine?
Apparently, as Green explains in an after note, the math in the book is real. Flipping through the pages, you’ll see a couple of graphs—but don’t worry if you don’t like/get math. It isn’t necessary to the story at all. If you like math, there are a few pages at the end of the novel in which a friend of Green’s, who is a math wiz, explains the theorem. I have math anxiety, so I didn’t get far with this, and, as I said, none of the math is “integral” to the story 
.
Matched by Ally Condie 
“It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”
—William Carlos Williams
Yes, Matched is another future dystopia, but like Hunger Games, this one is a great read. And yet the story itself isn’t similar to Hunger Games. So—enjoy it on its own terms.
Matched takes its title from the important milestone in teens’ lives—at age seventeen—when they are formally matched to their life’s partner. This person is someone they don’t know, living in another area of the country, perhaps. Yet matches succeed because the society has all the data necessary to pick the two people who are most perfect for one another. The two will get to know one another over the next four years, and, at twenty-one, will be united. They will have until they are thirty-one to produce children (maximum two); after that, childbearing isn’t allowed because, statistically, it can produce kids that aren’t perfect. Some members of society are ‘singles’ and don’t receive matches.
Oddly, when Cassia goes to her matching banquet (the only time she is allowed to wear something beautiful and colorful), she is matched with her best friend, Xander. Everyone is envious because she already knows and loves this boy. But later, when she goes home and places his data card into her reader, he disappears momentarily and a different match shows on the screen, another boy she knows—Ky, who is from the outer regions, whose parents are dead, and who was adopted by his aunt and uncle.
Right after Cassia’s ‘match banquet,’ her grandfather has his 80th birthday banquet, which is really the last celebration before death, as the society requires everyone to die on the 80th birthday (data shows it’s the best time to die). On this night, Grandfather lets Cassia know of poems he had hidden, poems not belonging to the 100 preserved by the Society—and therefore illegal to have. One of the poems is Dylan Thomas’s “Go Not Gentle into that Good Night,” and Cassia realizes this isn’t just about death but also about not obeying (gently) the Society when it doesn’t allow individuality.
Cassia says that she, like others, has always believed, “Following the rules. Staying safe. These are the things that matter.” But once she finds Ky in the data port, everything is open to question. She realizes that her father breaks simple rules and laws out of love for the family—and that her mother follows all the rules for the same reason. Cassia needs to find out if ‘falling in love with someone’s story is the same thing as falling in love with the person.’ She needs to know if danger and uncertainty are worth the opportunity to make choices about life and love.
YA dystopian novels are taking a hit right now. The Wall Street Journal (a conservative business newspaper) just published an opinion piece about this. (If you’d like to read it, click here.) This surprises me as the new YA novels are very much like George Orwell’s books (Animal Farm and 1984), which is generally loved by conservatives. I think a discussion of this social issue would be a great topic for a research paper or a literary analysis paper. Another great topic would be to compare Matched to the literary and art works it discusses (and which are outlawed by its Society), particularly the Dylan Thomas poem. By the way—the quote from the poet William Carlos Williams isn’t in the novel, but it was so much of what the book is about, I had to mention it.
If you’re just looking for a good read and nothing more, this is still your novel. The characters are complex and no one is a ‘bad guy’ in the love triangle that evolves. As a bonus, its star-crossed lovers, just like Romeo and Juliet, are bound for trouble.
Paper Towns by John Green 
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
–Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
I admit it. I just love John Green’s books. I started with Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which I guess is sort of backwards because it was his most recent work. But I loved it so much that I stepped back into Looking for Alaska and now Paper Towns. Once again, Green has done a great job of showing teen relationships—the group of guys at the center of this story (our protagonist and his two best friends) is hilarious. Q (for Quentin), Ben, and Radar (who edits Omnictionary, a fictional Wikipedia, and whose parents own the world’s largest collection of Black Santas) are spot-on in their conversations, their ‘dissing’ one another, their geekiness, and in the way they ultimately have one another’s backs. But while we do have a bit of ‘bromance’ here, the deeper story is about Q’s relationship with Margo Roth Spiegelman.
The story grabs the reader in the prologue when Q and Margo, living in Orlando, Florida, are only 10 years old. On a trip to a local park, they find a dead man under an oak tree. Later they learn that he’s killed himself. While Q is very much afraid, Margo is curious and steps ever closer. This tells us a lot about their personalities. Later a character will say of her, “’She’s the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven like Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome.’”
The story itself takes place just weeks before Q, Ben, Radar and Margo are to graduate. Q and Margo live next door from one another, but over the years, they have separated as friends because Margo is beautiful and hangs with a cooler crowd than the band geeks. Q has always had a crush on Margo, and so when she appears at his bedroom window and tells him they are going to pull an all-nighter in which she plans revenge on her not-true friends (including one who is sleeping with Margo’s boyfriend and that boyfriend himself), Q ditches his safety/comfort-first personality for the chance to hang out with Margo. Their adventures are wacky—the kinds of things you wish you could really do to the people who betray you, but never can. (So live that fantasy through this book—it’s entertaining! Just to whet your appetite—they use 3 whole catfishes, Veet, Vaseline, Mountain Dew, tulips, water, tissues, blue spray paint.)
At school the next day, Q is wondering if he’ll be able to connect with Margo once again. But she’s not there. In fact, she’s disappeared, something that’s happened a few times before as she has careless parents and seeks attention. But this time, she doesn’t return. And now Q has a mission—to find her, to figure out if she’s committed suicide—certainly a possibility judging from the clues she’s left. He begins to follow her path starting with a volume of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and using passages she’s highlighted. Q seeks Margo in ‘paper towns,’ neighborhoods/subdivisions that were built and then abandoned.
“’I can hear Margo that night as we drove around Orlando. I can hear her saying to me, “I don’t want some kids to find me swarmed with flies on a Saturday morning in Jefferson Park.” Not wanting to be found by some kids in Jefferson Park isn’t the same thing as not wanting to die.’”
In seeking Margo, the guys and one of Margo’s friends (now also girlfriend of Ben) take a 24-hour road trip. It’s life-changing, just the way a graduation should be.
Just a note here: If you need to write a literary analysis, comparing the action/characters in this book to the characters/authors in the classic literature they are reading (Walt Whitman, Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick) would be a lot of fun. It’d be creative, too, and your teacher would think you were wonderful for bridging the literary canon and YA literature. )
Fire by Kristin Cashore
For the second time in a week, I’m in the weird position of recommending to you a book that I really didn’t like all that much. I hope that this doesn’t appear hypocritical. Let me just say that I didn’t like Fire (or Graceling, its partner book) because over several years of study as an English major, I learned to loathe this sort of thing. And the reason I’m recommending it to you is that I honestly think you’re going to like it. (You’re young and not so jaded!) I’ve tried it out on two students. One is finished with the book and really enjoyed it; the other is still reading (and that’s a good sign). All the professional reviews were glowing.
Fire, who lives in the Dells, is the last human ‘monster’ in the kingdom. Monsters are not as we think of them; they are like typical creatures, but have extraordinary coloring and the ability not only to read minds, but to influence others’ thoughts, to control them if they aren’t strong enough to resist. Fire’s fabulous coloring includes hair that is a true red, orange and yellow. She’s is so unearthly beautiful that some people can’t resist touching her, running their hands through her hair. (Yes, if you know me, you know the author was already losing me with this.) Fire must cover herself in public to be able to travel unmolested. Her major concern with being a monster is that she not behave like her father (Cansrel), who used his powers to ruin lives and nearly destroy the kingdom.
Fire lands inKing City, where all the important men lust after her. However, she’s already engaged in a casual sexual relationship with a childhood friend, Archer. King Nash and his brother Brigan—the commander of troops—are engaged in saving the kingdom from evildoers. They could use Fire’s help in interrogating spy prisoners. Fire’s not sure whether using her powers to control others’ minds, even for the benefit of the kingdom, is right or just. So she has some important decisions to make. And, since both brothers are gaga over her, she has to sort that out, too, as well as her feelings for Archer, who is having multiple relationships with women in his frustration over the fact that Fire won’t marry him. (A Ms. Waddle side note: Girls, don’t fall for that nonsense when a guy tells you he’s playing the field because you’re not giving him everything he wants. It’s the oldest trick in the book.)
Some of the reasons I had a hard time getting through Fire were the same reasons it took me awhile read Graceling, the primary problem being that it was too repetitive. (Fire was tired of being attacked? Yeah, well, I got sick of hearing about her musings on the subject.) Other things just seems silly to me—that her presence provoked monster attacks—the monster form of raptors especially go after her. Or the constant references to her ‘monthly bleedings,’ how she had to lock herself indoors during that time or risk being shredded by monster creatures, who were especially sensitive to her at that time. I guess Cashore was trying to elevate this woman’s issue to a philosophical discussion (what should she tell Brigan’s little daughter about it? Would it hurt her psyche?) I believe this sort of thing will drive male readers away. And the inclusion of a single character from Graceling seemed artificial.
Nevertheless.
When all is said and done, you’re going to like this book because Fire is the same kind of kick-butt, never-back-down, take-no-prisoners heroine that Graceling’s Katsa was. She, too, is unconventional, refuses to get married, and carefully guards her mind and her independence. You’ll like the romance. In addition, Fire makes some important points about the relationship between parents and children. Fire has to understand that she is not responsible for her father’s evil and that she is not destined to repeat it. And there are some great quotable lines. I liked this from the end:
“Some people had too much power and too much cruelty to live. Some people were too terrible, no matter if you loved them; no matter that you had to make yourself terrible too, in order to stop them. Some things just had to be done.”
Note: I tagged this as ‘mature’ because of the casual sexual relationships that many of the characters have. There aren’t any explicit sexual descriptions, but I think some parents would have an issue with the book. A war is going on, so there’s violence, too, but it’s not graphic.
