Wide Awake by David Levithan

Duncan is ecstatic.  It’s the morning after the first openly gay Jewish man has been elected president of the United States.  He and his boyfriend and all of their friends worked hard on the campaign, and it seems to them that now nothing can go wrong.  But then the governor of Kansas declares a thousand votes for Stein invalid and the entire election is in jeopardy.  Wide Awake is set in the not-too-distant future, after the Greater Depression (Debt, Deficit, and Fuel), the Reign of Fear, the War To End All Wars, the Prada Riots, and the Worldwide Healthcare movement.  While it was published in 2006, a lost of what Levithan posits in this novel are either quite likely or have already happened in the intervening few years.

Review by Kathleen from a library copy

Love and Lies by Ellen Wittlinger

Marisol’s decided she’s going to take a year off between high school and college in order to write a novel.  She’s already worked on a zine and made some contacts in that world.  Now she’s living in an apartment with her best friend and his boyfriend, and she just wants to write her novel and find a girlfriend.  And when her beautiful writing teacher seems to like her and a younger girl seems to have a massive crush on her, Marisol doesn’t know what to do.  And how does she know what’s true?

Review by Kathleen from a library copy

Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have by Allen Zadoff

Andrew’s always been fine with his life.  He’s 307 pounds and hangs out with the Model UN guys, while his sister is miss thin and popular.  He’s used to not fitting in.  But just before the start of his sophomore year, he meets a girl.  And not just any girl.  He meets a really pretty girl at a wedding his mom is catering.  And it turns out she goes to his school now.  So what’s a guy to do?  He tells her he’s an athlete.  So when the star quaterback saves Andrew from getting beaten up on the day of the football tryouts, Andrew takes it as a sign and trys out.  To his great surprise, he makes the team.  But is he really a football player inside?

Review by Kathleen from a library copy

Tattoo by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

When Bailey and her three friends get temporary tattoos at the mall, things start getting strange.  Bailey hears a voice saying “To fight, to live, we two of three bestow this gift.”  The tattoos are talking to her.  She starts seeing people, and she sets fire to another girl’s shoes.  One of her friends can hear what the others are thinking.  Another gets premonitions of the future.  And the fourth can change things.  The girls are excited about their new powers.  But then the girl who can see the future gets a vision of a girl on a balcony, falling.  Suddenly, the powers aren’t fun anymore.  Something serious is going on.  Can the four friends figure out the mystery and stop it before their powers disappear?

Review by Kathleen

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Cameron just wants to get through high school.  His twin sister is queen of the popular kids and is dating the star of the football team.  Cameron would rather get a little wasted in the fourth floor restroom and skip working at the burger joint.  But suddenly his normal existence starts going a little… odd.  He starts seeing things, like a feather on his windowsill.  And then he gets diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.  Also known as Mad Cow.  He’s going to die.  And one day, in the hospital, he sees Gonzo, a kid from his high school, who just happens to be a hypochondriac dwarf.  He sees Dulcie, a punk angel that only he can see.  And Dulcie sets Cameron off on a quest to find a cure, and he’s got to take Gonzo.  Along the way they pick up a yard gnome who may or may not be a Norse god.  But is any of this even real?  Is Cameron on a road trip, or is his brain turning to mush in a lonely hospital room?

Going Bovine won the Printz Award in 2009. 

Review by Kathleen

Things Left Unsaid by Stephanie Hemphill

Sarah is pretty invisible at school.  Her friend Amanda is a size zero and probably suffering from anorexia or bulimia, and her friend Gina stopped being nice to her when a guy Gina liked showed a preference for Sarah.  And then there’s Derek, the cute boy Sarah’s crushing on from afar.  Sarah’s always been a straight A student, sung in choir but never had a solo, and never did anything to get herself noticed.  But then she runs into Robin one night at a party when she goes back to get her jacket, and Robin’s trying it on.  Robin and Sarah topple the tiki torches on the lawn over, burning holes in the grass.  Slowly, Sarah starts wearing more and more black.  She picks up smoking from Robin, and turns to ask Robin’s input before every decision.  Her other friends start to fade into the background of SarahAndRobin.  Until the day of the SAT test.  The day Robin’s mom tells Sarah Robin’s not feeling well and to go to the test without her.  The day Robin goes into the bathroom with a bottle of pills, a glass of water, and a razor blade, and gets into the tub.

Things Left Unsaid is a novel in verse, which means the whole book is a collection of poems.  It won the 2006 Myra Cohn Livingston Award for Excellence in Poetry by the Children’s Literature Council of Southern California.  Stephanie Hemphill is also known for Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath, and the forthcoming Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials.

Review by Kathleen