The Book Search

There are some amazing new books out there for teens who are struggling, which is one of my favorite genres!   Here are three really great ones to look for. The first one is called "Salt to the Sea" by Ruta Septys.  She has already written a couple of terrific pieces of historical fiction, one called "Between Shades of Gray", which is about a Lithuanian family trying to survive during the Russian occupation.  The second is called "Out of the Easy" which is set in New Orleans in the 1950s.  I was really lucky to get to hear her speak at a reading convention and was completely impressed with her research skills and the way she tells a story.  This book is an excellent example of her storytelling prowess.  It's told from the perspective of four different people, which is a bit confusing at first.  One is a German sailor, one is German art restorer, one is a Lithuanian nurse, and one is a young Polish girl.  Each of them have a story to tell and eac...

This week I've been reading award winning books.  My local library JUST got in the books that are on the short list for the National Book award for young people so I totally SCORED.  I'd read three of them already, so I had two left.  This week I read one of them called "Threatened" by Eliot Schrefer.  He also wrote Endangered which was also on the short list for the National Book award last year and I can totally see why.  "Threatened" was such an interesting story with very compelling characters and very topical situations.  It's about a boy named Luc who lives in Gabon.  He is so ignorant that as he starts to tell his story, I was bit confused about how he had come to live in a boarding house (essentially a share cropper kind of situation where he owed a lot of money from his mother's and sister's extended hospital stay so he was working off the debt, which sounded like it would probably take forever).  Luc is serving drinks at a local bar whe...