Book Crush: For Kids and Teens - Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Interest

by Nancy Pearl

  AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

  A lot of kids are insatiably curious about the lives of real people, especially if it’s someone they’ve heard of. Many of these autobiographies were written by well-known authors, and reading them always seems to give additional insight into their books.

  Bill Peet, author of Chester the Worldly Pig and nearly thirty other favorite picture books, tells the story of growing up in Indianapolis and then going to work for Walt Disney, where he was instrumental in the success of such children’s films as Dumbo and 101 Dalmatians.

  Although they’re frequently shelved in the juvenile fiction section, Farley Mowat’s Owls in the Family and The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be are really autobiographical stories that chronicle this Canadian writer’s experiences with the animals he loved when he was growing up in Ontario and Saskatchewan in the 1930s.

  Artist William Kurelek also recalls—in stories and paintings—his childhood on the Canadian prairies during approximately the same period in A Prairie Boy’s Winter and A Prairie Boy’s Summer.

  Other autobiographies not to miss include 26 Fairmount Avenue; Here We All Are; On My Way; and What a Year by Tomie dePaola; The Lost Garden by LawrenceYep (which is especially good at showing the relationship between Yep’s life and his award-winning books); Looking Back: A Book of Memories by Lois Lowry; Beverly Cleary’s A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet; Homesick: My Own Story by Jean Fritz; and The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer’s Life by Sid Fleischman (what he really wanted to be was a magician, not a writer).

  BEFORE AND AFTER HARRY (POTTER, OF COURSE)

  Although the recent huge popularity of this genre can be traced back to the impact of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and its terrific sequels, fantasy novels have always been an important part of children’s publishing. Long before Harry, Ron, Hermione, Snape, et al. were even a gleam in their author’s eye, writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, E. Nesbit, C. S. Lewis (as I wrote those names, I wondered why they all chose to be known by their initials), and others were writing books that are still excellent choices for middle-grade readers.

  There are basically two kinds of fantasy novels (whether for children or for adults). The first type is when the action of the novel takes place in a wholly fantastical world, peopled with dragons, princesses, witches, sorcerers, warlocks—the whole lovely magical shtick—and there’s no real connection with our everyday lives. Examples of this include Rowling, of course (one of the major appeals of her novels is the splendid evocation of Hogwarts), and Tolkien (once read, who can ever forget Middle Earth?). In the second type of novel, ordinary humans somehow stumble across or into something magical, and they usually, but not always, return to their everyday life at the book’s conclusion.The novels of E. Nesbit exemplify this second sort, as do the Narnia novels of C. S. Lewis, and Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.

  Publishing these days seems to be focused on the first type of novel, that is, writers dreaming up fully realized worlds (definitely not our own world) where magic prevails and there’s often an epic struggle between good and evil. There are lots of these books that will please young fantasy readers.

  The story goes that J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as a series of tales for his young children (and when they grew up he wrote The Lord of the Rings trilogy for them). In any case, The Hobbit is pretty much irresistible for any fantasy fan—it’s got dragons, elves, dwarfs, and a diminutive hero who succeeds in his quest by means of a riddle game.

  Someone referred to the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer “Die Hard with fairies” and it’s so true. Start with Artemis Fowl and continue on through The Arctic Incident, The Eternity Code, The Opal Deception, and whatever’s come out since Book Crush was published.

  Other good choices include The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, beginning with The Field Guide; Angie Sage’s Magyk, the first in the series featuring the magically talented seventh son of a seventh son; Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Trilogy, including The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem’s Eye, and Ptolemy’s Gate (all dealing with a djinn named Bartimaeus and his master, Nathaniel); Jean Ferris’s Love Among the Walnuts; Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember (where the secrets are revealed at just the right pace, and readers will want to go immediately on to the sequel, The People of Sparks, and the prequel, The Prophet of Yonwood); shape shifters are the main characters in Robin Jarvis’s Thorn Ogres of Hagwood (and sequels); The Wizard’s Map by Jane Yolen; Carol Kendall’s The Gammage Cup and The Whisper of Glocken; Herbie Brennan’s The Faerie Wars and its sequel, The Purple Emperor (which has a well-drawn, realistic hero and a possible if not exactly plausible plot—sort of).

  As I mentioned, the novels of E. Nesbit and C. S. Lewis exemplify the type of novels in which children stumble into a magical world. Good examples of the former’s books are Five Children and It and The Phoenix and the Carpet. When it comes to C. S. Lewis, where the children discover Narnia via a wardrobe, the question is always in what order to read the books (it’s not really a question of whether or not you do read them). In terms of Narnia time, the series begins with The Magician’s Nephew, but I would recommend beginning with the first (and best) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and then going on to Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle. I’m probably prejudiced here (and likely in the minority), but this is the order in which I read them as they were first published in the 1950s.The heavy Christian allegory with which Lewis frontloaded his books will probably go over the heads of most readers (as it did mine at that age), who will just read these for the grand adventure.

  Edward Eager, who wrote in the 1950s and 1960s, was heavily influenced by Nesbit. In Eager’s novels, some perfectly ordinary boys and girls have to cope with the entrance of magic into their lives.They find the magic, make sense of it, and then actually use it. Eager’s books include Half Magic, Knight’s Castle, Seven-Day Magic (a particular favorite of bookworms), The Time Garden, Magic or Not?, Magic by the Lake, and The Well-Wishers.

  Suzanne Collins’s Gregor the Overlander and its sequels are a fine addition to fantasy literature.You’ll discover that Gregor is one brave eleven-year-old, but a word of warning—don’t start the last few chapters of this novel on a school night, because the suspense builds to an almost unbearable level, and you will either a) not be able to stop reading until it’s far too late, or b) not be able to fall asleep when you finish because your heart is still pounding too fast to relax.

  The 13th Is Magic! by Joan Howard is about Ronnie and Gillian, who live in an apartment on Central Park West on the floor above the twelfth floor, only it’s called the fourteenth floor. It takes a cat called Merlin to take them to that magical missing floor.

  Others not to miss are The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth (a splendid family read-aloud); Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting and The Eyes of the Amaryllis (a superb novel that deserves a wider readership); and The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson (just one of her many excellent fantasies).

  BIOGRAPHICAL FICTION

  Biographical fiction is a particularly good way to introduce young readers to interesting people. It’s an easy leap from reading these to the whole world of nonfiction, and each of these books is practically guaranteed to start the reader off on a personalized journey of discovery with all sorts of interesting byways. For many, reading these books will begin a lifelong love affair with historical fiction (and that’s not a bad thing at all).That was certainly the case for me.

  Jean Lee Latham’s Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, winner of the 1955 Newbery Medal, is the story of the self-taught, eighteenth-century genius Nathaniel Bowditch, who grew up in the sailing town of Salem, Massachusetts, and despite never achieving his life’s dream of attending Harvard, revolutionized the practice of navigation through his book The American Practical Navigator, known familiarly as the “Sailors’ Bible.”

  I, Juan de
Pareja by Elizabeth Borton de Treviño is written in the form of a diary and tells the story of de Pareja, an African slave who becomes the assistant to the great seventeenth-century Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez, and grows up to become a great artist himself, despite having to overcome the ban on teaching slaves to paint.

  While waiting for her second husband, King Henry II of England, to join her in heaven, Eleanor of Aquitaine (married to two kings—although not simultaneously!—the mother of two kings, and a not-inconsequential woman in her own right) and three of her friends look back over her long and eventful life in E. L. Konigsburg’s A Proud Taste for Miniver and Scarlet.

  What’s it like to have a genius living in your house? Particularly if he’s an eccentric, not to say weird, sort of guy? That’s the situation presented in Beethoven Lives Upstairs by Barbara Nichol, as Christopher describes his feelings in a series of letters to his uncle about the strange musician boarding in his home.

  BOYS WILL BE BOYS

  The best thing about the books in this category is that even if you’re not a boy age nine to about twelve, the chances are good that you’ll enjoy reading about these appealing characters.

  What if you could earn a lot of money (well, a lot of money to you) just by eating a worm a day for fifteen days? How bad could it really be? And how many ways could you find to disguise the—ugh—slithery taste of worm? Billy faces the challenge in Thomas Rockwell’s hilarious and yucky How to Eat Fried Worms. Skip the movie and stay home and read the book.

  When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt is the story of an important summer in the life of thirteen-year-old Toby Wilson, when his mother leaves to pursue her dream as a country singer, his best friend’s brother is off risking his life in Vietnam, and Zachary Beaver, the world’s fattest boy, comes to their small Texas town as a circus freak.

  Joey Pigza, the main character in Jack Gantos’s Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, describes himself as “messed up but lovable.” Adults will recognize that Joey’s problem is ADHD, and many young readers will probably see parts of themselves in this warm and human portrait of a boy who just can’t control his behavior.

  John D. Fitzgerald grew up at the turn of the twentieth century in Adenville, Utah, where it seemed that everyone in town—except him and his family—was a Mormon. But whatever difficulties he might have on that account are minor, because John D.’s older brother, Tom D., just happens to be the smartest person around (renowned for solving the deepest dilemmas, swindling his friends out of their prized possessions, and always confounding his little brother). Start with Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain and go on from there, including More Adventures of the Great Brain and The Great Brain at the Academy. (It was a toss-up for me whether to put these titles in the “LOL: Laugh Out Loud” section or here.)

  It’s 1935, and twelve-year-old Moose Flanagan has just moved to Alcatraz Island, off the coast of northern California, where his dad is doing double duty as an electrician and a guard at the prison there (where Al Capone, once the most hunted criminal in America, is now housed behind bars). In his journal, Moose shares with us his resentment at being stuck babysitting for his sister, Natalie (whose odd and sometimes difficult behavior is often embarrassing), so that he can’t take part in lots of the school activities, and the adventures that his good friend Piper, the warden’s daughter, comes up with. It all adds up to the entertaining Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko.

  Two novels in which the main character has to overcome some pretty powerful fears in order to prove his courage to himself and others are Jungle Dogs by Graham Salisbury, which takes place in Hawaii, and Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry, set in Polynesia.

  Polly Horvath’s The Vacation has her trademark ditsy plot, outlandish characters, and snappy dialogue. When his parents go off to Africa (his mother decides she wants to be a missionary), Henry’s aunts Pigg and Magnolia come to stay with him and the three take off on a wild car trip that includes Henry’s being lost in a swamp in Florida, Pigg meeting the true love of her life (and changing her name to Peg), and, finally, the return of Henry’s parents, who’ve had their own adventures in Africa. My favorite character might possibly be Henry’s father, who always comes up with these great pronouncements and tidbits of advice for his son like “Son ...many of the things you are going to buy in your life are going to be lemons.There is nothing you can do about this. Do not blame yourself. Do not blame your spouse. Try not to blame each other.”

  What if you found a whole lot of money and needed to spend it really fast? That’s the premise of the enjoyable and engaging novel Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce, which was made into an equally pleasurable film.

  In Golden and Grey (An Unremarkable Boy and a Rather Remarkable Ghost) by Louise Arnold, the new boy in school, who’s being bullied and picked on, is befriended by a ghost, who ends up helping both of them find acceptance in their respective worlds.

  Joseph Bruchac’s The Heart of a Chief is set on an Indian reservation in New Hampshire and narrated by an eleven-year-old boy. It concerns three issues facing Native Americans today: casinos, rampant alcoholism, and how to deal with high school and college sports teams whose names seem to denigrate Indian culture. It’s heavy, but not overly so.

  Other great “boy” books include Leon and the Spitting Image and Leon and the Champion Chip by Allen Kurzweil; Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume; Louis Sachar’s Holes and Small Steps; Avi’s Nothing But the Truth: A Documentary Novel; and Loser by Jerry Spinelli (with a wonderful picture of a supportive family).

  COMING OF AGE

  I find it interesting that most of the books I describe in this category could also just as easily fall under the heading of “fantasy.” It makes me wonder if it is no longer possible to develop self-knowledge without the help of a wizard. Still, these books touch on significant themes, and, most important, are quite enjoyable reading.

  In Dia Calhoun’s Aria of the Sea, thirteen-year-old Cerinthe Gale must choose between two possible careers: becoming the dancer her mother always wanted her to be, or fulfilling her interest in, talent for, and fear of becoming a mederi, a healer.

  When Robert Norel is asked by a strange old woman in a nursing home to explore the mysteries of Chance House and discover the truth about a boy who fell to his death from the upstairs flat, he discovers things about himself as well as the past, in Nicky Singer’s Feather Boy.

  I first read Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea when I was early in my career as a children’s librarian, and I remember being simply stunned by the novel’s inventiveness and theme. I’ve always felt, in fact, that the training the hero, Sparrowhawk, goes through to become a wizard is probably the same training that Gandalf (of J. R. R. Tolkien fame) received as a youngster. Le Guin’s novel (which is followed by The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, and Tehanu) functions both as a grand fantasy and a rattling good coming-of-age tale.

  Fans of the Le Guin novel will also not want to miss Michael Gruber’s spectacular The Witch’s Boy, in which the most unattractive and unattractively named Lump, abandoned as an infant, is adopted by a witch (against the wishes of her familiar, a cat named Falance), who is extremely powerful at witchcraft but alas, also totally unfit for parenting. Lump’s experiences growing up reflect his adopted mother’s emotional coldness, and it takes many plot twists and turns for Lump to finally accept himself, learn his true name, and forgive his mother.

  Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell collaborated on a madly popular and inventive series of books called The Edge Chronicles. Unlike some series, it’s important to start with the first title, Beyond the Deepwoods, which introduces Twig, the young human hero.When Twig, who’s being raised by woodtrolls in the world of the Edge, learns from his mother that he was discovered as a baby wrapped in a quilt under a tree, he sets out on a perilous journey to discover the truth about where he comes from and who he is, but
not before he’s threatened by a variety of evil and dangerous beings.Although each book in the series tells a separate tale, there are internal sequences that make subsequent books hard to follow unless you read them in order. Some of my favorites involve librarian Rook Barkwater, including The Last of the Sky Pirates and Vox, but in fact they’re all good, complicated, suspense-filled fun.

  Another top-notch coming-of-age-with-the-help-of-magic novel for this age group is Nancy Farmer’s The Sea of Trolls. Based on Norse mythology, and notable for the excellent writing and three-dimensional characters that mark all of Farmer’s novels, this tale of a young boy thrust into a world of Berserkers, bards, and trolls is just outstanding.

  D@%! THE TORPEDOES, FULL STEAM AHEAD

  Novels centered around war for this age group are great for getting kids to think about some very deep stuff, like courage and conquering one’s fears, what it means to be a hero, the whole knotty question of good versus evil, and the consequences of our choices. So if you think your readers are up to the emotional depth of the titles in this category, try these:

  Set during Napoleon’s attempt to conquer Russia with his Grand Armée in 1812, An Innocent Soldier by Josef Holub tells the story of a sixteen-year-old orphan farmhand, Adam, and how he ends up fighting in the place of his master’s son.This is not only an interesting story about the Napoleonic War, but also a fine introduction to the social systems and lifestyles of the early nineteenth century. Because it’s translated from German, Holub’s writing sounds a little different than readers may be used to but once you’re used to it, the story rockets along.