Stolen by Vivian Vande Velde.

On the same day a witch is chased to her home and it is set on fire, a girl walks out of the forest.  Isabelle seems to be a girl who was stolen from the local village six years ago.  But Isabella can’t remember anything at all.  Her family takes her in and as Isabella learns more about them, her own past is slowly revealed to her.  Is she Isabella?  Or is she someone else?  And what role does the evil witch play in all of this?

For such a brief book, this novel has intrigue, mystery and twists galore.  Readers will enjoy the character of Isabella who though confused about her own past sees others with great clarity.  The villains in the novel are deliciously evil, roles are complex and twists are built up to but not foreseen.  Even those who can predict who Isabella is will not see parts of the ending coming.  How wonderful to be right but to be surprised too.

Recommended for readers who like a good thriller.  The cover alone guarantees that this will fly off the shelves.  It also has enough depth to be a good discussion book around Halloween.  Appropriate for ages 12-14.

Response by Paul Volponi

Volponi does it again with another short novel that is fast paced and filled with hard-to-answer ethical questions.  Noah and his friends go to an Italian-American neighborhood to steal a Lexus.  Before they are able to, they are jumped by three boys who shout racial epithets and beat Noah’s head in with a baseball bat.  Noah survives the attack and finds himself at the center of a racial controversy.  Was the other boy right to defend their community from theft?  Or was Noah and his friends targeted because they are black? 

The fast-moving prose is interspersed with police interviews of the suspects, adding to the drama.  Volponi does not come up with simple answers to the complicated questions that are raised here.  Part of his skill is in formulating the scenario and the questions but allowing the teen reader to make up their own mind.  Even the attackers are not cardboard, each emerging as a person themselves. 

So much is done in such a short number of pages that it is staggering.  Noah’s own family is not stereotypical at all.  His complicated relationship with the mother of his baby girl is equally deep and complex.   Noah’s eventual response to his attack is nuanced and mature.

Sure to be a popular read among teen boys who have probably already discovered Volponi, this book is appropriate for ages 14-18.

Heartsinger by Karlijn Stoffels

Steeped in traditional fairy tales, this book offers a framing story and then a series of smaller stories that illuminate the many forms of that love can take.  A boy whose parents are deaf and dumb, becomes a gifted singer who can reveal a person’s life in his own mysterious language.  A girl whose parents fight and curse nearly all the time, plays music that has everyone dancing and feeling merry.  The two are destined to be together.  As they slowly journey toward one another, readers get to see a princess who looks only into the mirror, a sailor’s sweetheart who loves the sea she sees in her husband, and a fluting soldier who saves everyone he can.

Repetition, lilting phrases, and classic fairy tale characters keep this book closely tied to its tradition.  Readers will immediately recognize the type of book they are reading, but will be amazed at the lyrical prose, the lack of sentimentality, and the power of this small book.  Love here is seen not in saccharine sweetness, but in reality, sometimes obsessive, strangely brutal, and always powerful. 

This book is a box of chocolates with hidden depths of spices and heat that surprise and delight.  Highly recommended for teens who want a bit of classic tale and truth in their romance.  Appropriate for ages 13-17.

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

Of course I had big expectations for this National Book Award Winner and they were very nicely met.  After World War II, Evie’s stepfather returns from the war and decides to turn his life around.  He buys a few appliance stores and it looks like Evie and her mother will be well off.  But when a strange phone call comes and they decide to head to Florida on the spur of the moment, everything becomes unsettled.  Living in a nearly-vacant hotel in Palm Springs, Evie falls in love with the charming Peter Coleridge who knew her stepfather during the war.  All is not as it seems and Evie must figure out the truth and then decide who to share it with.

The setting of this novel is amazingly vivid with the hotel and its rather surreal emptiness.  This same surreal feeling carries through the book, as reader lenses shift trying to find the truth in a sea of lies.  Evie is a fascinating main character, struggling with becoming an adult, often frightened but not showing it, and filled with much more moxie than most.  She wasn’t an entirely likeable character, which I find an intriguing part of great teen novels. 

Highly recommended.  This is a historical novel that will appeal to teens who enjoy modern literature about risk, love and truth.  Lots to grapple with here, this manages to be a novel with depth that reads easily.

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork.

Marcelo has always heard internal music that is hard for him to pull away from.  Because of this autism-like disorder, Marcelo has attended a special school, Paterson, where he is now going to help with care and training of the ponies.  Marcelo’s father has never approved of him going to a special school and challenges his son to enter the real world by working in the mail room at his law firm.  If Marcelo refuses or fails, he will be placed in public high school instead of Paterson for his senior year.  Marcelo excels in the real world until sudden knowledge about his father’s job forces him to make an impossible decision.

This book is written from Marcelo’s point of view, allowing the prose itself to become as poetic, strange and amazing as Marcelo’s inner dialogue.  It is a book where you feel the world around you shift as you see it through Marcelo’s eyes. 

There is an enticing thread of religion and music that weaves throughout not only the book but through Marcelo himself.  It is a point of entry for the reader into understanding him.  Lovely, poignant and vivid, this book will capture you, change you, and then release you with tears streaming down your face at the beauty you have found.

Highly recommended for teen readers who are looking for a novel with depth that surprises and delights.  Appropriate for ages 16-18.

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway.

When Audrey decides to break up with her self-obsessed musician boyfriend, she has no idea how her life will suddenly change.  The song, Audrey, Wait! is played that very night and suddenly Evan and his band are rising on the charts and Audrey is being stalked by fans.  All Audrey wants is to be able to go to concerts, hang out with her best friend, and have a normal life.  But suddenly nothing is normal anymore and Audrey is forced to make choices that no normal teen has to make. 

The voice of this novel is perfection.  Audrey is a great combination of sarcastic and vulnerable, a tone that is just right for the situation she finds herself in.  Benway’s pacing is also well done, from the bedlam of concert backstage to the quiet moments with friends.  So are the secondary characters, including Audrey’s parents and her friends.  This is one of those books that will have you snorting with laughter as you read it, longing to read entire passages to your friends and family. 

Fans of Nick and Norah’s Ultimate Playlist will love this book too.  It has the same great mix of music and wit.  Appropriate for ages 16-18.  

Happenstance Found by PW Catanese.

Happenstance awakens with no memory of his past at all.  Ragged and blindfolded, he can hear the enormous worms outside the room he is kept in.  When Lord Umber arrives to take him, Happenstance discovers that his eyes are very special.  Bright green and sparkling, they can see in the dark and see farther than normal human eyes.   Taken home with Lord Umber, after escaping a labyrinth filled with man-eating worms on a erupting volcanic island, Hap finds himself encountering one wonder after another.  But there is something coming after Hap, something hunting him, something that will not give up easily.

An eerie, often scary, always gripping romp of an adventure novel, this book keeps readers guessing and enthralled to the end.  Catanese is a master of hair-raising escapades which make the book nearly impossible to put down.  His characters can sometimes be a bit stiff and cardboard, but they can also surprise with their depth.  Hap is an intriguing lead character filled with questions and few answers but also engaging in his quest to understand the world he finds himself in. 

Get this in the hands of tweens looking for a wild ride of an adventure novel and you will have them clamoring for the next book in the series.  Appropriate for ages 11-14.

Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

15-year-old Liza lives in a world that recently survived a war between the human world and the world of Faerie.  Now the things in the human world have become strange, vines and trees have a taste for blood, corn and potatoes fight back when harvested.  Liza’s father has kept the entire village safe after the war, stamping out any sign of magic in the people who live there.  When Liza’s baby sister is born with the clear hair that is a sign of magic, her father takes the baby into the wild and leaves her to die.  After the baby’s death, Liza’s mother leaves the village, her death in the forest a certainty.  Now Liza is starting to notice signs of magic in herself.  She has visions in water and mirrors.  Fearing for her life and following her visions that show her mother alive, Liza flees into the wild.  She is joined by a boy from her village who has a magical secret of his own.  Liza must now learn the truth about the War and her magic for herself.

A stunning blend of apocalyptic fiction and faerie tale fantasy, this book is unique and fascinating.  The two divergent subjects work well together, blending to form a world that is strange yet familiar.  Because it is about Faerie and the real world, the book is able to talk frankly about the horrors and aftermath of all war. 

The characters are just as intriguing as the setting itself.  Liza is a contradiction both fearing magic and being able to wield it herself.  The  supporting characters have that same blend of the familiar and the surprising. 

I found this book nearly impossible to put down, caught up in Liza’s story and in the world itself.  Recommended to readers of Melissa Marr’s and Holly Black’s books.  Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Jerk, California by Jonathan Friesen

Sam Carter has been bullied throughout his high school days because of his tics and outbursts that come from his Tourette’s Syndrome.  Unable to control his movements, except for very short periods, Sam is shunned by his stepfather, Bill.  Bill has told Sam many stories about his neglectful real father who womanized and drank and gave Sam his disorder through his faulty genes.  Now Sam is about to graduate from high school.  He has no prospects, no college dreams, nothing to look forward to.  It all starts to change when he agrees to work for George the Coot who used to be best friends with his real father.  As Sam learns the truth about his father, he discovers the truth about himself too.

There is much to appreciate in this novel about identity, fathers, nature and nurture.  Friesen has created a protagonist who is a wonderful combination of damaged and heroic.  Sam is abused by life but unbroken.  He himself cannot see beyond his disorder, but others can show him the way.  He rises above over and over again, but doesn’t quite realize that he has done it.  Sam is a wonderful metaphor for life.

The Tourette’s Syndrome is not played up to TV talk show proportions.  It is an important and pivotal feature of the story and of Sam, but it is written honestly and plainly.  I also appreciated the thread of religion that runs through the book, becoming part of Sam’s journey as well.  It too is not overly done, just a subtle part of the quest Sam is on.

Highly recommended, this book well deserves the ALA Schneider Award which consistently awards books that are very special and worth finding.  A complex tale of self and family, this book will be enjoyed by teen readers who want deep reading without the darkness.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.