Milkshakes for the Almost Dead

YA: Milkshakes For the Almost Dead by Lulu Wood

July 10, 2020 admin 0

I wrote Milkshakes for the Almost Dead to celebrate teenage girls and remind them to believe in themselves and respect each other. I’d like society in general to respect teenage girls more.” — Lulu Wood Milkshakes For the Almost Dead is the first in the Girls and Monsters trilogy by Lulu Wood. It is a gripping page turner that follows the story of Diana in the sleepy seaside town of Lattering, which in itself is […]

Summer of the Shark

Young Adult: Summer of the Shark by DiVitto Kelly

June 24, 2020 admin 0

On June 20, 1975, the summer blockbuster was born. The movie was Jaws based on Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel of the same name. Forty-five years later, author DiVitto Kelly has tapped into the nostalgia of the mid-70s, Jaws, and the 1975 World Series with the release of his new YA novel, Summer of the Shark. In DiVitto Kelly’s new book, it is 1974 and school is out for 12-year-old Ryan Sullivan, only he won’t be […]

The Invisible Fortess Heads to Netflix

May 1, 2019 Linda L. Richards 0

Jason Rekulak’s engaging and bestselling 2017 novel, The Impossible Fortress (Simon & Schuster), will be reimagined as a Netflix project by Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films. From Deadline Hollywood: Ori Marmur and Ivanna Martinez will oversee the project for Netflix’s original films department. Aggregate Film’s Jason Bateman, Michael Costigan and Adam Wagner, and GoldDay’s Jonathan Goldstein and John Daley will develop a film based on the book, which was published in February 2017 by Simon & […]

S.E. Hinton’s Outsiders to the Stage

March 28, 2019 admin 0

The Outsiders the musical, a play based in part on the seminal 1967 YA novel by S.E. Hinton, will open in Chicago as part of the Goodman Theatre’s 2019-20 season. It will run at the Goodman from June 20-August 2, 2020. Wikipedia describes the original book as “a coming-of-age novel by S. E. Hinton, first published in 1967 by Viking Press. Hinton was 15 when she started writing the novel but did most of the […]

Young Adult: Antisocial by Jillian Blake

September 18, 2017 admin 0

It is the stuff of modern nightmares. An entire school’s innermost secrets exposed on social media. One can not imagine a thriller more targeted on the newly born angst of an entire culture. A spring like any other at a Washington, DC-area prep school. Everyone settling in for the countdown to year’s end and nothing out-of-the-ordinary is on the horizon. Suddenly a series of hacks exposes the secrets of the student body to everyone when […]

Young Adult Fiction: The Caller by Juliet Marillier

July 4, 2014 admin 0

Summer Gathering, when the rebels of Shadowfell are planning to challenge the evil King Keldec, is approaching rapidly. Caller Neryn, with whom we have made a long journey, still has two Guardians to go before her training is complete. But the White Lady, Guardian of air, is not in the best state. The Master of Shadows(fire) is a trickster who may or may not advise her on how to protect the rebels’ Good Folk allies […]

Feminism, Optimism and Genuine Creativity Fan Current Dystopia Craze

March 17, 2014 admin 0

As fans get ready for the release of Divergent, the first film based on Veronica Roth’s popular novels set in a dystopian Chicago, in a recent piece for Wired, Devon Maloney examines the way dystopic storytelling has morphed and come to rule in recent years. For one thing, Maloney notes, in a world that has itself become pretty dystopic, the success of the genre becomes easier to understand: In a post-Harry Potter world where YA […]

No Sex for Teenage Boys

September 28, 2013 admin 1

Do teenage boys want to read about sex? Author Darren Shan says that publishers don’t think so. Shan, who has sold 25 million copies of his books worldwide since his debut novel, Cirque du Freak, was published in 2002, claims that while YA publishers are often okay with violence, as he recently told The Independent, “Sex is a no-go.” From the same piece: “We should be more concerned about violence than exposing teenagers to sex. Teenagers […]

Young Adult Fiction: All Our Yesterdays By Cristin Terrill

September 12, 2013 admin 1

Em is in a cell next to Finn, a boy she cares about, but hasn’t seen since they were locked up. The Doctor has been torturing them to get a vital piece of information. And in a hidden place in her cell, there’s a piece of paper from a future self (or is that past?): “You have to kill him.”  The “him” is the boy she once loved, when she was Marina, rich and spoiled, […]

Hunger Games Kicks Harry Potter to the Curb

August 22, 2013 admin 1

To our knowledge, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins have never been in competition. But if they were? The latest word is that Collins would be in the lead. Forbes tells us that The Hunger Games series has passed the Harry Potter series to become the all-time bestselling series of books. From Forbes: Although author Suzanne Collins only wrote three books, her Hunger Games trilogy has been able to zap the […]