DEBBIE HARRY SINGS IN FRENCH by Megan Brothers (2008)

Henry Holt and Company; 234 pages; realistic fiction; ages 13 and up; ISBN: 978-0-8050-8080-3.

This coming-of-age novel centers on Johnny, a 1990s Florida teen whose dad dies in a car crash the week of his 13th birthday. His mom, too depressed to do much of anything over the next couple years, leaves chores like shopping for groceries and paying the bills to Johnny; he starts drinking to deal with the pressure. After she recovers and takes charge of the household again, Johnny accidentally overdoses on Ecstasy one night at a club. He goes into rehab, but following his own recovery, his mom sends him to South Carolina to live with his uncle Sam, whereupon he meets and falls for Maria, a “bad girl” who shares his love of 1970s punk rock (Blondie, Patti Smith, the Ramones) and helps Johnny explore his latent interest in transvestism.

Debbie Harry Sings in French received a starred review from Publishers Weekly for its “brisk pace and ... strong-willed, empathetic narrator,” although, like Kirkus Reviews, it took issue with Brothers’s plot, which the latter found “problematic,” especially in the early chapters set in Tampa. I’m sure a movie adaptation would cut the bulk of those chapters, but I enjoyed how Brothers presented a single-parent household in which the only child, out of sheer necessity, takes on the responsibilities of the incapacitated parent. Booklist’s Jennifer Hubert noted that “the prose occasionally slides into cliché,” but I’d argue it’s the supporting characters who sometimes run the risk of being stereotypes: Lucas, the hip, wise Jamaican record store owner, skirts the edge of “Magical Negro” status, and Bug, Johnny’s female cousin, acts more like a precocious second grader than an 11-year-old on the cusp of adolescence.

For further reading, check out Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (2007).

THE SKIN I'M IN by Sharon G. Flake (1998)

Jump at the Sun/Hyperion; 171 pages; realistic fiction; ages 11 and up; ISBN: 978-142310385-1.

Seventh grader Maleeka Madison is picked on because of the darkness of her skin. When a new language-arts teacher named Miss Saunders arrives at her inner-city middle school as part of a corporate program that puts advertising executives in classrooms for a year, Maleeka finds herself in the presence of a caring mentor, though she doesn't know it at first. In fact she resists Miss Saunders's attention and concern almost every step of the way, partly because the new teacher has a large white birthmark on her black face, making her, in Maleeka's mind, as much of a target for negative comments as Maleeka herself. The protagonist must also deal with an aggressive classmate named Charlese, who lets Maleeka wear her fashionable clothes in exchange for doing Charlese's homework every night.

Author Sharon G. Flake makes the point of providing hints as to how a "bad girl" like Charlese came to be: we see that her home life consists of no parents and an older sister who throws parties that last entire weekends. We also learn why John-John, one of Maleeka's worst verbal tormentors, began disliking her in the first place. The Skin I'm In wraps up its various plot threads a little too neatly (did Maleeka really have to find romance with the cutest boy in school?), but Flake energizes her story as a whole by telling it in Maleeka's urban-teen vernacular ("I ain't no squealer. Never was, never will be."), and her account of a near-rape that Maleeka narrowly escapes is told with vivid, heart-rending suspense.

Winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards' John Steptoe New Talent Award in 1999. For further reading, check out The First Part Last by Angela Johnson.

COOLIES by Yin (2001)

Illustrated by Chris Soentpiet. Philomel/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers; 40 pages; history; ages 7-10; ISBN: 0-399-23227-3.

Shek and his younger brother, Wong, leave famine-devastated China for America in the mid-1800s to find work building the First Continental Railroad along the western portion of the country. Their goal is to send money home so their remaining family members won't starve. On top of back-breaking work and discrimination from white railroad foremen, who condescendingly call the Chinese "coolies," or slaves, Shek, Wong, and their fellow immigrants discover they're being paid less than non-Chinese laborers. They go on strike, but Shek reminds them that as long as they don't work, they can't send money back to their families in China.

Yin tells her story with a framing device involving a tween boy and his grandmother, who regales him with the history of her great-grandfather and his brother—Shek and Wong, respectively. Soentpiet's drawings employ wide-screen, sun-kissed vistas that add cinematic flair to Yin's heartfelt, human prose. "Call us what you will," Shek says upon the completion of the First Transcontinental, "it is our hands that helped build the railroad."

For further reading, check out Ten Mile Day and the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad, written and illustrated by Mary Ann Fraser (1993).

CROOKLYN (Universal Pictures, 1994)

Directed by Spike Lee; screenplay by Cinqué Lee, Joie Susannah Lee, and Spike Lee; 115 minutes; comedy/drama; MPAA rating: PG-13 ("for drug content," which means two characters who sniff glue, but appropriate for ages 10 and up, if you ask me).

Troy Carmichael lives in Brooklyn with her four brothers, her schoolteacher mom, and her jazz-musician dad, who's been having trouble finding work lately. This causes tension at home, but most of it is kept out of sight of the kids, who spend their summer playing outdoors till the sun goes down, watching The Partridge Family when they're not supposed to have the TV on, and getting into mischief that occasionally involves their odd neighbor "Tony Eyes," a nearsighted man with oversized eyeglasses who owns several small dogs that are constantly barking. Troy reluctantly takes a trip down south to stay with her aunt Song and uncle Clem for a week, but she ends up having more fun than she expected with her cousin Viola. When she returns home, however, she finds that everything is suddenly about to change for good in the Carmichael household.

Set in the early 1970s, Crooklyn is episodic in nature and therefore won't appeal to everyone, but because it's semi-autobiographical—oldest brother Clinton appears to be based on cowriter-director Spike Lee, and Troy seems to represent cowriter Joie Susannah Lee (both have cameos in the film)—the Carmichael house feels like it's actually been lived in, not constructed for use in a movie. The Carmichael kids are almost always yelling and fighting with each other about something, but unlike the kids on Hannah Montana, for instance, their fights aren't constructed around well-rehearsed one-liners. And when the Carmichaels talk back to their mom, they suffer the consequences right away.

The last 20 minutes of Crooklyn may be too intense for younger viewers in the same way that Doris Buchanan Smith's book A Taste of Blackberries was too intense for me when I was eight years old. But it's a hell of an ending, one that makes me cry every time I watch the film. (Another selling point is Crooklyn's wall-to-wall soundtrack of early-'70s R&B hits, including the Spinners' "Mighty Love," Jean Knight's "Mr. Big Stuff," and Stevie Wonder's "Signed Sealed Delivered I'm Yours.")

For further viewing, check out Akeelah and the Bee (2006). And to see a trailer for Crooklyn, click here.

A WREATH FOR EMMETT TILL by Marilyn Nelson (2005)

Illustrated by Philippe Lardy. Houghton Mifflin; 48 pages; history; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 0-618-39752-3.

As Marilyn Nelson explains in the foreword to her book-length poem, A Wreath for Emmett Till is a heroic crown of sonnets, "a sequence of fifteen interlinked sonnets, in which the last one is made up of the first lines of the preceding fourteen." Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy, was visiting relatives in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 when he was kidnapped and murdered by two white men for supposedly whistling at a white woman. Till's mother held an open-casket funeral so the public could see how her child was mutilated by these men, who were charged with the murder but ultimately acquitted after a trial by all-white jury. Nevertheless, the battle for civil rights in the Deep South had begun.

Nelson's words pack a punch, particularly in this segment of one particular sonnet:

This country we love has a Janus face:
One mouth speaks with forked tongue, the other reads
the Constitution. My country, 'tis of both
thy nightmare history and thy grand dream,
thy centuries of good and evil deeds,
I sing ...

Tweens who stick with A Wreath for Emmett Till through Nelson's various twists and turns of phrase will be rewarded with an experience that bears comparison to a fiery gospel sermon delivered by a preacher whose heart is filled with equal parts rage and forgiveness. (Lardy's artwork is pretty, but the pen is mightier than the brush here.) Not easily forgotten.

For further reading, check out Chris Crowe's Getting Away With Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case (2003).

WEETZIE BAT by Francesca Lia Block (1989)

HarperCollins; 109 pages; magical realism; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 978-0-06-073625-5.

Weetzie grew up in Los Angeles and is nostalgic for a Hollywood she never knew, yet it's one we all unconsciously know, the golden age of stars like Bogart and Monroe. Weetzie is in her early 20s and a little lost when she meets Dirk, who becomes her new best friend. Dirk's gay, and Weetzie helps him in his search for an ideal boyfriend. Together they find Duck, while Weetzie falls for the one and only Secret Agent Lover Man. The two couples then move in together, but author Francesca Lia Block doesn't provide them with "happily ever after" until she's thrown a wrench or two into the works, plus a baby, a disease, and a death or two.

If you're in the right frame of mind, Weetzie Bat is a fun read that operates mostly on dream logic as it blends elements of 1980s L.A. with 1950s La-La Land. Tweens and teens discovering the book today can learn a little about the AIDS epidemic that permanently changed the American landscape in the '80s for both homosexuals and heterosexuals, though Block's then-progressive scenario of a woman and her two gay male friends raising a baby together may seem quaint to today's younger audiences. Thank God for that ...

For further reading, check out subsequent entries in Block's "Dangerous Angels" series: Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop.

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie (2007)

Illustrated by Ellen Forney. Little, Brown and Company; 230 pages; realistic fiction; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 978-0-316-01369-7.

Arnold Spirit Jr. is an awkward but creative 14-year-old Spokane Indian who lives on a reservation with his parents and grandmother. On the first day of ninth grade at the "rez" school, he discovers his mother's maiden name in his "new" geometry textbook. Infuriated, he throws the book at his teacher, breaking the man's nose, but when the teacher comes to Arnold's house to talk to him about the incident, he encourages Arnold to do whatever he can to get off the reservation, before it kills his spirit. Arnold decides to enroll at the all-white high school in nearby Reardan, angering many Indians, especially his newly former best friend, Rowdy, who feels abandoned but can only express himself with his fists. But over the course of the school year, as he experiences one family tragedy after another amidst personal triumphs on the school's basketball court, Arnold comes to terms with his status as a part-time Indian.

Sherman Alexie's semiautobiographical novel is bursting with brash humor and unexpected tragedy (apparently seven of his relatives died in a single school year when he was around Arnold's age). It also doesn't pull any punches in discussing extreme poverty among Indians or the rampant alcoholism that's a direct cause—and effect—of that poverty. Ellen Forney's line drawings enhance Alexie's prose, so much so that it's hard to imagine the book without them. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian lives up to the critical hype.

Winner of the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. For further reading, check out The Skin I'm In by Sharon G. Flake or American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. And to see a Glogster-hosted advertising poster I created for Part-Time Indian, click here.

DOCTOR PROCTOR'S FART POWDER by Jo Nesbø (2010)

Illustrated by Mike Lowery. Aladdin/Simon & Schuster; 265 pages; comedy; ages 9-13; ISBN: 978-1-4169-7972-2.

"The most successful Norwegian author of all time," according to this title's book jacket, turns his attention away from crime fiction and toward more juvenile matters, but if you're a reluctant reader of the male persuasion, you'll probably get a kick out of this goofy tale of a Norwegian boy named Nilly. When his family moves to a new house he makes the acquaintance of the girl next door, Lisa, and Doctor Proctor, a kindly inventor, whose latest creation is fart powder. There's a normal version that provides the funny noises without the terrible smells, but the doctor also has an industrial-strength version that can send Nilly up, up, and away into outer space (in a chapter entitled "The Fartonaut"). He hopes to sell the latter version to NASA, but another neighbor, the evil Mr. Trane, plans to steal the powder and sell it to the space agency first.

Despite the famous four-letter word in the title, Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder doesn't dwell on bathroom humor. Instead Nesbø uses the beloved/reviled bodily function to entice readers (again, those of the male persuasion) who might not otherwise want to read a story involving kooky inventors, stoopid twin bullies, and a giant snake that lives in the sewer. Nesbø's bone-dry style respects a general rule of comedy: no matter how outlandish your story becomes, always take it completely seriously.

For further reading, check out Nesbø's sequel, Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder: Bubble in the Bathtub (2011). (In case you haven't guessed already, kids, it includes farting too.)

CHARLOTTE'S WEB by E.B. White (1952)

Illustrated by Garth Williams. HarperCollins; 192 pages; fable; ages 8 and up; ISBN: 978-0-0644-0055-8.

Eight-year-old Fern lives on a farm. One day she prevents her father from killing the runt of a new litter of pigs. She names the pig Wilbur, who becomes friends with a wise, matronly spider named Charlotte in the farmer's barn. Wilbur becomes frightened and angry when he learns the culinary fate of all pigs ("I want to stay alive, right here in my comfortable manure pile with all my friends," he cries), so Charlotte spins a web—literally—that says "SOME PIG," which attracts attention from all over and earns Wilbur the new nickname of "Zuckerman's Famous Pig." Charlotte has saved Wilbur from the slaughterhouse, but how will he survive if she's no longer around to help him?

E.B. White's animal tale is an all-time classic, and for good reason: we all want mother figures like Fern and Charlotte to save us and make us feel secure in times of great need. Charlotte's Web also contains a great deal of gentle humor, most of it courtesy of Templeton, a rat who looks out for himself above all others but ultimately does the right thing when needed. After all these years, I still find it hard not to tear up during the final chapter.

Winner of a 1953 Newbery Honor Book award. For a more intellectual animal story, check out George Orwell's Animal Farm (1954).

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (National Geographic Feature Films/Warner Independent Pictures, 2005)

Directed by Luc Jacquet; written by Luc Jacquet, Michel Fessler, and Jordan Roberts; 80 minutes; documentary; MPAA rating: G (all ages).

This fascinating documentary about emperor penguins in Antarctica, narrated by Morgan Freeman, tells of how they travel 70 miles, by foot or by belly, each year from the ocean to breed in a special area that's protected somewhat from harsh winds by high ice walls and has ice thick enough beneath the penguins' feet that it never melts or cracks all year round. After the penguins mate and the female gives birth, the male takes responsibility for keeping the egg safe and warm while the female travels 70 miles back to the ocean to feed herself—she hasn't eaten in two months by this point—and gather enough food in her stomach so she can feed her baby when she returns.

Spellbinding cinematography drives home the sensation that March of the Penguins is showing the viewer something truly unique. Antarctica looks breathtaking, as in "Its natural beauty will take your breath away" and "It's so cold you'll stop breathing." Some tween viewers may be wary of watching documentaries on nature at this stage in their lives, but they'll warm up (no pun intended) to this one once they see the penguins on their march, waddling back and forth. Plus, baby penguins are mighty cute.

For further viewing, check out Happy Feet (2006), an animated song-and-dance story about penguins.

MAD HOT BALLROOM (Nickelodeon Movies/Paramount Classics, 2005)

Directed by Marilyn Agrelo; written by Amy Sewell; 105 minutes; documentary; MPAA rating: PG ("for some thematic elements," but appropriate for ages 9 and up, if you ask me).

In 1994 the New York City public school system introduced a ballroom dance program for fifth graders. Within ten years it expanded from two schools to 60, with 6,000 students required to take part in the ten-week course. School administrators can then choose whether or not to participate in an annual citywide competition, where only one school will be named the winner. Mad Hot Ballroom follows students from three of these schools, in the neighborhoods of Bensonhurst, Tribeca, and Washington Heights, revealing bits of their personalities and their dreams through footage of their dancing.

I think tweens would get a kick out of watching their peers learning the foxtrot, the merengue, and swing, but maybe it'd be too painful to see your insecurities about the opposite sex and your own body reflected back at you. As an adult who was introduced to ballroom dancing in college, however, I was tickled to see how these fifth graders reacted when forced to touch each other in various dancing poses (safe touching, of course, which isn't a bad lesson to learn at the age of 11) and let their feet and hips do the talking instead of their overactive mouths. I can't wait to see how my nieces will react to Mad Hot Ballroom.

For further viewing, check out the Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound (2002).

TITAN A.E. (Twentieth Century Fox, 2000)

Directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman; screenplay by Ben Edlund, John August, and Joss Whedon; 94 minutes; science fiction; MPAA rating: PG ("for action violence, mild sensuality and brief language," but appropriate for ages 7 and up, if you ask me).

In 3028 A.D., Earth is blown to bits by an intergalactic race called the Drej (the "A.E." in the film's title stands for "After Earth"), but not before Professor Sam Tucker launches the Titan, a mobile lab that has the components needed to create a new planet—if it can be found in deep space before all that's left of humanity is wiped out. Mankind is now a minority species in the universe, subsisting in assorted drifter colonies. Tucker's son, Cale, was a boy when Earth was destroyed; Captain Korso, who claims to have known the professor, finds Cale and shows him that the ring his father gave him right before he launched the Titan and disappeared forever contains secret directions that can help them locate the lab. The Drej hope to locate it too—and destroy it, sealing mankind's fate.

Over the years I'd heard good things about Titan A.E., which disappeared quickly from theaters in the summer of 2000. I'm sure tweens will find it at least somewhat entertaining, but I thought its mix of old-school hand-drawn animation and new-school computer animation was jarring, as if directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman or the studio couldn't make up their minds on which way to go. A chase sequence set among asteroid-sized reflective icicles is beautifully rendered, but in most other instances it looks like the animators overdid the hand-drawn material—characters' faces are constantly in motion, as if they're all on Ritalin—while underbudgeting the necessary computer effects. Worse, the story line is highly derivative of Star Wars at times (not to mention Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and even Waterworld), with Cale and Korso performing a mediocre Luke-and-Han tribute act.

For further, better animated viewing, check out Pixar's WALL-E (2008).

THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN by Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson, and Roger Stern (1993)

Illustrated by Jon Bogdanove, Tom Grummett, Jackson Guice, Dan Jurgens, et al. DC Comics; 168 pages; sci-fi/fantasy; ages 8-13; ISBN: 1-56389-097-6.

This graphic novel delivers on its promise: the seemingly immortal Man of Steel is killed at the hands of Doomsday, an otherworldly creature more powerful than any foe he's faced before. Doomsday is a killing machine, pure and simple, whose agenda consists of nothing more than total annihilation of everything that lies in his path.

Because The Death of Superman is a compilation of seven comic-book issues that spanned five different DC Comics titles (Superman, Superman: The Man of Steel, The Adventures of Superman, Action Comics, and Justice League America) at the tail end of 1992, there's a bit of repetition in the storytelling to fill in readers who may not have picked up previous issues. Every few pages it seems like a new character is questioning the origins of Doomsday, just as Superman constantly questions his ability to defeat the creature. The action-packed Doomsday story line, which becomes increasingly bloody as it nears its climax, starts on an unpromising note with a subplot involving creatures who live below the streets of Metropolis, but once Superman is interviewed on a local daytime talk show and states that "violence is the price we pay to accomplish a greater good," The Death of Superman begins to take off.

For further reading, check out World Without a Superman and The Return of Superman, which completed the saga in 1993.

NO GIRLS ALLOWED by Susan Hughes (2008)

Illustrated by Willow Dawson. Kids Can Press; 80 pages; history; ages 9-12; ISBN: 978-1-55453-177-6.

Susan Hughes's graphic novel, subtitled "Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom and Adventure," is made up of seven stories based on historical fact (more or less) that stretch from 1500 BCE to the American Civil War. Readers learn about Hatshepsut's rise to power as an Egyptian pharaoh despite men only being allowed to hold that title; Mulan's selfless enrollment in the Chinese army, an action she took to save the life of her elderly father; Ellen Craft's bold plan to escape her life as a slave in the American south in the 1840s with her husband, William, also a slave; and four other females who sacrificed their identities but never their souls in order to carve out better lives for themselves.

Hughes crams a lot of history and exposition into her seven tales, sometimes with a heavy hand that also ends stories abruptly, but Willow Dawson's clean black-and-white drawings help convey the characters' fears, frustrations, and triumphs quickly and effectively. "Allowed the freedom to reach out and try, they could achieve their goals," Hughes writes in No Girls Allowed's afterword. "Unfortunately, they had to do it while living a lie." Luckily, their shining examples of courage and independence blazed the trail for countless other women in the years to come.

For further reading about risk-taking females, check out T-Minus author Jim Ottaviani's Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists (1999).

BUD, NOT BUDDY by Christopher Paul Curtis (1999)

Yearling/Random House; 243 pages; comedy/drama; ages 8-12; ISBN: 978-0-440-41328-8.

Is jazzman Herman E. Calloway of Herman E. Calloway & the Dusky Devastators of the Depression the father of ten-year-old protagonist Bud (please don't call him Buddy) Caldwell? He seems to think so after seeing his mother get agitated by a flyer for one of Calloway's shows right before she passed away and made him an orphan. It's not much to go on, of course, but it sure beats sticking around in abusive foster homes and miserable shantytowns in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression. On his 120-mile journey to Grand Rapids, home of Mr. Calloway, Bud encounters a "vampire" with a clearly marked box of human blood in his car, kisses a girl named Deza Malone, and ultimately discovers the real identity of Herman E. Calloway.

Reminiscent of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens in his storytelling approach, Christopher Paul Curtis also has a wicked sense of humor like the former. "The door banged open and Herman E. Calloway stood there huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, only with his belly it looked like he'd already eaten the three little pigs," Curtis writes. Plus, Bud's self-help manual, entitled "Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself," includes some real doozies, like #29: "When You Wake Up and Don't Know for Sure Where You're At and There's a Bunch of People Standing Around You, It's Best to Pretend You're Still Asleep Until You Can Figure Out What's Going On and What You Should Do."

Winner of both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award. For further reading, check out a contemporary tale from Curtis, 2004's Bucking the Sarge.

THE RED BALLOON (Films Montsouris, 1956)

Written and directed by Albert Lamorisse; 34 minutes; fantasy; unrated; all ages.

The Red Balloon, also known as Le Ballon Rouge, centers on a Parisian boy, played by writer-director Albert Lamorisse's son, who discovers the title character tied to a lamppost one morning. He takes it wherever he goes, and soon the balloon is showing signs of life: when the boy's mother tosses the balloon out the window at first glance, it hovers outside instead of floating away until the boy can pull it back in. It also evades the capture of the boy's classmates and schoolteachers, though its fate is never certain. Lamorisse gives his film an uplifting ending in more ways than one, and it's complemented by Maurice Leroux's musical score, which is as wide-eyed as The Red Balloon's protagonist.

There are a few subtitles since the dialogue is in French, but for the most part The Red Balloon is a silent film that relies on visual storytelling above all else, with the balloon turning out to be one of the most memorable characters I've ever seen in a movie. (I'm curious to know how many had to be used in the course of filming.) Lamorisse never panders to his audience, and despite the film's age and subtitles, I think The Red Balloon can be enjoyed by English-speaking tweens of all ages just as long as they show some patience in the early stretches—attention deficit disorder hadn't yet been invented in 1956.

For further viewing, check out another Lamorisse short film with a young male protagonist, White Mane (1953), which is available on a double-feature DVD with The Red Balloon.

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE by Gene Luen Yang (2006)

First Second; 235 pages; drama/fable; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 1-59643-208-X.

Three stories converge in an unexpected fashion in this graphic novel centering on identity crisis and self-respect. The reader is first introduced to the Monkey King, a character from epic Chinese literature who emerges from a large rock and uses Taoist teachings to gain supernatural powers. But when he attends a party in heaven and isn't given what he considers proper respect for his godlike status, he beats up all the other deities; his punishment is 500 years' imprisonment trapped under a mountain. The second story revolves around Jin Wang, a Taiwanese-American middle schooler who's recently moved from San Francisco to a new town and new school and just wants to fit in, while the third story begins as a sitcom parody entitled "Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee," in which handsome white teenager Danny is visited—and humiliated—by Chin-Kee, his cousin from China who embodies every outdated Chinese stereotype in existence.

Yang's bold color palette signals an assured sense of identity that generally eludes Jin Wang, Danny, and the Monkey King as they struggle to break free from their roots ("It's easy to become anything you wish," a mysterious Chinese herbalist tells a young Jin Wang, "so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul"). Yang is an inventive storyteller, playing around with readers' preconceived notions of story structure in order to catch them off guard when he delivers his plot twists, and his story ends on a sweetly reconciliatory note. American Born Chinese teaches an important lesson about tolerance—of other people, of your own race, and of yourself—while also throwing in some pee and fart jokes for reluctant male readers.

A 2006 National Book Award finalist in the category of Young People's Literature; also, winner of the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album (New). For more fantastical—not to mention fantastic—tales by Gene Luen Yang, check out The Eternal Smile: Three Stories, coauthored with Derek Kirk Kim (2009).

THE FIRST PART LAST by Angela Johnson (2003)

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; 144 pages; realistic fiction; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 978-1-4424-0343-7.

Bobby is 16, a good student who's planning to attend college. He's also a single father. Feather is the baby's name, and Nia is the mother, and we find out why she's no longer around as Angela Johnson's narrative unfolds, crisscrossing back and forth in time as it covers various events that have occurred in Bobby's life. Nia and he are presented with the option of giving Feather up for adoption, but once their lives are changed forever, Bobby decides to bring Feather home—to his mom's home, that is, and despite being a loving, attentive grandmother, she has no intention of taking care of Feather whenever her son is too tired or too busy with schoolwork to do it himself.

The "tough love" reticence Bobby's mother displays as she adamantly refuses to let him deflect any of his parental responsibilities onto her, is my favorite aspect of The First Part Last. It's nice to see a pregnancy-centered "problem" novel for tweens and teens that's told from the father's perspective—one who doesn't leave the hard work to the mother—but the revelation of why Nia isn't around tips the story into soap-opera territory, and the conclusion pours on the schmaltz. Still, the novel's good qualities outweigh the bad.

Winner of the 2004 Michael L. Printz Award and 2004 Coretta Scott King Award. For further reading, check out Angela Johnson's Heaven (1998), another Coretta Scott King Award winner, in which Bobby makes his first appearance.

SEVENTEENTH SUMMER by Maureen Daly (1942)

Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster; 340 pages; romance; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 978-1-4169-9463-3.

Angie Morrow has graduated from high school in a small town in Wisconsin and will enter college in Chicago in the fall. She's never had a boyfriend before, but when Jack Duluth, a star athlete at school, notices her at the local drug store and asks her out on a date, they quickly fall for each other. But is it really love? As the summer winds down, they must decide what to do about their feelings for each other before college and work (Jack is employed at his family's bakery) pull them apart, perhaps permanently.

It's amusing but refreshing to read a book set in the 1930s that proves no matter how many electronic gadgets we carry around these days or how much social mores have changed, men and women, boys and girls, etc. still have no idea what to do with themselves when confronted with the blush of first love. Seventeenth Summer will seem absolutely chaste compared to a YA book like Gossip Girl, but that should make it a safe bet for parents and teachers who tend to be squeamish about the sexual content of the books tweens often want to read when reading "up."

Unfortunately, Maureen Daly's first novel, which she wrote when she was still in college, is excessively long, as if she begged her editor not to chop out a single detail about the weather or leaves swaying in the breeze or what's for breakfast. Of course, first love can make a guy or gal lose their perspective on all kinds of things. Seventeenth Summer is charming, but if you ask me, it wore out its welcome sooner rather than later.

For further reading—and in a contemporary setting, to boot—check out The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han (2009).

AMONG THE HIDDEN by Margaret Peterson Haddix (1998)

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; 153 pages; science fiction; ages 10-14; ISBN: 0-689-81700-2.

The first in Margaret Peterson Haddix's “Shadow Children” series, Among the Hidden explores a dystopic future in which a worldwide food shortage has forced the government to prevent families from having a third child. Luke has grown up in hiding the past 12 years thinking he’s the only third child that exists. Then he meets Jen, who lives hidden upstairs in the house next door. She tells Luke about other "shadow children," at which point his desire to live his own life and defy those in power becomes unstoppable. "We'll make them listen to us," Jen says. "We're a revolution!"

Because its themes include government control and free will, and because its story takes place in a future society where food is scarce, Among the Hidden has the potential to be used by parents and teachers as a stepping stone toward similar yet more mature fare like The Hunger Games. My favorite aspect of the book was the conflict of interest Jen's stepfather had as a member of the Population Police, but ultimately I prefer realistic fiction to this particular stripe of science fiction.

For further reading, check out the rest of Haddix's "Shadow Children" series.