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.