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Weekly YA Explorations: What DO Teens Like? 😊

 Weekly YA Explorations: What DO Teens Like? 😊 Since this week didn't (as far as I could tell?) have as much of a defined theme as previous weeks, I decided to just do some poking around the YA section and note what appealed to me.  Furia by Yamile Saied Mendez is about Camila Hassan, an Argentine teenager leading a bit of a double life: the daughter her parents expect her to be on one hand and La Furia, soccer star, on the other. This pull quote I read in a review really captured my attention I fight for every ball, and although I don’t always win, no one can say I hold back. I leave my soul on the pitch. I relish what my body can do, appreciate its unorthodox beauty. The eyes of the crowd are on me, and I feel like a goddess. As a former soccer player myself, I identified with this quote (though I never quite reached goddess level, myself). I like that this book seems to be steeped in a love of futbol, and it seems like it would make a fun read for an American teenage girl with
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Weekly YA Explorations: Nutritious Books 🍎

Weekly YA Explorations: Nutritious Books 🍎  I've become more of a non-fiction reader in my old age, so I was interested in seeing what kinds of non-fiction books are out there for teenagers these days. This week's exploration didn't disappoint! Flowers in the Gutter , by K.R. Gaddy, tells the story of working-class German teenagers who fought the Nazi's rise to power in Germany. This teenage resistance army was known as the Edelweiss Pirates, and they fought the Nazi's rise to power in numerous ways; through a mutual aid network of sorts, distributing leftist literature, and sometimes engaging in physical fights with Brownshirts. I selected this book because I think the feeling of fighting for something, or against something dangerous, is a feeling that teenagers today will easily relate to as many of them are also fighting; against racism, income inequality, climate change, etc. You can read more about Flowers in the Gutter here .  We Should All Be Feminists , by
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Weekly YA Explorations: Romance 💖

Weekly YA Explorations: Romance 💖  This week I decided to start with a book that I saw mentioned many times last week, Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. Perkins wrote There's Someone Inside Your House , my most controversial pick from last week. Many of the negative reviews I read of that book included something along the lines of "she should stick to romance because that's what she's good at!" So I thought it was only fair that I check out something of hers from the Romance genre. Anna and the French Kiss seems like a great, escapist treat. The book features Anna, a teenager forced to live out her senior year at a boarding school in France, who meets a boy (of course!) who is very perfect and very taken. I could see reading it now, amid the rising hum of pandemic anxiety, as a fun treat, akin to how I watch Hallmark Christmas movies to escape the stress of the holiday season. You can read more about Anna and the French Kiss here .  To All The Boys
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Weekly YA Explorations: SCARY BOOKS! 👻🧟

 Weekly YA Explorations: SCARY BOOKS! 👻🧟 I was looking forward to this week. I enjoy some horror fiction here and there, as long as it keeps things light and there's a fun supernatural element in the mix. I'm grateful that I read Dread Nation , as it seems some of my other classmate's books were about kids in scary situations which is not for me . I'll take some zombies to separate me from the heavy stuff, thank you very much.  Deathless Divide, by Justina Ireland, is the sequel to Dread Nation , and it sees Jane and Katherine departing the crumbling Summerland for California. It seems she can't leave it all behind though, as the the trauma of Summerland haunts her on the road to the golden west. Judging from the snippet I read, it seems as though the people of Jane's past still haunt her, too. (Miss Anderson is back!) While I enjoyed reading Dread Nation this week, it did feel at times like the book did a lot of work to set up the sequel, at the expense of t
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 Weekly YA Explorations This week I checked out a few different books at my local public library. One of them I'd heard mentioned by so many different people, I thought it must be a sign... which maybe I'll get around to acting upon some day! The others I found through researching other aspects of YA. The first book I'd like to highlight is The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics , by Daniel James Brown. Told in part through the team members' own diaries and photographs, The Boys in the Boat seems like a perfect summer read for someone looking for both some inspiration (who couldn't use a bit of that these days?) and also way to get into the Olympic spirit during this summer's odd Olympics. The 1936 Olympics were also unusual, though more for the fascist scourge taking over the host country that the plague still ravaging the globe. I overheard strangers talking about this book over the last week; once when I
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Not a YA fan, but I am in a YA class

Hello! I will be up front: I'm someone who loves to read and has always shunned YA. I've tried a couple books here at there but I've never given YA much of a shot. I've always had the, perhaps very unfair, assumption that YA books are overwrought, melodramatic, unnecessarily florid and just and too self-serious for me. However, I'm really looking forward to trying out some YA books with a more context and a critical eye. Also, if I still don't like the books I read, it doesn't really matter does it? I really look forward to learning about how to get people excited for a book they might like, that doesn't necessarily appeal to me . So, here we go! 
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