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 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, made quite a splash a few years ago, when Beyonce sampled her TED Talk in her song "Flawless". You can watch that TED talk here and that music video here! In 2015, Sweden gave every 16 year old student a copy of this book. In We Should All Be Feminists, Adichie talks about her life and uses her experiences to provide the reader with a nuanced and engaging argument for why feminism benefits every single one of us. I think that this book would be a great read for teenagers today, who are craving intersectional discussion of sexual politics. You can read more about We Should All Be Feminists here.

Honor Girl tells author Maggie Thrash's story of first love, at an all-girls summer camp. Honor Girl is a graphic novel, which is an engaging way to write a memoir. The illustration style is somewhat juvenile? Crude? I am honestly not sure how to describe it. These pages look like cartoons that my friends and I  passed back and forth in freshman year geometry. But I think that choice matches the story being told quite well; first love, confusion, innocence. You can read more about Honor Girl here. 

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