Kardashian, K., Kardashian, K. and Kardashian, K. (2011). Dollhouse. NY: William Morrow. While this novel doesn’t technically qualify as a work of young adult literature, its likely YA readership, combined with its “privileged YA” plot, makes it a reasonable addition to this blog. Also, when I saw the Kardashian sisters’ novel on the “new books”…
Balog, Cyn (2011). Starstruck. NY: Delacorte. 244 pages. What started out as a not-too-body-hating fat-girl romance takes a sudden and unexpected turn into the fantastic in Balog’s Starstruck. Then again, the novel is set at the Jersey Shore, and we all know that anything can happen there. When, after four years away, sixteen-year-old Gwendolyn “Dough”…
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds (2011). Incredibly Alice. NY: Atheneum. 278 pages. I had always enjoyed Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s series of books about Alice McKinley, the seemingly average Maryland girl living with her widower father and her older brother. The first novels cast Alice and her family in Quimby-esque terms: the McKinleys were neither rich nor poor…
von Ziegesar, Cecily (2010). Cum Laude. NY: Hyperion. 272 pages. So I had heard that “Gossip Girl” creator von Ziegesar was coming out with a book about privileged college kids and I was pretty psyched to read it. Enter Cum Laude and, apres le read, I’m a little let down. Focusing initially on Shipley, a…
Conrad, Lauren (2010). Sugar and Spice. NY: HarperCollins. That’s right: I’ve read all three of the books in Lauren Conrad’s “L.A. Candy” series and I’m not in the least bit ashamed. In fact, I rather liked this little trilogy of stories supposedly penned (with a “collaborator”) by the star of Laguna Beach and The Hills.…
Kerbel, Deborah (2009). Girl on the Other Side. Toronto: Dundurn Press. 151 pages. This short novel by British ex-pat and Canadian Kerbel is a lighter, more Northern Define Normal (Peters, 2003) with a definite anti-bullying message. Told in alternating chapters from the perspectives of the wealthy and popular Tabby and the nerdy and unpopular Lora,…
Cassidy, Kay (2010). The Cinderella society. NY: Egmont. 322 pages. The recent target for harassment by the queen of the bitchiest girls at school, sixteen-year-old new girl Jess Parker is psyched to be asked to join the ranks of some of the most popular and admired girls in town. When she attends a slumber party…
Radford, Michelle (2008). Almost fabulous. NY: HarperTeen. 247 pages. At the request of an organization for whom I’ll be giving a workshop, I’ve been looking for YA titles related to bullying. As someone who is decidedly NOT a fan of the traditionally bibliotherapeutic, I was interested in finding out whether the lay of this topical…
Warman, Jessica (2010). Breathless. NY: Walker Reprint. 226 pages. Warman’s first novel owes a debt to Curtis Sittenfeld’s 2005 adult novel, Prep which, in turn, owes a debt to the enduring prep-school story genre. Like Sittenfeld’s novel, Warman’s Breathless features an outsider character, a female narrator from a well-to-do family in a white-trash Pennsylvania town,…
Dessen, Sarah (2008). Lock and key. NY: Viking Children’s Books. 432 pages. Sarah Dessen’s popularity among the patrons who compete with me for YA materials at my library is evidenced by the amount of time it took me to finally get my hands on this book. It’s been pretty much a year since publication, and…