New York City has to be one of the greatest places in America, if not the world. Luckily for us, many authors have chronicled The Big Apple's antics in a way just right for kids.

Here are some of the books available. This is not yet a complete list, but I'm adding books to the list daily. If you wish to purchase any of these books, click on either the title or the book cover to be directed to Amazon.com. As a warning, I have put up pictures of the book covers to give you somewhat an idea of the style of each book (I know, I know. "Don't judge a book by its cover") so the pages may load slowly, depending on the speed of your internet connection.

The categories below are sorted by approximate age group and topical categories. Feel free to browse around. The same links are located on the left side of your screen. To return back to this page, simply click on the "Welcome" link on the left.

If this website came up without frames, click here to see the complete "New York City Books for Kids" website with frames.

*NOTE* Many of these books contain mature themes.

Other Pages of Interest:
Fiction & Historical Fiction: General Books About New York City (Nonfiction) | Fiction NYC Picture Books and "Easy Reader" Stories (Ages 4-8) | Fiction NYC Books (Ages 9-12) | New York Fiction for Young Adults | New York Historical Fiction (Colonial Period and Revolutionary War) | New York Historical Fiction (Ellis Island & Immigration) | New York Historical Fiction (Life in the 1800s) | New York Historical Fiction (Life in the 1900s)

NYC History: New York Biographies | Native Americans from New York (History and Historical Fiction) | New York History (Colonial Period and Revolutionary War) | New York History (Immigration and Ellis Island) | New York History (The 1800s) | New York History (The 1900s) | The World Trade Center and September 11, 2001 |

NYC Locations: The Statue of Liberty | The Empire State Building | Central Park | NYC Art Museums (Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, etc.) | NYC's American Museum of Natural History | Harlem Books (Including books about the Harlem Renaissance) | Chinatown Books | Little Italy Books | The New York City Subway System | Brooklyn Books | The Bronx Books | Queens Books | Staten Island Books | Long Island Books | Upstate New York Books | New York State Books

Life and Travel in NYC: Thanksgiving in New York City | Christmas in New York City | New York Sports Teams and Players The NYC Fire Department (FDNY) and NY Police Department (NYPD) | General Books About Cities | New York City and New York State Test Preparation and Study Guides | New York Regents Review Books | Parenting in New York City | New York Travel Guides for Families with Children

NYC Toys, Puzzles, and Games (For Kids & Adults) | Amazon.com Coupon Codes

The Catcher in the Rye By J. D. Salinger	Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins, "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them." His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation. Description from Amazon.com
The Pigman and Me By Paul Zindel	Eight hundred and fifty-three horrifying things had happened to me by the time I was a teenager. That was when I met my Pigman, whose real name was Nonno Frankie. The year Paul Zindel, his sister, Betty, and their mother lived in the town of Travis, Staten Island, New York, was the most important time of his teenage life. It was the year he and Jennifer Wolupopski were best friends. It was the year of the apple tree, the water-head baby, and Cemetery Hill. And it was the year he met Nonno Frankie Vivona, who became his Pigman. Every word of his story is true. And The Pigman & Me has an added bonus—one crucial piece of information: the secret of life, according to the Pigman. Description from Publisher "Eight hundred and fifty-three horrifying things had happened to me by the time I was a teenager. That was when I met my pigman, whose real name was Nonno Frankie," begins this wry autobiography. Zindel recalls the zesty Frankie, father of a young Italian woman who, with her hyperactive twin sons, shared a house with teenage Zindel, his mother, and his sister. A frequent visitor, Frankie dispensed sound advice and a passion for life along with platters of frog legs and pasta. With the warmth characteristic of his classic novel "The Pigman", Zindel talks about those visits, and about battles with cockroaches, suicide threats from his unstable mother, bullies, and those meaning-of-life questions that trouble everyone--especially teens. His thoughtful, humorous book is one that even reluctant readers will enjoy. Description from Booklist
Gossip Girl By Cecily Von Ziegesar	Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side where my friends and I live, and go to school, and play, and sleep- sometimes with each other. We all live in huge apartments with our own bedrooms and bathrooms and phone lines. We're smart, we've inherited classic good looks, we have fantastic clothes, and we know how to party... Introducing Gossip Girl, a wickedly funny and risquÈ paperback original novel about the provocative lives of New York City's most prestigious private school young adults. Gossip Girl herself is an anonymous narrator with the ultimate insider scoop on the inner-workings of this privileged society because she's one of them. Sharp wit, intriguing characters, and high stakes melodrama drive the action of this addictive novel that will make Gossip Girl the lit world's new "it" girl. In Gossip Girl, when the beautiful Serena van der Woodsen returns to private school after mysteriously getting kicked out of boarding school, the whole school is talking. All Blair Waldorf knows is that there's no freaking way Serena's going to just waltz back in with her Jimmy Choo mules and Kate Spade bag and steal everyone's heart again. But Serena's got other things on her mind, like college pressure and living up to everyone else's extreme expectations. Plus there's that Ryan Phillippe-looking guy who stands across the street and stares at her all the time. It's going to be a wild and wicked year, I can smell it. Love, Gossip Girl Description from Publisher At a New York City jet-set private school populated by hard-drinking, bulimic, love-starved poor little rich kids, a clique of horrible people behave badly to one another. An omniscient narrator sees inside the shallow hearts of popular Blair Waldorf, her stoned hottie of a boyfriend, Nate, and her former best friend Serena van der Woodsen, just expelled from boarding school and "gifted with the kind of coolness that you can't acquire by buying the right handbag or the right pair of jeans. She was the girl every boy wants and every girl wants to be." Everyone wears a lot of designer clothes and drinks a lot of expensive booze. Serena flirts with Nate and can't understand why Blair is upset with her; Blair throws a big party and doesn't invite Serena; Serena meets a cute but unpopular guy; and a few less socially blessed characters wonder about the lives of those who "have everything anyone could possibly wish for and who take it all completely for granted." Intercut with these exploits are excerpts from www.gossipgirl.net (the actual site launches in February), where "gossip girl" dishes the dirt on the various characters without ever revealing her own identity amongst them. Though anyone hoping for character depth or emotional truth should look elsewhere, readers who have always wished Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz would write about teenagers are in for a superficial, nasty, guilty pleasure. The book has the effect of gossip itself once you enter it's hard to extract yourself; teens will devour this whole. The open-ended conclusion promises a follow-up. Description from Publishers Weekly "Ever wondered what the lives of the chosen are really like? Well, I'm going to tell you because I'm one of them." Gossip Girl is the anonymous narrator of this campy, scandal-hungry glimpse into the lives of privileged teens in Manhattan's Upper East Side. In between pages made to resemble Gossip Girl's Web site, with updated gossip about the characters, the novel follows its central characters through a few months of private school, drinking, shopping, pot-smoking, and sex (described in relatively non-explicit scenes). When "tall, eerily blond" Serena is kicked out of boarding school, she encounters rumors, ostracism, and romance with a boy from the other side of the tracks (the Upper West Side) as she tries to find her place again. The characters and their interactions have the depth (and parental guidance rating) of a raunchy teen movie, with the usual stereotypes, cat fights, and designer labels. And that's just why the book may attract eager readers. A sequel is expected in the fall. Description from Booklist
You Know You Love Me: A Gossip Girl Novel By Cecily Von Ziegesar	College interviews, romantic troubles and a fancy wedding photographed for Vogue dominate this second installment of von Ziegesar's frothy but fun series about rich Manhattan prep school kids and the gossip Web site tracking their lives. Blair Waldorf's mother is marrying her "seriously tacky" boyfriend on Blair's birthday and has chosen the bulimic overachiever's former best friend Serena as a bridesmaid (Blair will be maid of honor). Meanwhile, "hunky" Nate avoids Blair (he's secretly seeing chesty Jenny Humphrey), and the compounded stress makes her act like a "freakshow" during her Yale interview. Blonde bombshell Serena is disturbed by poet Dan's intense affections, struggles through her own interview at Brown and scores first prize in a school film contest. The plot culminates at the wedding, where the girls' boy troubles come to a head. As with her Gossip Girl, von Ziegesar creates a complete world: the characters get drunk, shop and indulge in spa treatments plus, the film contest prize is two tickets to Cannes. While this is still strictly a guilty pleasure, the story lines are better developed in this volume and the characters show more growth. But it's their outrageous lifestyles and antics and the snide omniscient narrator that will keep readers turning the pages. Description from Publishers Weekly Continuing her soap opera saga where Gossip Girl left off, von Ziegesar again has her mostly rich, private-school crew of privileged Manhattan teenagers partying at elegant eateries, drinking booze, and shopping at high-end stores, but also thinking about college. Because of their wealth and social status, "not applying to the Ivy Leagues is not an option" and not getting accepted "would be a total embarrassment," so "the pressure is on." As the hunky, rich, pot-addled Nate says, "All of a sudden we have to plan what we’re doing for the rest of our lives and try to impress people with how smart and involved we are. I mean, do our parents take eight classes . . . , play on sports teams, edit the paper, and tutor underprivileged children . . . every single day?" Despite their jealousy inducing advantages, the characters are surprisingly sympathetic and von Ziegesar has the gift of summing up an experience with incisive wit. For example, at "a hippie arts camp," Jenny "had to write haikus about the environment, sing peace songs in Spanish and Chinese, and weave blankets for the homeless." Almost Chekhovian in situation, the bulk of the kids are in love with someone who is either indifferent to their charms or in love with someone else. Getting it all sorted out is the fun of it, and like its predecessor, it’s a highly enjoyable speedboat of a read, zipping along at lightning speed, leaving adolescent angst, wounded egos, and Manolo Blahnik mules in its wake. Description from Kirkus Reviews
The Princess Diaries By Meg Cabot	Awards: 2001 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Readers (ALA) Books for the Teen Age 2001 (NYPL) 2001 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA) Mia Thermopolis is your average urban ninth grader. Even though she lives in Greenwich Village with a single mom who is a semifamous painter, Mia still puts on her Doc Martens one at a time, and the most exciting things she ever dreams about are smacking lips with sexy senior Josh Richter, "six feet of unadulterated hotness," and passing Algebra I. Then Mia's dad comes to town, and drops a major bomb. Turns out he's not just a European politician as he's always lead her to believe, but actually the prince of a small country! And Mia, his only heir, is now considered the crown princess of Genovia! She doesn't even know how to begin to cope: "I am so NOT a princess.... You never saw anyone who looked less like a princess than I do. I mean, I have really bad hair... and... a really big mouth and no breasts and feet that look like skis." And if this news wasn't bad enough, Mia's mom has started dating her algebra teacher, the paparazzi is showing up at school, and she's in a huge fight with her best friend, Lilly. How much more can this reluctant Cinderella handle? Offbeat Mia will automatically win the heart of every teenage girl who's ever just wanted to fit in with as little fuss as possible. Debut author Meg Cabot's writing is silly and entertaining, with tons of pop culture references that will make teens feel right at home within her pages. This is a wonderfully wacky read. Description from Amazon.com Teens like novels written in diary format, and you can bet they'll be lining up for this hilarious story about a gawky 14-year-old New Yorker who learns she's a princess. Mia spends every available moment pouring her feelings into the journal her mother gave her: she writes during algebra class, in the ladies' room at the Plaza (much nicer than the one in Tavern on the Green), in her grandmother's limousine. She writes down her thoughts on everything--from algebra and her mother's love life to her jet-setting father's announcement that she's the heir to the throne of the principality of Genovia. Then, of course, she records Grandmother's efforts to turn her into a princess, her dealings with classmates, the press, and a bodyguard, and also her attraction to the most gorgeous guy in school and her attempts to be assertive and happy with her new life. She whines; she gloats; she cheers, worries, rants, and raves. Reading her journal is like reading a note from your best friend. Cabot has a fine grasp of teen dialect (and punctuation), an off-the-wall sense of humor that will have readers laughing out loud, and a knack for creating fully realized teen and adult characters that readers will miss when the story ends. Description from Booklist She's just a New York City girl living with her artist mom... News Flash: Dad is prince of Genovia. (So that's why a limo meets her at the airport!) Downer: Dad can't have any more kids. (So no heir to the throne.) Shock of the Century: Like it or not, Mia Thermopolis is prime princess material. Mia must take princess lessons from her dreaded grandmére, the dowager princess of Genovia, who thinks Mia has a thing or two to learn before she steps up to the throne. Well, her father can lecture her until he's royal-blue in the face about her princessly duty--no way is she moving to Genovia and leaving Manhattan behind. But what's a girl to do when her name is Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo? Description from Publisher
Princess in the Spotlight (The Princess Diaries, Volume II) By Meg Cabot	Fifteen-year-old Mia Thermopolis, the witty, lovable star of Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries, has had it with princess lessons, also known as torture sessions: "Do they really think anyone in Genovia cares whether I know how to use a fish fork? Or if I can sit down without getting wrinkles in the back of my skirt? Or if I know how to say 'thank you' in Swahili? Shouldn't my future countrymen be more concerned with my views on the environment? And gun control? And overpopulation?" To make matters worse, she's getting these lessons from Grandmère, a rather judgmental woman who dresses her pet in chinchilla bolero jackets and has eyeliner permanently tattooed on her eyelids. Princess in the Spotlight further records Mia's path to princessdom: her artist mother's relationship with her algebra teacher (how awkward), her forced television interview, broadcast to all of America (how humiliating), and her crush on her best friend Lilly's brother Michael (how excruciating). The result is another thoroughly entertaining diary of a very human, very self-deprecating, very unprincesslike princess. Description from Amazon.com In The Princess Diaries (now a movie), readers were treated to 27 days of Mia Thermopolis' musings and ranting about her mother's dating habits; her life as a flat-chested, five-foot, nine-inch high-school freshman living in Greenwich Village; and the discovery that she's heir to the throne of a tiny European principality. This book covers the next 13 days in Mia's life, and it's just as good as its predecessor. The action is fast, furious, and laugh-out-loud funny as Mia takes more princess lessons and flirts online with an admirer she hopes is Lilly's brother, Michael; Mia's mother and Mr. Gianini announce they are going to have a baby; and Grandmere plans the wedding. Through it all, Mia remains as smart, sassy, self-absorbed, worried, and wistful as ever. Readers who loved the first volume will be equally pleased with this one and eagerly await the four books to come. After all, there's a month till Mia is presented to her subjects, and she still doesn't realize that Michael likes her. Description from Booklist A sequel to The Princess Diaries, in which Mia, 14, discovered that she is a princess. Now she is reluctantly adjusting to the trappings of royalty: she has a bodyguard, she rides to school in a limousine, and she takes "princess lessons" from her paternal grandmother. Written in diary format, the story opens with a bombshell: the teen learns that her mother is pregnant. Worse yet, the baby's father is Mia's algebra teacher. They soon announce that they are getting married. At first, Mia is a little apprehensive, but slowly she becomes accustomed to the idea. When GrandmŠre learns about the wedding, she begins to plan a huge state affair. The plot careens along with outrageous characters doing outrageous things, but in the context of the story, "outrageous" seems quite normal. In the end, mother and algebra teacher elope, and even though Mia's secret admirer is not who she hoped he would be, her friend's brother does seem interested in her. With The Princess Diaries a Disney movie released during the summer, this title should be popular. Description from School Library Journal
Princess in Love (The Princess Diaries, Volume III) By Meg Cabot	It would seem that 14-year-old Mia Thermopolis ("five foot nine inches tall, with no visible breasts, feet the size of snowshoes") has the kind of life every Manhattan teenager could only dream of: She is, in her spare time, the princess of the European country of Genovia. Alas, the Royal Privilege is more like a Predicament. Not only does she have to endure daily princess lessons from her critical Grandmère ("It isn't as if I'm going to show up at the castle and start hurling olives at the ladies-in-waiting"), but her new stepfather is also her algebra teacher, her mother is pregnant and vomiting, she doesn't like her boyfriend very much, and she's convinced the real love of her life--her best friend's older brother--thinks of her as a kid. Written in diary form like Louise Rennison's award-winning Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, Meg Cabot's endearing and often hilarious novel Princess in Love--third in the series after The Princess Diaries and Princess in the Spotlight--is sure to appeal to teen readers who will be able to relate to Mia--a young woman who would like people to know that "behind this mutant facade beats the heart of a person who is striving, just like everybody else in this world, to find self-actualization." Description from Amazon.com Fans of the first two installments of The Princess Diaries will be just as delighted with this new volume. Mia's voice is as strong as ever and the story line is more satisfying than the plot of Princess in the Spotlight. The diary picks up with a blow-by-blow account of Mia's two Thanksgiving celebrations and concludes with a jubilant entry written aboard the Royal Genovian jet on December 20. In between, readers will be captivated by two weeks' worth of Mia's fretting about her upcoming algebra final, her presentation to the Genovian people, and Kenny's tardiness in inviting her to the Albert Einstein High School Nondenominational Winter Dance. She also obsesses about Michael's relationship with his brilliant lab partner and gets even with her grandmother and an enterprising fashion designer. It's a good thing three more volumes of the diary are forthcoming, because Cabot has secured Mia's position as teen readers' new best friend. Description from Booklist
The Bronze King (The Sorcery Hall Trilogy, Book 1) By Suzy McKee Charnas	Weird things began to happen, Tina noticed, right after the explosion in the subway. Stuff was disappearing—ordinary things like the closet doorknob and Tina's best sneakers, highly improbable ones like the kitchen linoleum, and most amazing of all, the great bronze statue of King Jagiello in Central Park. The three punky guys who kept turning up, with their chains and wrist straps and jackets lettered "Prince of Darkness" across the back, were obviously part of the terror. But it wasn't until Tina met the old street fiddler Paavo that she understood the menace that threatened the city and her own role in the terrifying struggle that lay ahead as an evil power from another dimension challenged her world. Here is a brilliant and compelling fantasy, which builds irresistibly from its everyday beginnings at a subway station on Manhattan's West Side to an epic battle in Central Park. Music and magic conspire together as Tina, her new friend Joel, and the ancient wizard Paavo join forces to defeat an awesome enemy. Description from Publisher Charnas's enthralling story is related by Valentine (Tina), a schoolgirl who lives a New York apartment house with her divorced mother. Tina's first intimation of looming dangers is an explosion at a subway stop and inexplicable disappearances of awesome proportions. The enormous statue of the warrior Jagiello astride his steed vanishes from Central Park, for example, along with things from Tina's home. An encounter with an old man, Paavo, reminds the girl of her grandmother's tales of the Norwegian Kraken, the monster that Paavo says is thrusting up from underground to devour the world. Later meetings with the old man involve Tina with Joel, a teenager mesmerized by the music Paavo plays on the violin. It isn't, as he pretends, the fiddling of an amateur for coins, but the performance of a gifted maestro. Its magic conquers, momentarily, the punks who obey the kraken's orders, posing as muggers on the subway and the dark streets. Tina escapes their clutches only to learn that the monster has grabbed Joel. Blind and paralyzed, he's below the tracks where only Tina can find and save him. The tensions and startling switches in developments, as well as the author's realistic evocations of metropolitan life, result in an unforgettable novel. Description from Publishers Weekly
The Silver Glove (The Sorcery Hall Trilogy, Book 2) By Suzy McKee Charnas	Fourteen-year-old Valentine Marsh has always known about her grandmother's remarkable magic powers. Val hasn't let her belief in Granny Gran's sorcery affect her everyday life at home and school, until the day she receives a phone call and a magic silver glove from her grandmother that brings her two worlds together with a crash. A powerful wizard has come to Earth to steal human souls, and Gran has been chosen to defeat him. Val can't believe that the wizard is actually masquerading as smooth-talking Dr. Brightner, her new school psychologist. But when her mother becomes a pawn in his deadly scheme, Val finds the courage to join Gran's fight. Together, armed with magic and the illuminating power of love, they face Brightner's seductive and dangerous illusions. Guided by instinct and urged on by fear, Val uses the silver glove to aid her in her mission— a mission to save not only her family but even the world from the forces of doom. Description from Publisher Fans of The Bronze King shouldn't miss this sequel, but those new to the proposed trilogy won't be left out by beginning with this one. Some time after the events of the earlier novel, Valentine Marsh finds herself willy-nilly cutting school, disobeying her mother and trying to save the world again. The threat: sinister Dr. Brightner, who is installed as the new school psychologist the same day Val's magic Gran runs away from her nursing home. A renegade wizard, Brightner is after souls, and he's been trying to get Gran to his clinic for "research." Val is horrified to find that he is trying to seduce her mother, who has long denied Gran's magic and doesn't see the threat. This is a book to relish; told in Charnas's nearly perfect first-person narration, Val's engaging personality of savoir-faire and innocence is judiciously mixed with a flying carpet, a deliciously scary Indian woman and a wonderful final confrontation in Central Park. Description from Publishers Weekly In this sequel to The Bronze King, 14-year-old Valentine discovers that her grand mother, who has magical powers, has gone into hiding to escape a powerful "rogue wizard" who is stealing human souls to use as soldiers in another world. When the wizard turns up as Dr. Brightner, the new psychologist at Val's school, and begins to date her di vorced mother, Val realizes that she alone can oppose him directly. This she does with the help of a magical glove given her by Gran. The various magical elements, including an Indian Restau rant named after the Goddess Kali and Brightner's "Claw," which takes vari ous sinister shapes, do not form a smooth whole. However, the recurring image of a skating rink, on which the assembled souls whirl mindlessly, forms an effective link between episodes of the plot, which moves at a good pace. Characterization is lightly but effectively sketched. Brightner's gaining of power over Val's mother by using her loneliness is well-drawn, as is Val's reaction to it. In fact, it is the realistic tensions of this situation which will appeal to readers most strongly. Charnas has done a good job of fitting her fantasy into the everyday world of a young teenage girl. Description from School Library Journal
The Golden Thread (The Sorcery Hall Trilogy, Book 3) By Suzy McKee Charnas	In this third exciting book of the Sorcery Hall series (The Bronze King; The Silver Glove), apprentice wizard Valentine Marsh's newest adventures in magic begin when her musician friend Joel, who is studying violin in Boston, calls on her. For some reason his hands cramp up when he plays, and he needs Val's help to understand why. But she is distracted by other concerns--her grandmother is dying of a stroke. Magical events at a New Year's Eve party seem to lead to the arrival of Bosanka, a sinister girl who says she is a foreign exchange student. She insists that Val and her friends can help her search for her "people." The problem is getting everyone together to create more magic--the unlikely group of conjurers includes skeptics and wise guys. Bosanka's true identity will be a wonderful surprise for readers; her reunion with her people is poetically depicted and touching. Description from Publishers Weekly With her beloved sorceress grandmother in a coma and hospitalized, 14-year-old Valentine Marsh attends a subdued New Year's gathering on the roof of a New York apartment building. When Val and her friends join hands in an experiment to magically create a star, they seem to fly into the sky until they are struck by a powerful bolt of heat. None of this is too disconcerting to Val; in previous adventures, she and her grandmother have destroyed a monster and an evil witch. Upon returning to school, Val is assigned to assist a strange foreign exchange student, Bosanka, who reveals that she is a powerful, magical ruler of another world and is looking for her people. Then she demands that Val and her friends use their power to find her misplaced subjects. Val fears Bosanka's people may subdue and misuse humankind, yet she dreads to refuse the royal commands. Charnas shows the adventures of a typical high-school girl who just happens to have inherited some degree of white magic talent. In so doing, she touches on a host of contemporary issues, the most important of which is her ecological message that we are one people and must use technology to preserve the earth rather than destroy it. If all this seems a "stretch," it isn't. Charnas neatly ties seemingly disparate pieces together into an exciting, absorbing, contemporary romp. Description from School Library Journal
Snow White and Rose Red : A Modern Fairy Tale By Regina Doman	In this contemporary version of the traditional folk tale a mother and her two teenage daughters living in New York City offer hospitality to a stranger in need and are rewarded generously. Description from Publisher
Twelve By Nick McDonell	"White Mike" dresses in an overcoat and lives with his dad on Manhattan's Upper East Side (his mom died of breast cancer not too long ago). The 17-year-old doesn't smoke, doesn't drink and doesn't do drugs. He dropped out of high school and now sells drugs pot and an Ecstasy-like upper called "twelve" to the city's moneyed teens. In this shocker of a first novel, McDonell who was 17 when he wrote it carries readers through White Mike's frantically spinning world, one alternately peopled with obscenely wealthy teenagers who live in gated townhouses with parents rarely in town and FUBU-clad basketball players in Harlem. In terse, controlled prose, McDonell describes five days in White Mike's life during Christmas break. He introduces a host of characters, ranging from Sara Ludlow ("the hottest girl at her school by, like, a lot") to Lionel ("a creepy dude" with "brown and yellow bloodshot eyes" who also sells drugs), writing mainly in the present tense, but sometimes flashing back in italics. His prose darts from one scene and character to the next, much like a cab zipping down city streets, halting quickly at a red light and then accelerating madly as soon as the light turns green. And although it brims with New York references e.g., the MetLife Building and Lenox Hill Hospital this is really a story about excess and its effects. The final scene, at a raging New Year's Eve party, will leave readers stunned, as well as curious as to what might come next from this precocious writer. Description from Publishers Weekly From The Catcher in the Rye, to The Basketball Diaries, to Less than Zero, there have been books that captured the soul of a generation. Now comes a novel for the new millennium -- Twelve, a chilling chronicle of urban adolescence that has already created an international sensation. This is not a coming-of-age novel because these kids never had a childhood; rather it is a rare look into a sealed world rendered with authority and wit. Set in Manhattan between Christmas and New Year's Eve, from the housing projects of Harlem to the penthouses of Park Avenue, it is the story of White Mike, a seventeen-year-old prep-school dropout turned drug dealer, and his privileged peers. White Mike is a loner and an anomaly: he doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and he never uses drugs. His mother is dead and his father is depressed -- but they're hardly more absent than the other parents who are off on holiday in Bali or business in Brussels, leaving hired help to look the other way while the kids of Twelve stay home in their multimillion-dollar co-ops and town houses, partying with drugs and sex and escalating violence. Access to cash is a given here and the kids of Twelve have it all; Chris and Claude and Hunter and Laura have the best, and most, of everything, but are constantly looking for something more exotic, and more dangerous: like the new designer drug, twelve. From page one, the seventeen-year-old author, whose clarity and skill far exceed his years, sets an icy pace toward an apocalyptic climax. In the penultimate party scene, when we thought we couldn't be surprised, we are shocked. And throughout the book, where there is an excess of everything but hope, we are filled with that very emotion as White Mike struggles for nothing less than his soul. Description from Publisher
When I Was Older By Garret Freymann-Weyr	Sophie Merdinger is convinced that she’s a “wretched daughter, a nonexistent girlfriend, and a sister who can’t remember one tiny thing about her brother.” Two years ago her little brother, Erhart, died of leukemia, and Sophie finds her memories of him fading. And she can’t seem to forgive her father for having an affair while Erhart was dying. Added to all of this, Sophie is trying to handle the normal pains and confusions of adolescence. Enter Francis. With a dead mother, a teardrop tattooed on his face, and a curiosity that is almost nosy, he has a lot to teach Sophie about losing someone and saving memories. But things get confusing when Sophie realizes that Francis wants to be more than friends. Is she finally ready to let go of the past? In this memorable novel, Garret Freymann-Weyr presents us with the unique story of one girl’s attempt to understand life, death, and the time that passes in between. Description from Publisher The defining event of Sophie Merdinger's life is her brother's death from leukemia, just before he turned eight. That was three years ago, and since then, Sophie's mother has divorced her philandering husband, Sophie and her sister are unable to discuss their differing opinions of their father, and boys have started to call. Sophie's afraid that if she goes out with boys, she will lose her personality and focus and become one of the boring "A-girls" who think only of their boyfriends. Then Sophie's mom starts dating again, a widower named Nick whose teenaged son, Francis, lost his mother just before he turned eight. Unlike Sophie, Francis talks openly about his loss. He even has a teardrop tattooed under his left eye so that his grief is always out in the open. And although Francis seems to like Sophie romantically, he's willing to respect her desire to stay friends. The novel's strengths lie in the concrete New York City setting and in Sophie's voice, a blunt, declarative sensibility that the author invests with ingenuous humor: "The minute anybody mentions death, my brain clicks right off. This is an extremely bad habit which I thought I had under control." Sophie shares with the reader-but rarely voices aloud-the rude but honest thoughts she has about her family, specifically about her father's abandonment of them while her little brother was dying. The voice is even strong enough to carry Sophie's weighty musings about how time has changed her perceptions about her brother's death. With Francis acting partly as therapist and partly as suitor, Sophie opens up a little and even allows herself an exception to her strict no-dating policy. Freymann-Weyr's handling of grief and family dynamics and the gentle and subtle thematic treatment of time shape this affecting first novel. Description from Horn Book Fifteen-year-old Sophie Merdinger's life fell apart when her younger brother died from leukemia, and her parents' marriage dissolved. Sophie has thrown herself into her studies and her swimming, avoiding any meaningful relationships. Now her mother is dating a history professor with a fascinating, outspoken, attractive 17-year-old son. Initially resistant to Francis' friendship, Sophie finds herself, to her horror, obsessing over him. Marvelously quirky, multidimensional secondary characters abound, including gorgeous older sister, Freddie, and irritating, brilliant classmate Henry. The plot is fairly standard. It's the philosophical issues that give the story depth and meaning. An assigned essay provokes Sophie to muse on the nature and meaning of time, and to try to stop time to preserve her brother's memory. Sophie's narrative voice is a delight: wry, clever, bitter, and totally teenage, providing welcome leavening for her classically dysfunctional family and awkward friendships. Description from Booklist
Friends to Die for By Jane Sughrue Giberga	Beverly Hills, 90210? Nope. This is Upper East Side, New York, 10028, and these teens might have even more money than those famous West Coasters. Sixteen-year-old Cristina moves with a sophisticated crowd of friends--many of whom live on their own due to jet-setting parents. When one of their many parties turns ugly and another teen is brutally murdered in its aftermath, Cristina begins to reevaluate friendships and her own beliefs. It is extremely difficult to write about privileged teens without turning the novel into a screenplay for (yet another) prime-time soap. Author Jane Giberga pulls this off, though, giving teens an exciting, but emotionally honest look at how it feels to be on the A-list. Description from Amazon.com Crissy and her friends are strictly A List. They live in a fabulous Manhattan apartments, attend the best schools, and live fast, beautiful lives. Until the night that a wild party spins out of control. One of them ends up dead, the killer is on the loose--and Crissy has a terrible secret to keep. Fleet pacing, dead-on dialogue, and twists and turns galore make this a must-read for mystery fans. Description from Publisher
I am an Artichoke By Lucy Frank	Fifteen-year-old Sarah leaps at the chance to spend a summer as a mother's helper in Manhattan. How much trouble could it be to care for someone who's already 12? It turns out to be a lot of trouble--because Emily is anorexic, and her mother alternates between denial and obsession. The length of time Sarah waits before involving her sensible (though "boring") parents seems unbelievably long, but the detail given to Sarah's fascination with Angel, an older boy working in the building for the summer, is credible and will keep readers involved. The plot stretches probability, yet the what-happens-next pacing is good, and Sarah, who, like Emily, has trouble seeing herself realistically, learns something about herself from her young charge. Description from Booklist
Will You Be My Brussels Sprout? By Lucy Frank	In Frank's debut novel, I Am an Artichoke, Sarah takes a summer job in New York City as a mother's helper to anorexic 12-year-old Emily. This companion volume picks up the story when Sarah, 16 and an aspiring cellist, begins taking lessons at the New York Conservatory of Music, meets Emily's older brother, David, and falls in love for the first time. Sarah and David connect on many levels, but the inexperienced Sarah faces a dilemma when David starts pressuring her to become intimate. Frank resolves the conflict in a believable, satisfying, and responsible manner (Sarah chooses not to have sex), opening the door for discussion on this sensitive topic. Punctuated with humor and witty dialogue and filled with all the angst any teen could ever want, this quirky coming-of-age story will confirm Frank's place as a fresh new YA talent. Description from Booklist
Miracle's Boys By Jacqueline Woodson	Another tale of the inner city that focuses on the real struggles of those live there, from Woodson (Lena). The Bailey boys are on their own: their father died from hypothermia after rescuing a woman and her dog from a frigid lake in Central Park, and their mother, Milagro, or Miracle, followed him in death when she could not afford the insulin she needed. Ty'ree, the oldest, has given up his dreams of college and a career in science and works full time in a publishing company mailroom so that he can feed and house himself and his brothers. Charlie, who was in a juvenile detention facility for armed robbery when his mother died and cannot ever forget it, is now home, but he is full of hatred and anger at the whole world, no longer the boy who once cried at the sight of a sick or injured animal. He directs some of his hatred at the youngest boy, Lafayette; between that and the devastation his mother's death, Lafayette finds that his world is in chaos. Readers will be caught up in this searing and gritty story of their struggle; Woodson composes a plot without easy answers, and creates characters for whom predictable behavior is all but impossible. A decent, involving novel about a family struggling to remain intact in spite of tremendous obstacles. Description from Kirkus Reviews Even though it's been more than two years since his mother died, thirteen-year-old Lafayette continues to grieve by withdrawing into an inner world where he is haunted by his memories. Secretly he blames himself for his mother's death since he was the one to find her body after she sank into a diabetic coma. His twenty-two-year-old brother Ty'ree, mature and responsible, has some demons of his own: he witnessed the drowning death of their father before Lafayette was even born. These two brothers have learned to depend on each other for the emotional comfort that comes from predictable daily routines. Quite likely each would have worked through his private trauma at his own pace were it not for a third brother, Charlie, who, at age sixteen, has just returned from doing time at Rahway Home for Boys for an armed robbery he committed three years earlier. The challenge of living with this angry, hostile brother forces Ty'ree and Lafayette to open up to each other, so that they can finally work through their grief and figure out how to help Charlie survive. This compelling novel about contemporary African-American brothers living in New York City is oddly reminiscent of S. E. Hinton's early novels, with its streetwise, self-sufficient orphans who seek refuge in art films and self-examination. Although there is little action in a story that is told almost entirely through dialogue and Lafayette's innermost thoughts and memories, the narrator's voice maintains a tone of sweet melancholy that is likely to hold the attention of thoughtful young teens. And, like Hinton's novels, it may not be entirely credible, but it sure has heart. Description from Horn Book Lafayette, 12, tells his family story in a voice that's funny, smart, and troubled. It's a story of poverty and grief, of family secrets and brotherly love. Lafayette's oldest brother, Ty'ree, has given up hope of college so that he can work and raise Lafayette and their middle brother, Charlie, who robbed a local candy store two years ago and has returned home from the correctional facility an angry stranger. Charlie is now in trouble again; this time it's a gang fight. With the boys always is the absence of their beloved mother and the guilt, blame, and sorrow they all feel and incite in one another. Mama is too saintly a figure, at least in her three sons' soft-glowing sorrowful memories, but the fast-paced narrative is physically immediate, and the dialogue is alive with anger and heartbreak, "brother to brother to brother." As in Walter Dean Myers' novel 145th Street, the city block in the story is hard and dangerous--and it is home. Description from Booklist
Spellbound By Janet McDonald	In her first book for young adults, McDonald (Project Girl, for adults) uses a chorus of highly authentic, lively young voices to convey heartbreaks and dreams reverberating in a Brooklyn ghetto. From the outside, Raven appears to be just another "housing project girl," whose prospects are as bleak as those of her best friend, Aisha. Both teens are high school dropouts, unwed mothers and virtually unemployable but, unlike Aisha, Raven is not content to rely on "the system" for support. Her chance to gain independence and to carve out a better life for herself and her son comes in the form of a spelling bee. If Raven wins the contest, she will be able to enter a college prep program, then go on to college on a full scholarship. Offering balanced portions of humor and drama, the novel traces how Raven gradually gains confidence in herself and her future as she prepares for the spelling bee. McDonald paints Raven's path to success as realistically rocky, obstructed by such complications as the reappearance of her baby's father and the disturbing news that Aisha is pregnant again. If the story's resolutions seem a little too pat, the heroine's passionate determination remains admirable. Her ability to turn her life around defies the notion that girls like her and Aisha are stuck on a dead-end street. Description from Publishers Weekly Sixteen-year-old Raven, a once-promising student in spite of her impoverished home and single mother's limited education, has been derailed by the birth of a baby conceived during her first sexual encounter. The father of her child was a stranger to her when they met at a party and doesn't know the extended ramifications of their meeting. Raven finds herself teetering on the brink of forgoing any life beyond her Brooklyn-project apartment, the baby, the only sort of job open to a high school dropout, and her best friend's brash "welfare recipient" influence. Then Raven's older sister hears about a college prep and scholarship program and goads her into studying for the spelling bee through which program participants are identified. In spite of the baby, in spite of a fast-food job, in spite of her best friend's loud mocking, and in spite of the reemergence of the baby's father into her life, the African-American teen decides to learn to spell so that she can compete, so that she can win. McDonald has created a vital cast of characters, giving them authentic voices and motivations. Even while cheering for Raven, readers will understand her best friend's hesitancy. The baby's father is depicted in both his lack of maturity and his desire to get beyond his parents' prejudices. Raven's mother is strong and reliable, clearly able to cope with the crises life hands her and hers. Among the shelves of novels about teenage girls dealing with unplanned babies, this is a standout. Description from School Library Journal
Chill Wind By Janet McDonald	Afraid that she will have no where to go when her welfare checks are stopped, nineteen-year-old high school dropout Aisha tries to figure out how she can support herself and her two young children in New York City. Description from Publisher McDonald writes with such honesty, wit, and insight that you want to quote from every page and read the story aloud to share the laughter and anguish, fury and tenderness of 19-year-old Aisha Ingram. A high-school dropout from the projects, "with no diploma, no skills, and two kids," she's about to lose her welfare income unless she agrees to the "slave jobs" of workfare. As she tries out various wild alternatives (faking mental illness to stay on disability; working as a "big model") Aisha remembers how she got where she is and her experience with the boy who left her, just like her dad left her mom. Aisha is the wild homegirl in McDonald's first YA novel, Spellbound, and, as in that book, the resolution here is much too easy and contrived. It's the truth of the characters and their talk (without obscenity) and the energy of the neighborhood--a neighborhood too seldom depicted in YA books--that will grab readers from everywhere. There's no romanticism, just a sense of a strong, young black woman, far from "sugar and spice," who screws up big time but finds self-respect with friends and family where she lives. Description from Booklist
Love and Other Four-Letter Words By Carolyn Mackler	With her parents splitting up, 16-year-old Sammie Davis may not want to feel a thing, but feelings happen. For starters, she’s plenty angry. Her dad’s leaving their upstate New York home and moving clear across the country. Her mother—well, she’s packing up and relocating to New York City with Sammie, who has no say about any of it. Overnight Sammie is forced to deal with change. And one change spawns another: Roles get reversed, old and new friendships tested, and sexual feelings awakened. It’s a scary time. But as Sammie realizes that things can’t stay the same forever, that even the people she loves and trusts the most can disappoint her, she begins to accept that change isn’t always bad. It’s how you cope, jumbled feelings and all, that counts. And as she copes, Sammie’s sense of self emerges proud and strong. Description from Publisher Until this summer, the biggest problems 16-year-old Samantha Davis faced were her embarrassingly large breasts, (nicknamed "the Grand Tetons after those mountains in Wyoming,") and the fact that her gorgeous best friend, Kitty, always made her feel like a Plain Jane: "It sounds awful, but if you saw a Jaguar and a Ford Taurus parked next to each other, which one would you want to drive?" But now Sammie's parents are splitting, and suddenly she is being assaulted by changes from every direction. She is forced to move from upstate New York to Manhattan, play nursemaid to her depressed mother, and suffer the utter boredom of not knowing anyone in a city of 8 million. But then she meets Eli, the cute "crunchy granola" son of her mom's friend, and Phoebe, the quirky girl in Central Park who categorizes people by the dog breed they resemble. Exposure to the urban scene, new friendships, and a developing sense of self cause Sammie to realize "that along with love comes other four-letter words. Like hate, obviously.... And gain. And most important, grow." Description from Amazon.com Like Phyllis Naylor's Alice and many other teenage girls in contemporary coming-of-age books, the 16-year-old narrator in this funny first novel is frank, awkward, "absolutely, completely average," and trying desperately to make sense of family, friendship, romance, and sex. Sammie's parents are having a trial separation. Her dad is gone, and she's left trying to care for her mom, who has moved them to New York City and can't cope at all. Sammie's best friend, beautiful, self-centered Kitty, talks all the time about sex with her boyfriend (including discussion of responsible contraception), but Sammie's worries are about her body image (especially her big breasts), and at parties she just ends up in a corner sipping lukewarm beer. The ending is happy: Mom and Dad are doing better, Sammie finds a new best friend, and there's romance (just kissing, so far) with a nice awkward "crunchy granola" guy. The nostalgia for the Beatles and Dylan is a bit overdone, but Mackler gets the contemporary scene with humor and realism. Many teens will read this for the facts about sex and growing up as well as the story. Description from Booklist Called a "hippie-chick" by her best friend Kitty, Sammie Davis strums folk songs on her guitar instead of joining life in the fast lane. Aside from the changes in her developing body, the 16-year-old's life has been relatively uneventful until she learns that her artist mother and college-professor father are separating. Feeling angry and betrayed, Sammie leaves Kitty and her upstate home for a cramped New York City apartment with her mom. Despite the stressful situation, there is a lighthearted element to the novel that keeps the mood balanced. Insightful and intelligent, the teen finds herself coping with the changes better than her emotionally fragile mother. Sammie's humor shines through, especially when she's with her slobbery dog, Moxie. She begins to primp, donning a lacy camisole and a spritz of vanilla musk for "Elevator Duty," a daily routine in the hope of a chance meeting with her good-looking neighbor. Finding a fellow dog-walker and ally named Phoebe, Sammie gains confidence in her new surroundings and ultimately finds the courage to tell her father how she feels. The author uses actual locations from the upstate New York area around Cornell University and from New York City, adding to the realism of the story. Teens will relate to the common themes of divorce and awakening sexuality and will enjoy this Birkenstock-wearing heroine. Description from School Library Journal
Babyface By Norma Fox Mazer	At fifteen, Toni Chessmore was happy with her life. She had parents who adored her and each other. Her best friend lived next door and was everyting a best friend should be. Toni's life was just about perfect...or so she thought. But that was before her best friend left for California, before they almost ended their perfect friendship over a boy, and before Toni heard a long-buried secret about her family that made her world come crashing down around her. Yet it was those bitter truths that let her see that nothing in life was perfect...including the people she loved the most. Description from Publisher Toni Chessmore has always felt lucky; she could not have asked for more perfect parents or for a better friend than Julie Jensen, her next-door neighbor. But during her 14th summer, Toni's opinion of herself and others begins to change after her father's near-fatal heart attack. Toni is sent to stay with her older sister in New York, where she learns shocking secrets about her parents' past and recognizes that they have been living a lie that began before she was born. Feeling hurt and deceived, Toni has trouble dealing with her parents after returning home. To make matters worse, an argument with Julie results in the girls' not speaking. Only when Toni deals openly and honestly with her resentments can she start to accept and forgive. Although she seems a bit two-dimensional at the onset of the novel, Toni's inner growth and increasing awareness--as well as her disillusionment--are realistically portrayed. Mazer (After the Rain ; Silver) offers a thorough, sensitive exploration of parent/teen relationships as she reveals how a sheltered girl discovers that the people she loves are neither perfect nor infallible. Description from Publishers Weekly A sensitive novel that explores the subtle patterns of family relationships. Toni Chessmore, 14, has always thought of herself as lucky. She has loving parents who almost never fight and her best friend lives next door. Her luck begins to change when her best friend temporarily moves to California and her father has a serious heart attack. When her parents go to an out-of-town health program, Toni is sent to stay with her 28-year-old sister in New York City. Never having been close in the past, the two sisters are thrown together in a tiny apartment and a family secret is revealed--before Toni was born, her father had hit her mother during a heated argument, and her parents were seriously considering divorce. Knowledge of this piece of family history drastically alters Toni's perceptions of her parents, her sister, and herself. Returning home, Toni matures; she begins a serious friendship with a boy and confronts her parents with their past. Mazer's resolution may be a little hasty, but her characters are vivid and true. Letters between Toni and her best friend add an intimate dimension to the story. Readers will easily recognize the communication problems that Mazer depicts so accurately. Description from School Library Journal
Scorpions By Walter Dean Myers	Awards: 1989 Newbery Honor Book Notable Children's Books of 1988 (ALA) 1988 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA) 1989 Recommended Books for Reluctant Young Adult Readers (ALA) The USA Through Children's Books 1990 (ALA) Young Adult Choices for 1990 (IRA) 1989 Judy Lopez Children's Books Award, Honorable Mention Children's Books of 1988 (Library of Congress) 1989 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library) Life in Harlem is difficult for 12-year-old Jamal: he has problems with teachers and peers, his often absent father makes him feel inadequate and his older brother Randy is in jail. Randy wants Jamal to take over the Scorpions, his lucrative crack running gang, but Jamal feels that he is too young andtoo inexperienced to lead the older gang members. Then Mack, Randy's warlord, passes a gun to Jamal. Jamal knows that keeping the gun is wrong, but it gives him such a feeling of power and security that he can't bring himself to give it up. Description from Publisher Jamal's feelings of powerlessness, insecurity, and ambivalence will strike a chord with readers. He is frustrated with his life yet not able to make any definite changes for the better. The decisions he must make (should he runcrack to earn money for Randy's appeal, should he take the gun to school, should he take the drug the school nurse offers to calm him down) are all decisions that a growing number of YAs face every day. Myers' matter-of-fact descriptions of Harlem offer a bleak portrayal of inner city life. His use of Black English, although the gang members have a much cleaner vocabulary than would be expected, adds to the plot's authenticity. Myers effectively illustrates the problems of guns, gangs, and inner city life; . . . however, the young characters will limit the appeal to middle and younger junior high readers. Description from Voice of Youth Advocates Jamal, who is black, and his best friend Tito, Puerto Rican, are not terribly sophisticated twelve-year olds when they are confronted with the 'choice'to join a gang, the Scorpions. . . . While Tito's grandmother and Jamal's mother and impish little sister . . . provide, as well as they can, love and support, the Harlem world portrayed here is unsparingly cold and frightening. . . . Myers's anti-gang message is strong but not didactic, effectively voiced through the words and actions of the Scorpions themselves. His compassion for Tito and Jamal is deep; perhaps the book's signal achievement is the way it makes us realize how young, in Harlem and elsewhere, twelve years old really is. Description from Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Rats By Paul Zindel	From a Pulitzer-prize winning author comes another white-knuckle thriller forteens. When mutant rats threaten to take over Staten Island, which has becomea huge landfill, 14-year-old Sarah and her younger brother Mike try to figureout how to stop them. Description from Publisher Zindel (Reef of Death) churns out another variation of his teen versus man-eating beast theme. Again, he relies heavily on horror, gore and gimmicks. The first scene graphically depicts a man being devoured by a mob of vicious rats, and the rest of this nightmarish thriller follows suit, as billions of rodents invade New York City after their feeding ground (a garbage dump in Staten Island) is buried under asphalt. Enter Sarah, the 15-year-old daughter of the landfill supervisor; like many of Zindel's recent heroes and heroines, Sarah possesses the courage, intelligence and creativity needed to take charge of a life-threatening situation and bring order out of chaos. Unfortunately, her scheme to "hypnotize" the rats has less narrative oomph than the string of grizzly deaths occurring before the story's climax. The book does contain a somewhat watered-down message about environmentalism, but readers caught up in the fast-paced, blood-spewing action may not take time to ponder the moral. Description from Publishers Weekly Staten Island and the rest of New York City are threatened by an invasion of vicious killer rats in this gory, makes-your-skin-crawl thriller. The epicenter of the disaster turns out to be a huge landfill brimming over with decades worth of rotting garbage, right next to the quiet neighborhood where Sarah Macafee, 15, and her brother Michael, 10, live with their widowed father. Mr. Macafee just happens to be the city sanitation officer in charge of the landfill, which is in the process of being paved over with a layer of asphalt. The horror begins one summer morning with rats emerging from residents' toilets, hot tubs, and in-ground swimming pools. Sarah and Michael discover a neighbor dead in her car, and alert their father that rodents from the landfill are mounting an attack on their neighborhood. Readers looking for gruesome details are treated to numerous descriptions of bodily dismemberment by these traditionally maligned mammals, and the jolts of horror recur at regular intervals while Sarah and her brother survive several cliff-hanger escapes. Just in the nick of time, Sarah figures out a way to halt the vermin in their tracks and put an end to the bloodbath that engulfs a crowded Manhattan entertainment center. Zindel's style is fast paced and the plot is chock-full of shivery, stomach-churning action. Young readers will certainly rest easier once Sarah uses her wits to end a nightmare of carnage. Description from School Library Journal
Sometimes I Think I Hear My Name By Avi	Too Many Questions It wasn't that thirteen-year-old Conrad didn't like living with his aunt and uncle in St. Louis. It's just that his mother and father both lived in New York and he hadn't seen them lately. And he had a few questions he needed to have answered. That's how Conrad happened to spend the strangest week of his life in New York City with a girl he hardly knew--and getting more answers than he had questions...about his parents, himself, and what real families are all about.Conrad lives in St. Louis with his aunt and uncle, who his divorced parents feel can provide the stable home life they can't manage in New York City. When his mother decides that he should spend spring vacation in London instead of with her, Conrad is sure something is wrong, and he goes to New York to find out what. Once there he contacts Nancy, a secretive girl with a family life just as strange as Conrad's. With Nancy by his side, Conrad embarks on a remarkable adventure of discovery-about his family and about himself. Description from Publisher
Slake's Limbo By Felice Holman	Awards: An ALA Best Books for Young Adults An ALA Notable Children's Book An ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults The Horn Book Fanfare List Desperate, driven, harassed to the breaking point, Slake decides to go underground--into the sheltering depths of the New York City Subway where he ends up staying for one hundred and twenty-one days. This is the story about survival, and about a 13-year-old misfit's attempts to find footing in a hostile and threatening world. Description from Publisher Most adventure and survival stories pit boy against the elements, or boy against evil; for Artemis Slake, it is boy against the cruelty of his peers, or even worse, the anonymity of disinterest. When he disappears into the subway tunnels of New York, no one misses him, no one cares. But 13-year-old Artemis manages to survive on his own—in fact, he flourishes, as he creates his own little world apart. And yet, it is the growing concern of total strangers that allows him to believe in himself, and humanity, in the end. Description from AudioFile
The Jetty Chronicles By Leonard Everett Fisher	Fisher (Anasazi) admits to some fictionalizing of the details, but this brief memoir of a few adolescent, preWW II years in Brooklyn has the authenticity that comes from well-chosen details, lovingly and honestly observed. With no attempt to turn this into an autobiography, Fisher finds some metaphors for living in the ``immortal'' jetty from which, in his youth, he watched ships come and go from New York City's waters. From an old professor comes a geology lesson, from an artist a lesson in painterly verisimilitude, from a buff young man a lesson in false pride, and from a poor, delusioned soul, a lesson in--among other things--the abuse of religion. That the war is coming hangs over many paragraphs, that Fisher would become an artist and storyteller all but hidden. The volume, with so many speakers expounding on various topics, may be more suited to Fisher's admirers than to readers unfamiliar with his work; he sticks to a particular reference--the jetty and the people around it--and a particular time, and makes it utterly palpable. Description from Kirkus Reviews Fisher returns to his boyhood home in this novel based on his reminiscences from 1934 to 1939, set in the wake of a manmade jetty in southwestern Brooklyn. Built in 1907 to prevent erosion of a small sandy beach, the jetty is in itself a fascinating hulk of a character. While it seems massive and certain to last forever, it is now barely visible at low tide. From the jetty, the young Fisher could watch the world go by. All manner of vessels passed through his "front yard." Colorful fictional characters include an elderly geologist; a nameless ex-convict; an artist; and a radical newspaper vendor hell-bent on getting into the exclusive Sea Gate with his message of miracles, salvation, and eternal damnation. The best of the bunch, though, is the story of a pretty-boy Olympic hopeful. Rumors (that he successfully started) are so strong, that Horace Monash begins to believe that he might just be a powerful swimmer. His unmasking has all the elements of a Greek tragedy. The grim specter of World War II haunts this story. Newspaper headlines and adult conversations overheard foretell the future evil to come. This is a piece of Americana, an antidote to Norman Rockwell, portraying a real place and time that no longer exists. A place of power and majesty reclaimed by nature.-- Description from School Library Journal
The World of Henry Orient: A Novel By Nora Johnson	Val and Marian, two teenage school girls growing up in New York City, are misfits. Val, virtually ignored by her wealthy parents, lives at a boarding house where she is watched over by an arty but childless couple. Marian lives with her divorced mother and her mother's friend and rarely sees her father. Marian spends her afternoons eating sundaes at a local drugstore; Val disappears mysteriously each afternoon before school is let out. They don't seem to have much in common with the other girls at their school nor even with each other. Yet together they find friendship and adventure in this poignant and witty novel, as they follow the life of one mediocre pianist, and learn what it means to grow up. Description from Publisher
The Kidnappers: A Mystery By Willo Davis Roberts	In a new twist on the old "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" story, 11-year-old Joey Bishop's well-deserved reputation as a liar and teller of tall tales gets in the way of helping to solve a crime. When Joey accidentally hits the class bully in the nose, he knows it's only a matter of time before Willie seeks revenge. Hiding outside of his expensive New York City private school after most of the chauffeurs have come and gone, Joey witnesses the abduction of his worst enemy. By the time he convinces others of the veracity of his story, he realizes that having seen the kidnapping is nearly as dangerous as being kidnapped. The fast-paced mystery unfolds with suspense and excitement, as Joey is nearly run down and then abducted himself. A double-crossing by an old friend and the making of a new one conclude this first-person narrative. Joey's frustrations with his schoolmates and family add humor to the mystery. While the subplots tend to dilute the tension, this remains a quick, satisfying read. Description from School Library Journal
Where You Belong By Mary Ann McGuigan	Fiona doesn't know where she belongs. When her mother is evicted from their Bronx apartment in New York, she tries to return to her father's house--only to flee one of his drunken rages the first night back. Alone, she wanders the streets until--by chance--she bumps into an old classmate. Yolanda seems to understand her pain. Misfits, both girls search for belonging. Will they find it in each other? ... even though one is black and the other is white? Mary Ann McGuigan deftly explores how racism riddles the lives of these characters in New York during the early '60s, leaving readers hopeful about friendship's power to bridge chasms--perceived and real. Description from Amazon.com Where does 13-year-old Fiona belong? With her mother and three siblings, all newly evicted from their Bronx apartment? With her alcoholic father whose repeated failures at life drive him to violent, abusive rages? With resentful Aunt Maggie in her already overcrowded apartment? Feeling lost and alone, Fiona bolts and, by chance, encounters Yolanda, a black girl from school, whose defiant spirit and kindness have made her Fiona's idol. Because the year is 1963 and the civil rights movement is stirring passionate enmities, the ensuing interracial friendship is forbidden, but through it Fiona discovers, for the first time, that positive change and hope can become part of her life. In this deeply moving novel, McGuigan demonstrates a wonderful talent for creating emotionally complex characters, believable situations, and closely observed, realistic settings. That some of the plot situations remain unresolved reinforces the feeling of real life, which is one of the book's singular strengths. As for Fiona, she is an unforgettable character with a first-person voice that is marvelous in its understated artfulness and compelling in its emotional authenticity. Description from Booklist
The Kingdom of Kevin Malone By Suzy McKee Charnas	Amy, 14, is roller-skating in Central Park when Kevin, a tough Irish kid from her old neighborhood, suddenly runs by and pins onto her jersey a trinket he took from her long ago. Running after him, she passes through an arch and into the kingdom that Kevin has created to escape his father's brutality. There, Amy is drawn into Kevin's struggle with his archenemy Anglower, returning to the real world to bring Kevin a magic sword. In the end, Kevin defeats Anglower, who turns out to be a reincarnation of his brutal, drunken father. Amy returns home, but Kevin stays in his kingdom. Charnas blends tough, gritty young New Yorkers who have real problems--Kevin's dad, Amy's recent loss of a beloved cousin--with the standard elements of troll-and-mole fantasy. The mix is uneven, but it does make an engrossing story. Description from Kirkus Reviews When Kevin Malone -- a boy Amy has not seen for years -- lures Amy into chasing him through Central Park, they both end up in a fantasy world that Kevin imagined as a boy and now lives in as a prince. While traveling between worlds to retrieve the magic object that will save the kingdom, Amy interacts not only with Kevin and the creatures, both friendly and menacing, of the Fayre Farre but also with her friends and family. The plot is entertaining; the unique premise will fascinate fantasy fans. Description from Horn Book Charnas melds the world of the teenage problem novel with that of fantasy in a story that pokes gentle fun at the conventions of fantasy fiction. Bereft at the untimely death of her beloved aunt and confidant, Amy goes roller skating in Central Park with her best friend, Rachel. Suddenly, someone bumps into Amy, pinning a rhinestone rose on her sleeve--the very pin that her aunt had given her and that Kevin Malone, the neighborhood bully, had stolen from her years earlier. Amy gives chase and, skating through the arch of a bridge, finds herself in the Fayre Farre, a world Kevin has created and peopled with all sorts of fantasy creatures in order to escape his abusive father. Here, Kevin is prince and Promised Champion, destined to save the land from the evil White One. However, Kevin's creation has gotten away from him; he's ill-prepared, and a prophecy not of his making says that the help of three princesses is needed to "bring the prince worthily to his throne." The action is fast paced as Amy brings two friends and a pocket knife/magic sword into Fayre Farre and events move inexorably to the final confrontation. The juxtaposition of Central Park and Fayre Farre is nicely done, adding to the sense of mystery, which is also conveyed in the attractive, beckoning shaded black-and-white frontispiece and chapter heading illustrations. Though the somewhat quick acceptance of magic by all three girls is not quite believable, Amy is a convincing and likable heroine, and Kevin, in all his emotional frailty--tough exterior, internal vulnerability--rings true. Description from Booklist
Jazmin's Notebook By Nikki Grimes	Her name is Jazmin, and like the music of her name, her life throbs and swings--a few flat notes to be sure, but also bursting with rich passages that rise and soar. Sitting on her stoop she fills her notebook with laughs, anger, and hope. There's the risky lure of luscious-looking men and the consequences of free haircuts. This is a fourteen-year-old so-real girl living in Harlem in the 1960's, born with clenched fists and big dreams, and strengthened by the love of a steadfast sister. Captured within pages of her tough, exuberant life are all the beauty, chaos, confusion, and clarity that accompany the excitement of exploring life's possibilities--and discovering they are endless. Description from Publisher "There are days when laughter hides in the shadows, days when food is low . . . or we have no heat"; but 14-year-old Jazmin was "born with clenched fists," and her journal entries and occasional poems about her life in Harlem in the 1960s are funny, tender, angry, and tough. Mom's back in the hospital with a breakdown, and Daddy's dead; but after years of being sent "postage paid" to many relatives and foster homes, Jazmin at last has a place to stay with her strong, older sister. Jazmin loves school, even though she's picked on for her Coke-bottle glasses; an A student, she stands up to the counselor, who tries to steer her away from academics. Her journal is chatty and informal, but never cute (one anachronism, though: "ya-da, ya-da, ya-da" in the 1960s?). The brief poems are as direct and touching as the narrative. Many teens will relate to Jazmin, whether she is talking about the power of religion, friendship, or laughter, or about her attraction to a luscious guy, a "six-foot-four chocolate drop," who then tries to rape her. Jazmin's trouble with her mother is always there: anger that her distant mother never loved her and guilt that she just can't make herself visit the hospital. Then Jazmin does visit, and she finds her mother changed. Jazmin describes the heartbreaking scene: Mom "took my face in her hands, and let me see her tears." There is nothing idyllic in this realistic story, no talk of Heaven, but there is hope. We share Jazmin's laughter and tears as she writes about her struggle to find community and her own space. Description from Booklist There's a poetic soul taking notes up on Amsterdam Avenue in New York City, and her name is Jazmin Shelby, the star witness to the hard lives and high hopes in a novel from Grimes (Come Sunday). Jazmin has her sights set on college, but meanwhile she keeps her eyes open, noticing all the comings and goings of her 1960s neighborhood from her front stoop. She records everything in her notebook, including a running commentary on her family, feelings, friendships, hopes, and disappointments. Her father has been dead a year, and her mother--a mentally unstable alcoholic-- is hospitalized; Jazmin's life has included shuttling between relatives and foster homes, living in rat-infested tenements, and avoiding the everyday violence of the streets. Older sister CeCe is a source of strength, who, along with some supportive neighbors and teachers, have helped Jazmin hang on to her goals and resist the pitfalls of drugs, alcohol, and sexual activity. Peppering the first-person narration with poems from Jazmin's journal, Grimes paints a vivid picture of her character's surroundings. Especially effective are Jazmin's witty descriptions of neighbors and local characters; just as compelling is Jazmin's interior landscape, in which a wiser, more reflective voice hints at the young woman--and writer--she'll become. Description from Kirkus Reviews
Missing Angel Juan (The Weetzie Bat Books) By Francesca Lia Block	Awards: 1994 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA) 1994 Recommended Books for Reluctant Young Adult Readers (ALA) Best Books of 1993 (SLJ) 1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library) 1993 "Pick of the Lists" (ABA) Lonely City A tangly-haired, purple-eyed girl named Witch Baby lives in glitzy L.A. She loves a guy named Angel Juan. When he leaves for New York she knows she must find him. Looking For Love So she heads for the city of glittery buildings and garbage and Chinese food and drug dealers and subways and kids playing hip-hopscotch. Finding Trouble Her clues are an empty tree house in the park, a postcard on the street, a mannequin in a diner. Angel Juan is in danger, and only Witch Baby's heart-magic can make him safe.When Angel Juan leaves L. A.—and Witch Baby—to play his music and find himself in New York, Witch Baby, wild and restless without him, follows. Description from Publisher Witch Baby is heartbroken when her true love, Angel Juan, decides to play his own music on the streets of New York City, leaving her behind. When Angel Juan's letters stop, she goes to look for him. Aided by the ghost of her dead grandfather, Charlie Bat, Witch Baby roams the city, following an occasional mystical clue, dogged by visions of a male mannequin in white. The appealingly outrageous plot races to a flurry of concluding activity, with Angel Juan found, Charlie Bat redeemed, the demon-madman in white destroyed, and Witch Baby reborn. This third story in the Weetzie Bat saga exhibits Block's ability to combine romantic language, poetic slang, and character eccentricity into a viable plot (complete with tree spirits, a "truth" camera, and sexual passion); and it packs an emotional wallop that makes it a strong choice for young adults. Description from Booklist Still following the teenage experiences of Weetzie Bat and her friends, Block departs, for the first time, from the L.A. scene. The Goat Guys' success isn't enough for Angel Juan; he flies to N.Y.C. to prove himself as a performer on his own, sending back postcards but no address. Witch Baby sets out to find him; she stays in Weetzie's father Charlie Bat's empty apartment, communing with his ghost (at one point, Charlie takes her back to his Brooklyn childhood) and finding signs of Angel Juan in such surprising places as a tree in Central Park. Eventually, in an extraordinary dreamlike scene that bespeaks both the city's underworld and the young people's rites of passage, Witch Baby finds Angel Juan, who is, at last, ready to be found: "`Who was that man?' `He was our fear,' says Angel Juan. `My fear of love and yours of being alone. But we don't need him anymore.'" In her fourth book, Block's lyrical interplay of leitmotifs and artful allusions (statues, mannequins, drag queens; photos, mirrors, ghosts; pimps, wholesale butchers, vegetarians; and, of course, angels) continues to be uniquely fascinating and provocative. Description from Kirkus Reviews
Kelly 'N' Me By Myron Levoy	Anthony, 15, helps his mother, a has-been actress, pay the bills by playing guitar in Central Park. One day he meets Kelly Callahan, a girl with a beautiful voice, singing in the park, and they work up an act together. They become successful street performers--and fall in love. But Kelly is not who she claims to be. When she reveals her true life, their friendship is severely tested. Description from Publisher Sensitive, guitar-playing Anthony Milano meets the mercurial singer Kelly in Central Park and finds that they make quite a team -- as musicians and as more-than-friends. But Kelly's problems as a rebellious, guilt-ridden child of rich parents are too great to be solved by teenage love alone, and Anthony, who owes allegiance to his own troubled mother, must choose how best to help. Rich characterization with a fairly simple but involving plot make this appealing reading and excellent discussion material. Description from Horn Book
In the Forests of the Night By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes	Three-hundred-year-old Risika looks darn good for her age. Thanks to her "blood mother," a vampire named Ather who turned Risika (nee Rachel) into one of the undead back in 1684, she will always look as fresh as a 17-year-old. Now Risika is a world weary night stalker who sleeps in Concord, Massachusetts, by day and prowls New York City by night, in search of fresh blood to slake her inhuman thirst. One of the benefits of living such a long life has been discovering that most of the popular myths about vampires are not true: "Holy water and crosses do not bother me... and silver does not burn me. If someone hammered a stake through my heart, I suppose I would die, but I do not play with humans, stakes or mallets." In fact, there is little in the mortal world that surprises Risika anymore, until she returns from a hunt one night to find a black rose on her pillow--the same flower she was given on the eve of her mortal death. Knowing that the rose is a taunt from Aubrey, a vampire she believes murdered her human brother, Risika decides to confront her nemesis. In a bloody battle with Aubrey, Risika finally unearths her brother's true fate. While the plot of this vampire tale may not stand out from the fanged masses of the genre, what does stand out is the fact that the author is 14 years old. Teen horror fans of Anne Rice and L.J. Smith will surely want to experience for themselves how In the Forests of the Night stacks up to their favorite adult titles--and will be especially interested in seeing how one of their young peers plies the writing trade. Description from Amazon.com
Fresh Girl By Jaira Placide	This ambitious first novel traces the coming of age of a 14-year-old Haitian-American girl, forced to grow up too fast. To some kids at school, Mardi seems quite naeve. She wears outdated clothes, spends more time studying than socializing, and is not allowed to stray very far from her Brooklyn apartment. But Mardi knows more about the dangers of the world than most people her age. Placide plants clues along the way to the secret Mardi harbors: while living in Haiti with her grandmother she experienced a life-changing event during the 1991 coup, too horrific and personal to share with anyone, even her family and closest friends. Now, rejoined with her parents in New York, Mardi wants to forget the past and blend in with her American peers. Yet memories of Haiti continue to surface, causing her to feel bitter and to act "fresh." The author peels away the tough exterior of her protagonist layer by layer to expose a frightened and vulnerable young woman who has ambivalent feelings for her loving, yet over-protective mother, the classmates who taunt her and an attractive, unattainable boy. Although several subplots begin and end abruptly (Mardi's friendship with the wealthy Janille, her uncle's relationship to a boy orphaned in the refugee camps, etc.), the heroine's growing courage to voice her unspeakable truth sustains the novel. Description from Publishers Weekly Haunted by nightmares that play back variants of her final days in Haiti, running and hiding from the soldiers, fourteen-year-old Mardi worries, "What if I wake up dead?" Being alive in Brooklyn with her family is occasionally not much better: Mardi hides from her family at home and is harassed at school as an outsider, an island girl. Mardi's world is thrown into turmoil with the announcement that her uncle Perrin-a revolutionary and the only member of the family who stayed in Haiti-will join them in America. From page one, Placide shares hints of the remembered horror Mardi both keeps to herself and from herself; it is a horror Mardi believes Perrin should have prevented. Still, Mardi's love for Perrin and his unfailing support begin to dissolve her anger against him and the rest of her family and finally allow her to tell her terrifying story of sexual violence. Placide's vivid, controlled first-person narrative traces Mardi's credible reclamation of her own goodness and self-worth. Description from Horn Book
The Book of Night With Moon By Diane Duane	Rhiow seems a typical New York City cat: pampered by her Upper East Side owners, permitted in good weather to lounge on the apartment balcony, never allowed to run free. Or so the humans think. Rhiow is much more than she appears. With her teammates Saash and Urruah, she works with human wizards, protecting the world from dark forces and helping to maintain the network of magical transport gates that connect all parts of the world. The Book of Night with Moon is the gateway to an amazing, secret animal world. In it we learn much about cats: they have a complex language, society, and history; they can call on skills unknown to their owners; they live lives of challenge and danger that culminate, if they are lucky, in a "tenth life" that equates to the human heaven. That tenth life is the fate of one of Rhiow's team as they, plus the foundling Arhu, find themselves caught up in a danger that threatens not only the cats of the world, but humans as well. Description from Publisher Have you ever wondered what is beneath Grand Central Station? There are mystic Gates, and the guardians are cats that live in the station, whose job is to keep the strands of all realities in place. However, an Evil manages to break through the gates and tries to flood New York with all means of black wizardry and horror. With fast-paced action, four cats try to send this Evil back to the Darkness from whence it came. The description of the world beneath the station is lyrical and evocative. The idea and portrayal of reality as a series of strands that must remain untangled is intriguing and thought provoking. The description and actions of the creatures of the Dark are true to their evil nature, but they lack the horrific details sought in true horror literature. While not the pace of an action movie, there are enough twists and turns and near misses here to keep a reader enthralled. Great care has been taken to discuss the language, Ailurin, used by the cats. There is an involved glossary in the back that contains a partial Ailurin vocabulary. Communications between cats is shown with italics. However, the italics and the need to look up numerous Ailurin vocabulary words can be distracting. The location and the use of cats as superior surreal beings are intriguing. The reader need only be a cat lover or fantasy reader to delve into the surreal worlds that are described. Description from VOYA Fantasy set in the universe Duane created in a YA series (Deep Wizardry). Cats are intelligent and have their own language, Ailurin; feline wizards with their human counterparts keep transit gates open and the world safe from disasters and invasions. Three New York wizards, house pet Rhiow, neurotic Saash, and dumpster resident Urruah, are detailed by the Powers That Be to repair a malfunctioning gate beneath Grand Central Station before a train accidentally gets hurled into another dimension. In the train tunnel the three battle hordes of rats and rescue a kitten, Arhu, who, though resentful and hostile, is destined to become a wizard, too. Next, the trio must travel into an alternate world of the past, Downside, to locate the gate's power source--but the locals are dinosaurs, and very belligerent. Then the investigators' human Area Advisory vanishes; they discover a magic spell written in Ailurin on an ancient Egyptian papyrus; Arhu develops a talent for seeing the future; and it becomes clear that they're being opposed by a dinosaur wizard backed by the evil Lone Power. Often intriguing, with a well-worked backdrop, but it's hard to find a logical or emotional connection between cats and dinosaurs. Still, fantasy-loving ailurophiles will curl up and purr. Description from Kirkus Reviews
Picture Perfect By Yvonne Lehman	Cissy Stiles sat aside her modeling career after a tornado turned her life—and priorities—upside down. She never dreamed she would end up a finalist in Top Ten's elite Dream Teen Model Search only months later. The unexpected invitation leads the nineteen-year-old to New York City—and a once-in-a-lifetime event full of the glamour and glitz the Big Apple is known for. But then a freak accident jeopardizes Cissy's chances of winning, and she realizes her hopes for a modeling career may be dead forever… Antonio Carlo is no stranger to life in the limelight of the fashion world, with its bright lights and flashing cameras. As son of the famed owners of the prestigious Top Ten Agency, Antonio often finds himself playing host to the agency's beautiful clients, including would-be model Cissy Stiles. Unfortunately for the handsome Antonio, his first run-in with Cissy leaves him in big trouble—and her wanting to be anywhere but near him! Miles from home, on a collision course with love… Description from Publisher
The First Cut (No Secrets: The Story of a Girl Band, #1) By Nancy E. Krulik	What teenager doesn't dream of hitting it big as the next mega-superstar singing wonder? For eight young women in New York, just such a chance is at their fingertips, almost within reach. These stars-in-the-making have been selected to work together to see which ones will make the final cut for the four-member all-girl band, No Secrets. Yet it seems secrets abound. Rife with backstabbing, manipulations, drinking, sex, and eating disorders, the first two installments in this series leave the reader wondering if success can come only at a high price. The girls do make positive choices as well. Rather than face a future of anorexia, Cassidy chooses to tell her mother the truth and live with her father. Rather than carry the weight of an emotionally destructive relationship, Katie chooses to end it. Rather than settle for living with the manipulative machinations of a roommate, Katie tells the truth about Daria. The slim size of the books is deceptive; readers may think they are an innocuous read. They aren't. While not graphic in nature or description, the subject matter is for older readers or readers more familiar with the grittiness of life. Description from KLIATT The students at the Professional Children's Boarding School aspire to be stars. When Eileen Kerr, a renowned talent agent, comes to town in search of her next hit girl band, the young women of PCBS realize how close they are to reaching their dreams. Only four girls will be chosen. How far will they go? #1 THE FIRST CUT The Fall showcase has never been so intense. The girls must not only rehearse for a sold-out, standing room only audience, but they also know that Eileen Kerr will be watching. Eight girls will make the first cut, but that's only the beginning. . . . Description from Publisher
Sneaking Around (No Secrets: The Story of a Girl Band, #2) By Nancy E. Krulik	What teenager doesn't dream of hitting it big as the next mega-superstar singing wonder? For eight young women in New York, just such a chance is at their fingertips, almost within reach. These stars-in-the-making have been selected to work together to see which ones will make the final cut for the four-member all-girl band, No Secrets. Yet it seems secrets abound. Rife with backstabbing, manipulations, drinking, sex, and eating disorders, the first two installments in this series leave the reader wondering if success can come only at a high price. The girls do make positive choices as well. Rather than face a future of anorexia, Cassidy chooses to tell her mother the truth and live with her father. Rather than carry the weight of an emotionally destructive relationship, Katie chooses to end it. Rather than settle for living with the manipulative machinations of a roommate, Katie tells the truth about Daria. The slim size of the books is deceptive; readers may think they are an innocuous read. They aren't. While not graphic in nature or description, the subject matter is for older readers or readers more familiar with the grittiness of life. Description from KLIATT The students at the Professional Children's Boarding School aspire to be stars. When Eileen Kerr, a renowned talent agent, comes to town in search of her next hit girl band, the young women of PCBS realize how close they are to reaching their dreams. Only four girls will be chosen. How far will they go? #2 SNEAKING AROUND The eight finalists say goodbye to PCBS and settle into the brownstone where they will all begin their journey towards stardom. But are their friendships strong enough to survive such fierce competition? Description from Publisher In the second book, the eight finalists have been chosen. Among them the new girl band No Secrets will be created - but only four of them can make it into the final band. While most of the girls work hard and honestly to make it into the band, cruel Daria insults the girls' figures and values, tries to get the other girls in trouble, and puts on a false act in front of their talent agent, Eileen Kerr, who will be the one to choose the final four. She gets a chance to get team member Katie out of the running when Katie tries to find out if a night which got carried away, spent with a local boy ended up in pregnancy or not. Can Daria get away with eliminating a fair playing competitor? And is Katie pregnant? Description from Amazon.com Customer Review
Spring Fever (No Secrets: The Story of a Girl Band, #3) By Nancy E. Krulik	What teenager doesn't dream of hitting it big as the next mega-superstar singing wonder? For eight young women in New York, just such a chance is at their fingertips, almost within reach. These stars-in-the-making have been selected to work together to see which ones will make the final cut for the four-member all-girl band, No Secrets. Yet it seems secrets abound. Rife with backstabbing, manipulations, drinking, sex, and eating disorders, the first two installments in this series leave the reader wondering if success can come only at a high price. The girls do make positive choices as well. Rather than face a future of anorexia, Cassidy chooses to tell her mother the truth and live with her father. Rather than carry the weight of an emotionally destructive relationship, Katie chooses to end it. Rather than settle for living with the manipulative machinations of a roommate, Katie tells the truth about Daria. The slim size of the books is deceptive; readers may think they are an innocuous read. They aren't. While not graphic in nature or description, the subject matter is for older readers or readers more familiar with the grittiness of life. Description from KLIATT The students at the Professional Children's Boarding School aspire to be stars. When Eileen Kerr, a renowned talent agent, comes to town in search of her next hit girl band, the young women of PCBS realize how close they are to reaching their dreams. Only four girls will be chosen. How far will they go? #3 SPRING FEVER And then there were seven . . . Description from Publisher Cass has left the brownstone building which holds the finalists after her struggle with bulimia, and the other seven finalists are working harder than ever. Daria is, as usual, looking for oppourtunities to kick other girls out of the running. Hannah is concerned that her friends will find out that she isn't the rich girl they all think she is. And Serena, usually the perfect angel, has hired an extra trainer to get better at the dance classes. However, this comes with consequences...will there be only six left by the end of this book? Description from Amazon.com Customer Review
In the Spotlight (No Secrets: The Story of a Girl Band, #4) By Nancy E. Krulik	What teenager doesn't dream of hitting it big as the next mega-superstar singing wonder? For eight young women in New York, just such a chance is at their fingertips, almost within reach. These stars-in-the-making have been selected to work together to see which ones will make the final cut for the four-member all-girl band, No Secrets. Yet it seems secrets abound. Rife with backstabbing, manipulations, drinking, sex, and eating disorders, the first two installments in this series leave the reader wondering if success can come only at a high price. The girls do make positive choices as well. Rather than face a future of anorexia, Cassidy chooses to tell her mother the truth and live with her father. Rather than carry the weight of an emotionally destructive relationship, Katie chooses to end it. Rather than settle for living with the manipulative machinations of a roommate, Katie tells the truth about Daria. The slim size of the books is deceptive; readers may think they are an innocuous read. They aren't. While not graphic in nature or description, the subject matter is for older readers or readers more familiar with the grittiness of life. Description from KLIATT The students at the Professional Children's Boarding School aspire to be stars. When Eileen Kerr, a renowned talent agent, comes to town in search of her next hit girl band, the young women of PCBS realize how close they are to reaching their dreams. Only four girls will be chosen. How far will they go? #4 IN THE SPOTLIGHT The waiting is over. The four lucky girls take the stage as the hot, new girl band No Secrets. Now the hard part begins. Is stardom everything they thought it would be? Description from Publisher The book opens at a great spot - it's the six finalists' last night before the choosing of the four final girls - the ones which will form the new pop group No Secrets. The answers are revealed the next morning, and I'm not going to say who was chosen since you may not have read this book yet, but their first concert, arguments over a song, and first European tour are well chronicled in this emotional, fast-paced conclusion to the series. Description from Amazon.com Customer Review
Gathering of Pearls By Sook-Nyul Choi	In this sequel to The Year of Impossible Goodbyes and Echoes of the White Giraffe, Sookan Bak has left her Korean home to attend a Catholic women's college in New York in 1954. This semiautobiographical account of her freshman year is very much a docu-novel about the new scholarship girl caught between two cultures, trying to fit in. Everything is overarticulated. Sookan and her friends speak like therapists ("You need to live your own life"). She writes long letters home about her cultural conflicts ("Here they do not place so much emphasis on patience, humility"), and her first-person narrative repeats all the analysis. Mostly, the U.S. is better than Korea, freer for the individual, though she does come to see that sometimes her American friends feel like outsiders and have problems with their families' expectations, just as she does. The last section of the book is the most immediate: her beloved mother dies, and Sookan is not told till long after the funeral. Her grief is heartfelt. We feel her distance from home. Description from Booklist In this sequel to Choi's autobiographical The Year of Impossible Goodbyes and Echoes of the White Giraffe, 19-year-old Sookan continues her journey--this time leaving Korea to study at Finch, a Catholic women's college in White Plains, N.Y. Although frightened by the enormity of her adventure and confused by the strangeness of American culture, Sookan is determined to excel at her studies, work for her keep, and serve as unofficial ambassador for her country. She has little time to enjoy what her bubbly roommate Ellen calls "college life"--parties, football games, and young men. Sookan makes friends but feels guilty whenever she has fun; she has a responsibility to her family, as her older sister Theresa keeps reminding her, that her American classmates cannot begin to understand. Sookan rebelliously feels that many of the American customs are good, although she can never lead Ellen's carefree life. When tragedy comes to her again, Sookan recalls what her mother used to tell her: Just as oysters make pearls out of grains of sand, women create something precious from their suffering. Preparing to face life alone, Sookan gathers her strength--her pearls--and resolves to succeed. Sookan is sometimes annoyingly good, but the story of her struggle with her Korean heritage makes her more than just an ethnic Pollyanna. Description from Kirkus Reviews
The Sabbath Garden By Patricia Baird Greene	Her beloved grandmother is dead; her best friend has rejected her; and while her mother avoids life by sleeping away the days, her brother becomes more evil and angry every moment. Opal Tyler feels as though she has a caged wildcat inside her. Solomon Leshko faces his own struggle. An Orthodox Jew who has lived on Manhattan's Lower East Side since its heyday, he resents what Opal and "those people" are doing to his neighborhood. One evening Opal needs a place to take refuge from her brother's violence, and old man Leshko takes her in. He introduces her not only to his Sabbath, but also to the importance of personal dignity. The bond that grows between them replaces their prejudices with an empowerment that saves them from their own anger and enables them to help the rest of the community. Though the character transformations come a little too easily, and the answers are a little too pat, the action is nonstop and the ending uplifting. Opal is an introspective, multidimensional character who will appeal to teens across ages and cultures, and the picture of her neighborhood with all of its tension and all of its pride--both justified and misplaced--will draw readers into a world they will be able to understand regardless of socioeconomic background. Description from Booklist A memorable and moving book. Opal Tyler, a 13-year-old African American, lives in a world of drugs, crime, and squalor. Struggling to stay above the more sordid aspects of her life, she is angry, depressed, and suicidal. Her mother works much of the time and sleeps the rest, soothing her emotions with tranquilizers. Her brother is often violent, and her best friend is no friend at all. Opal forges a friendship with Solomon Leshko, an elderly Jewish man who is trapped in his memories and in his grief, and, yes, trapped in a neighborhood he has watched change from a clean, solid place to a filthy, crime-ridden slum. Resentful of the new residents, he cherishes only his cats, his religion, and his family. But he sees something special in Opal and offers her his home as a hiding place after she is threatened by her brother. Their friendship blossoms, and both are instrumental in creating a community garden that brings the neighborhood together. The story deals with racial and religious relations, but it is also a book that looks at pride and dignity. It shows the kind of emotional strength needed to survive an urban ghetto and the value of community. Beautifully written, it will appeal to a wide audience Description from School Library Journal Greene's debut offers a slice of contemporary urban angst as blacks, Jews, and Hispanics struggle for survival in N.Y.C.'s angry streets. As the dedication indicates, the story is rooted in the Bowery-Houston Garden on the Lower East Side. Opal Tyler, the black adolescent viewpoint character, battles her own self-destructive nature in a home that's troubled by a depressed mother and a dangerous brother. Opal finds safety in the apartment of neighbor Solomon Leshko, a Jewish elder who remembers the days when the neighborhood cradled his Orthodox brethren. Trying to regain Solomon's silver, stolen by her brother, Opal is shot, though not fatally. Anger and destruction escalate until Solomon decides he must leave; attempting to keep him in the neighborhood, Opal plants the idea of a community garden where diverse cultures, working together, can create a peaceful haven at the center of the war zone. Greene's language packs an honest, urban punch; the city's tension fairly pulses through the book. Description from Kirkus Reviews The only time Opie feels at home is on the basketball court where her height and her slight build are an advantage. Otherwise, she feels gawky and out of place. Opie has always been taught to suppress her feelings, but there is a caged animal inside of her clawing toward escape. An encounter with old Mr. Leshko, a neighbor in her apartment building, helps Opie find some inner quiet. Together they build a Sabbath garden. Literally, it is a place where the community can gather, a spot of peace in an otherwise riotous city. The Sabbath garden is also a deep well of inner contentment from which Opie can draw when her life seems out of control. Greene has created a realistic picture of how people can sometimes lose their humanity when the city presses in on them. Though gritty, the story is ultimately about the redemptive quality of trust. Interesting companion books might be Lasky's Prank and Brooks' The Moves Make the Man. Description from The ALAN Review
Elizabeth Loves New York (Sweet Valley University) By Francine Pascal	If she can make it there... When Elizabeth Wakefield wins a summer fellowship to produce her own play in New York City, no one is more surprised than she is. It's an offer Elizabeth can't refuse, even though she and Tom Watts vowed to spend the summer together. So Tom gives up his prestigious summer internship to be with her! Will Elizabeth have to give up something in return--and make a sacrifice she's not yet ready for? Jessica Wakefield is embarking on a wild, adventurous, and totally butt-kicking journey this summer--to a training camp in Florida for her specialized security agents! Hand-to-hand combat, stunt driving, hot guys in uniform... this place has it all. Will she submerge herself in total excitement? Or will Jessica end up over her head in trouble? Description from Publisher
Adam Zigzag By Barbara Barrie	The stories are told in alternating chapters by Adam, who calls himself Adam Zigzag because that's the way he sees the written word falling on the page, and his older sister, Caroline, who's mildly dyslexic, too, but angry that her brother gets all the attention. Adam chronicles his descent downward as, despite the help of his parents, tutors, and teachers, he is unable to make sense out of his studies. Although Barrie does a good job of capturing the despair that both child and parent feel when a learning disorder takes over family life, the characters never really come alive. It is only the learning disorder itself that seems real. Still, the book's hopeful ending may inspire some kids in the same predicament; in any case, it will surely let them know they are not alone. Description from Booklist The author of Lone Star, who's also an award-winning actress, describes a dyslexic's troubles and their eventual resolution in a narrative that alert readers will suspect is largely autobiographical. Though Adam is bright and has numerous gifts, his learning problems lead to academic failures and the pain of being thought lazy by insensitive teachers. His parents are supportive but, both involved in theater, otherwise engaged; older sister Caroline, who inherited a milder dyslexia from their mother, justly feels that Adam gets more than his share of attention. Schools are changed and tutors and counselors engaged with varying success; with junior high comes independence and dubious friends purveying escape through drugs, one of whom steals some things from the family's Manhattan apartment. This, plus a bad trip when Adam adds acid to his established pot habit (the joints are rolled on Zigzag brand paper), jolts him into therapy and also into accepting what seems to be the right school at last. All this is typical of boys like Adam, and too smoothly told to fall into the trap of sounding like a case study; but the sequence of events never quite evolves into a plot, while--though Adam's and Caroline's first-person voices alternate--the underlying insights seem more parental. Still, an honest and empathetic portrayal of a not uncommon set of pressures and responses. Description from Kirkus Reviews Adam hates reading and writing. Throughout his school years he is in and out of private institutions in New York City because public schools cannot serve dyslexic students. He hesitates to use a telephone because he fears he will dial the wrong numbers; he gets letters in his last name mixed; he worries because he is unable to read the passage assigned him for his bar mitzvah ceremony. A crisis with drugs makes him realize he has allowed dyslexia to overshadow his talent in sports, music, and acting. The book spans Adam's life from elementary through high school. Narration alternates between Adam and his older sister Caroline, who offers a glimpse of the effect of Adam's dyslexia on a loving and supportive family. Adam's viewpoint offers a well detailed and informative account of the frustrations connected with dyslexia and the sense of worth that results from developing strategies to deal with it. Description from ALAN Reviews
Enter Three Witches By Kate Gilmore	Bret lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and, at 16, he's met his first love. Ironically, Erika, the girl of his dreams is playing a witch in their school production of Macbeth. In real life, Bret's mother is a witch, his grandmother a fortune-teller and their tenant a voodoo priestess. As for Bret's father, he has moved out and sees Bret only on weekends. Longing for a normal family, Bret tries to keep his odd relatives a secret from Erika, but finds that parents aren't something one can hide, especially when they are determined to be "helpful." Calling to mind a family-problem-novel version of Suzy McKee Charnas's The Silver Glove , Gilmore offers a portrait of young love by way of stagecraft and magic. Not as dramatic as her Remembrance of the Sun, the story nevertheless has a quiet, solid charm. description from Publishers Weekly A quirky YA novel that sparkles with a sense of humor, graceful style, fully drawn setting, and rich characters. It chronicles how Bren copes with his parents' separation, his first love, his responsibilities in the school play, and his yearning for a normal, uneventful life. Beyond the array of these typical teenage trials is the plot's pivotal twist: Bren's mother is a practicing witch who insists on summoning him at the moment of his first kiss, providing special effects for the school's production of Macbeth , and meddling in his life with powers beyond those of an ordinary interfering mother. The denouement, in which the ordinary meshes with the supernatural, lapses into silliness, but, on the whole, this is an entertaining and magical story. Description from School Library Journal
Wannabe By Shelley Stoehr	Catherine Tavarelli can't believe what she's just found out about her brother, Mickey. He's supposed to be spending his days at college--instead, he's running errands for the local mob. Catherine also suspects that Mickey may be taking and dealing drugs. Catherine's always been Mickey's protector--and she doesn't want him involved in the mob. So what if she's working secretly at the local mafia social club? And so what if she and her friend Erica do coke once in a while? Catherine can handle it; Mickey can't. Or so she thinks.... Description from Publisher In seventeen-year-old Catherine Tavarelli's New York neighborhood, you aren't anybody unless you associate with the Mafia. While secretly working as a cocktail waitress at an Italian social club, Catherine ignores the young wannabe gangsters and meets Joey Valentino, the exciting wannabe who made it to the big time. As she begins a curious relationship with Joey, Catherine discovers that her older brother Mickey has stopped going to college and started running errands for a local dealer. She has always been his protector, jumping into his fights to keep him from making a name for himself in the neighborhood. Now, how can she criticize Mickey's choices, when she and her friend start using cocaine regularly to make it through school, dates, and even the SATs? Each character seems to be a "wannabe" in his or her own fashion-the alcoholic father who was never accepted, the mother with elusive dreams of a house in Queens, Mickey's hope for gangster fame, and Joey's unknown desires. Catherine's hopes of becoming a writer, the most tenuous of the dreams, is overshadowed by the image of her shoeboxes filled with stories she could never figure out how to end. They have each constructed fantasies of how life could or should be, and must face the challenge of making the fantasy meet painful reality. This sharp novel follows the Tavarelli siblings as they slide all-too-easily into the realm of addiction and struggle to maintain loyalty to each other and their dreams. Readers may be momentarily distracted when Catherine's smooth, biting narrative is interrupted at chapter seven as Mickey begins to narrate his version of the events. This abrupt change allows the reader insight into both falls from grace, which broadens the appeal of the work. Some may object to the violence and language used in this novel, but Stoehr writes skillfully so both seem intrinsic to the characters. Recommended for most older readers, but all will be able to look beyond the superficial lure of the Mafia theme and empathize with the desires of the "wannabes." Description from VOYA Familiar territory for readers of Stoehr's Crosses and Weird on the Outside. Seventeen-year-old Catherine's decidedly tarnished version of the golden rule seems to be, "Use others before they use you." She and her best friend grow increasingly entangled in the mob milieu of Little Italy in Manhattan. Falling for handsome Joey Valentino, apparently a mobster on the way up, Cat unsuccessfully tries to keep her brother, Mickey, a wannabe mobster, from following his bent. An enthusiastic patron of mob movies, Mickey drops out of college and eventually is kicked out of the house by his father at gunpoint. Profane street language is common throughout the book. One reference to Cat's sexual activity is described with a mix of humor and directness. Occasional chapters written in Mickey's voice jolt uncomfortably, but effectively communicate his anger and frustration. Description of secondary characters is light. Frequent references to the title appear, as Cat views everyone around her as affecting behavior, language, and attitudes that she self-righteously abhors. Joey Valentino, who shelters Mickey and seems too good to be true in keeping Cat's best interests at heart, turns out to be an undercover cop. The resolution is too happy and too quick, but Stoehr's narrative flow is a strength, as is her ability to capture the rhythms, attitudes, and feelings of teens facing a violent, drug-filled world of big dreams with little chance of making it. Description from School Library Journal
Hiding Places By Lyn Miller-Lachmann	Is 17-year-old Mark Lambert an emancipated minor or a throwaway? This gritty but sweet novel offers a protagonist who has seen too much: his parents' divorce, the drug-induced automobile-crash death of his physician father, school failure, ulcers, physically abusive treatment from a macho stepfather who abhors Mark's wish to write, a suicide attempt and a retreat from his timid mother, who can't seem to protect him. Now his stepfather wants him to get discipline at military school. Mark escapes their reality by running off to New York's East Village. There he eventually finds freedom through his efforts at new relationships, a job and in school. In a gradually evolved, believable plot, Mark comes to leave behind responsibility for events beyond his control (e.g., the deaths of his father and Dr. Sam, a school administrator) and to accept responsibility for his own aspirations and achievements. Description from Publishers Weekly Family life falls apart for Mark at 17, when his stepfather and mother, unable to understand or cope with his anti-social, self-destructive behaviorincluding alcoholism that has produced an ulcerenroll him in military school. Poetry-writing, anti-war activist Mark is stunned. Then his discovery that his deceased father was a drug addict is the final blow. Mark leaves his suburban home and ends up in a gritty New York City shelter for runaways and throwaways. With the support of caring adults and peers at the shelter and at an inner-city high school, he develops resources and insights which may lead to an independent and purposeful future. This strong, painful story is slow-paced, reflecting the contemporary, no-answers situation. Characterizations are multi-dimensional and superb. The disturbed protagonist has legitimate grievances. Mark's timid mother is torn between the husband who has given her a secure life and her only child; his harsh stepfather is rigid and abusive but concerned. Miller-Lachmann reveals that life can be tough for tormented teenagers and for their well-intentioned, equally at-wit's-end parents, too. This realistic novel is a valuable title for bibliotherapy. Description from School Library Journal

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