MADreads for Teens

This sleeping beauty is no wilting flower

A review of A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan

I love fairy tales and I love outer space, so picking up Anna Sheehan's debut novel A Long, Long Sleep was a no-brainer for me. In this fantastic reinterpretation of the story of Sleeping Beauty, we meet (biologically) 16-year-old Rose Fitzroy, who has been awoken from a long, long sleep by a kiss. It isn't a terribly romantic kiss, though, and she doesn't find herself in a magnificent four-poster bed in a picturesque castle - instead, she's resuscitated from a chemically induced ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on March 13, 2012 | 3 comments

Hoping for a little less suck in the world

A review of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

There are a fair amount of people on the earth who have not had the pleasure of reading a John Green novel. I really and truly feel bad for them. Still, free choice being what it is, it’s fine if people choose to shuffle off this mortal coil without reading one of his books, but I am firmly of the belief that were one to choose to invest a day or so in reading a John Green novel, life would be richer and there would be, as Green might put it, a little less suck in the world. Hazel, the ...read more

Reviewed by Katie H. on March 6, 2012 | 3 comments

Just the right amount of creepy

A review of The Girl Behind the Glass by Jane Kelley

Crafting a ghost story for kids can be tough. Too scary, and parents will be ripping it out of their child's hands for fear of nightmares. Not scary enough, and kids won't be interested. Jane Kelley, however, gets it just right in her novel The Girl Behind the Glass. Told in a lyrical style reminiscent of Kathi Appelt's The Underneath, the ghostly narrator is thrilled when twins ...read more

Reviewed by Krissy on March 2, 2012 | 0 comments

Man-eating Misty

A review of The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

There's a widespread phenomenon among fourth grade girls that I like to call "horse fever." It's not contagious, but it's rampant and for some, all-consuming. Now, I understand that not all girls love horses or obsessively read horse books in fourth grade. Some get started as early as second or third grade and keep going well into their teens. And I know that horse fever is not limited to just girls, because I inherited horse fever from my father. He had a full set of Marguerite Henry's ...read more

Reviewed by Molly - Central on February 29, 2012 | 0 comments

Will you get high if you drop an aspirin in a Coke and drink it?

A review of In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard

This at-times excruciatingly keen novel starts out with the unnamed narrator and her best friend Felicia babysitting for a wild tribe of six children, a tarantula, a python, a rat snake, a bunch of white mice, and an elderly dog for seventy-five cents an hour in order to earn money for new school clothes. The oldest boy sets the house on fire and the fourteen-year-old babysitters can't decide whether they should call the fire department, their mothers or both. They decide that whatever they do ...read more

Reviewed by Molly - Central on February 23, 2012 | 1 comment

The gold and the black

A review of Legend by Marie Lu

What happens when the most perfect military prodigy sets her sights on capturing the most wanted criminal in The Republic (and they are both 15-year-olds and super hot)? I'll tell you what happens: a book you cannot put down. Legend by Marie Lu takes place in a future Los Angeles that is flooded, poverty stricken and divided into Sectors based on the results of military trials. The elite citizens of The Republic (those that did well on the trials) live in relative comfort while the ...read more

Reviewed by Molly - Central on February 17, 2012 | 1 comment

Thin Mints, anyone?

A review of Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

The summer of 1962 has just begun, but for Jack Gantos, it’s already over. Caught messing around with his dad’s souvenir Japanese rifle, Jack is grounded for the entire summer, or possibly his life, depending on the mood of his parents. In the slowly dying town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, there doesn’t seem to be the prospect of much happening, so Jack doesn’t mind when his mother hires him out to help eccentric neighbor Miss Volker with a mysterious project. But rather than the tedious round the ...read more

Reviewed by Jane J - Central on February 13, 2012 | 2 comments

I did not study Jean-Paul Sartre in high school

A review of Tina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap and illustrated by Mari Araki

Nor did I study Sartre in college, even though I did take Introduction to Philosophy! Ha. Seriously, though, my high school wasn't bad. I was able to take electives in courses like Russian History and Great Books, but the high school in this new graphic novel is a step beyond beyond. Tina M. attends Yarborough Academy where the students study the great philosophers and stage Kurosowa's Rashomon for the spring ...read more

Reviewed by Molly - Central on February 2, 2012 | 0 comments

I know... more vampires...

A review of Lost in Time by Melissa De la Cruz

For those of you who aren't totally over the vampire craze, there is one fantastic vamp series that is still in full swing. The Blue Bloods series, by Melissa De la Cruz, is Gossip Girl meets Twilight. The latest novel, Lost in Time tells three different, yet connected stories. Schuyler and Jack Force continue their quest to save the world in Egypt and are forced to put their love to the test. Mimi Force, meanwhile, must literally travel to Hell and back to ...read more

Reviewed by Krissy on January 27, 2012 | 0 comments

We're not in Omaha anymore

A review of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

You're likely quite familiar with at least one story about a girl who gets swept up by the wind from her Midwestern home into another world that desperately needs her help, but I hope you'll make room for another. September, the 12-year-old girl who circumnavigates Fairyland in Catherynne M. Valente's beautiful story The Girl Who Circumnavigates Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, definitely holds some similarities to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but once the Green ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on January 18, 2012 | 0 comments