Petunia isn’t quite sure how she managed to become a heroine, but now that she is one there’s no way out. It seems that everyone has heard of her and her ‘amazing’ feat and there’s no way that she can come clean about it. That...

In Accidentally Perfect by Elizabeth Stevens, Piper Barlow is perfect, or so everyone thinks. In reality, she finds herself feeling sad and all alone, even though she has a loving family and plenty of friends. She just doesn’t feel comfortable expressing herself since she thinks...

Where Dragonwoofs Sleep and the Fading Creeps is a coming of age fantasy novel for young adults and preteens written by A.J. Massey. Ben’s life was rather more complicated than that of most 13-year-olds. All he had left of his dad was a broken watch,...

Dreamcatcher by Ann Curtin relates the story of a young boy, Jesse, living with his dad and moving from ranch to ranch. But at the current ranch, his dad manages to get the foreman’s job and it’s not a broken-down ranch. Maybe things will look...

Leeway by I.O. Jones is a novel that captures the tensions and the stress that accompany life in a high school in a city like New York, a book with a strong appeal for young adult readers, especially female adolescents. We encounter a young protagonist,...

We read a lot of war memoirs from those who have been at the front, but what happens to those left behind? In Home Front: A Memoir from WWII, C.D. Peterson chronicles life in a rural community just before, during, and after the war, following...

Alone at War by AM Brussel takes us into the life of 14-year-old Sara, who has been left on her own through tragedy to care for her younger sister in France during the raging of WWI. Sara is forced to do things she might not...

The Field by Ian Dawson is a fairly straightforward YA novel about two friends, Daniel and Kyle, and what happens when one of them is kidnapped. The book starts with an introduction to both boys and their friendship, and all of the normal adolescent...

Under a Purple Moon by Beverly Stowe McClure is a rich novel — emotionally and psychologically — a coming of age story that follows the lives of four adolescents from dysfunctional homes who inadvertently find themselves in an old, abandoned house, seeking to escape the...

Being a new girl in high school is hard enough, but being the new girl that arrives mid-term is even more difficult. Especially when this new girl has had many experiences as a new girl in high schools across the country. Her parents move a...