Hey, YA Readers!
Happy Pi(e) day! Do you have a favorite pie? As someone who is not a huge baked goods fan—I’ll take ice cream to cake or cookies—I do love a good key lime or peanut butter pie. Whatever your preference, here’s your reminder to treat yourself to something nice today. If it’s not pie or candy or a fancy coffee, a book obviously counts.
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Speaking of which, onto the books!
Bookish Goods
Protect Public Libraries Sweatshirt by angiepea
Vintage style? Check. Light sweatshirt for cool mornings and evenings? Check. Highlighting the need to love on public libraries? Check.
Grab this little gem of a shirt in sizes small-5XL starting at $30—and don’t feel confined to a sweatshirt. There are tons of other style options.
New Releases
We’re back to a quieter week for new paperback releases. Find below two hitting shelves and grab the entire (short) list over here. You might need to toggle your view when you click the book title to see the paperback edition.
Both of these are novels in verse, too.
Dear Medusa by Olivia A. Cole
Alicia is 16, and she’s subject to nonstop judgment from her classmates. It comes because she has sex, so she’s, of course, seen as easy. A slut. Every other name you can imagine for a girl like her.
Except: Alicia was sexually abused by a teacher. She’s a survivor. And, of course, it’s a popular teacher who did that to her.
As Alicia begins to drop out of everything that brings her joy, she finds a series of letters from someone else at school. Someone who claims they’ve been a victim, too. Now, she wants to get to the truth of that story and her own.
This verse novel is one for readers who are itching for a compelling and powerful story of redemption, race, power, and maybe even love.
The Name She Gave Me by Betty Culley
Rynn knows she is adopted, and even though her records are closed until she turns 18, she decides to seek out her birth mother. Her birth mother may no longer be alive, but when Rynn discovers she has a biological sister in foster care, she wants to reconnect. But that reconnection may cost her her adoptive family.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
YA Book News
- An animated series based on Twilight is being shopped.
- I’m going to do a big roundup of upcoming novels from big and soon-to-be-big names in YA for a newsletter soon, but two for your radar right now: there’s a new Jordan Ifueko novel coming this summer and a new Jandy Nelson novel in September.
- The most anticipated science fiction and fantasy YA novels for March and April.
- A Sumner County, Tennessee, teenager who has been frustrated by book bans in her area and beyond has launched a free speech club.
- I don’t put book censorship news in here regularly because there’s a whole newsletter for that, but this needs to be included. Flathead County libraries in Montana—which until very recently were called the ImagineIf libraries—are considering removing the YA designation. They believe it is too vague and offers nothing to explain what the books are. We’ll ignore the fact those books have descriptions and age designations because that does not matter.
- One question I got a lot when in libraries was about appropriate, interesting, and engaging monologues for teen theater kids. Here’s a roundup of 30!
Thanks as always for hanging out. We’ll see you with some deals on Saturday!
Until then, happy reading.
–Kelly Jensen, currently reading Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia