The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg

Thanks to @kidlitexchange and @scholasticinc for sharing an ARC of @bkonigsberg's The Bridge, which is out TODAY, so go ahead and grab your copy!

Aaron and Tillie "meet" when they lock eyes on the George Washington Bridge. Both teens are straddling the guardrail, ready to jump. The story is told in four different ways: Tillie jumps and Aaron doesn't, Aaron jumps and Tillie doesn't, they both jump, and neither jump. Each option is realistically fleshed out, showing how everyone even remotely involved with the teen reacted to the news.

This book is so heavy, so real, and so necessary. I hope it gets into as many hands as possible. I think showing the finality of suicide, and the reality of how it impacts others is so important. Teens (and honestly probably any age) need to see this, and it's even more powerful coming from someone who has been there. (Konigsberg has a moving explanation at the beginning of the book.) This is a hard read, depending on your mental state - aka hard for me during the pandemic, but this is probably a very crucial time for it to be read! I can't recommend this enough, and hope you recommend it to anyone you know who might be struggling, or who might need it to help those around them.

Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert

After a year at a boarding school across the country, Suzette is ready to reconnect with her family. Her stepbrother, Lionel, picks her up from the airport, and Suzette warily accepts that things are back to normal. But as the summer progresses, she sees Lionel is still battling his mental illness. Suzette wants to help him as much as she can, but she's caught in a love triangle with a boy she's known forever and a new coworker, so she is understandably distracted... Should she tell her parents she's worried about Lionel, or trust him to know what's best for him and his mental well-being?

This book won the 2018 Stonewall Award at the Youth Media Awards. I was watching the awards online and putting books on hold at my library as they won awards! I've read several award winners and am so excited at the wide range of young adult fiction these days.

It Looks Like This

The teenage years are a time for young people to discover their identities and explore and push the boundaries of structured life. The lucky ones are given room to experiment as they explore. It Looks Like This is a book about what happens when someone is not given that freedom.

See the full review at Cleaver Magazine.

Honor Girl

Honor Girl is a compelling graphic memoir that you will want to finish in one sitting, so be warned. Graphic memoirs just might be my favorite type of "graphic" book, like El Deafo by Cece Bell, Smile by Raina Telgemeier, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.


Maggie has always gone to the same girls' camp every summer, but during her fifteenth summer, she falls in love. With a girl. (Because it's a girls' camp.) Maggie is shocked to find this vital piece of information she didn't know about herself, and spends the summer trying to deal with her feelings. The book is framed by seventeen-year-old Maggie looking back at the summer.

Besides the main storyline of coming out to herself, the side stories in this book are wonderfully, and completely embody the timeless feeling of summer camp. I loved the book for the story, because the people looked a little too much like anime drawings for me to relate to, but then I looked more into Maggie Thrash herself.

It turns out, she isn't an artist at all. She wanted to share the story of her fifteenth summer and coming out, but didn't want to tell it in a traditional way, so she decided to try making it a graphic novel. She looked up illustrations of people and trees and kept practicing until hers looked good. From an interview with MTV:

It’s sort of important to me to let kids know you don’t have to have art school cred to do this. Just do it. Anyone can do it. Not to devalue the medium, but don’t be intimidated by it. Just try it.

Also worth sharing are her thoughts on diversity in young adult fiction:

I’m really excited for the day when you can no longer presume that the protagonist is straight, or that they’re white, or that they have all their arms and legs. There’s this unwritten rule that the protagonist has to be a tabula rasa for you to be able to relate to them, and that a tabula rasa equals straight, equals white, and just that — it needs to, and everyone wants to, be able to relate to other kinds of protagonists and other kinds of stories.

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel

Plot Summary
Sixteen-year-old Leila Azadi likes girls. Really likes girls. But she can’t tell anyone. She’s already struggling to fit in at school due to being an Iranian-American in a sea of white students. And she’s already disappointing her parents by failing science and not becoming a doctor like they want her to; throwing an announcement about her sexuality into the mix would devastate them.
     When an exotic new girl starts at Leila’s private school, Leila feels less alone. Sask. is from Switzerland, and gorgeous, and immediately befriends Leila. But it feels like something more than friendship… Leila has never felt this way before. She ditches soccer to try out for the school play alongside Saskia. But Leila still isn’t ready for anyone to know she’s a lesbian, and she isn’t sure Saskia is the best person to keep her secret…

Critical Analysis
Leila’s voice is honest and true—teens will find comfort in Leila’s world, even as she is experiencing emotional turmoil. The school environment Farizan portrays is equally as relatable, making this a valuable contemporary book for teens. Leila represents two minorities—mixed-race Iranian-American, and lesbian. Elements of Iranian culture that are incorporated into the story in the form of Leila’s father and social events the family attends are shown with respect and intelligence, so the reader comes away learning about the culture. The lesbian culture is also shown, with Leila falling for, and then striking down, stereotypes. None of those elements are heavy-handed, so the reader doesn’t feel like they’re getting hit over the head with political correctness, yet takes away tolerance and acceptance at the end of the book. The enjoyable, realistic depiction of two minorities make this book a necessity for contemporary young adult collections.
     This book will appeal to teens because the story is easy to get caught up in, but to be superficial, I have to say the pink cover might be a turn-off. This book would be great for girls and boys to enjoy, but every edition I could find a photo of had the signature pink cover. When it comes to an attention-grabbing color, pink is it. But when it comes to a book you’d want to be caught reading in high school, regardless of your gender, pink looks fairly immature. If teens can get past the cover and read the jacket copy, however, I think they’ll be hooked.

Related Activities
Much like her character Leila Azadi, author Sara Farizan is the daughter of Iranian immigrants, likes girls, and dislikes science and math. Other authors have also incorporated a lot of themselves into their fiction, like Sherman Alexie in The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian. Invite teens to create a character using aspects of themselves and their personalities that they find unique or are especially proud of. Characters can be sketched, revealed in a short story, or even shown by a list of traits.
     Leila had a secret that she wasn’t ready to share, but found that things weren’t so bad in the end. Have teens write down a secret on a small slip of paper. They can disguise their writing or write with their other hand if they don’t want to be identified. Teens can roll up or fold their secrets and place them in a jar, which will be sealed so not even the librarian can open it! It’s surprising how much lighter you might feel after getting your secret out - even if no one knows it.
     If you’re lucky enough to have an especially open group of teens, share the secrets instead of sealing the jar! Have the teens leave the room and post all of the secrets on a bulletin board. When the teens come back in, they can read all of the secrets—silently! No calling out guesses or accusations of who wrote what.

Resources
Iranian immigration to the United States is a relatively new political phenomenon and constitutes one of the highest status foreign-born groups in the United States (Ansari). Encourage teens to read more about this fast-growing population with a variety of fiction and nonfiction books.
     Amirrezvani, Anita and Persis Karim. Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian American Writers.
          Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2013. Print.
     Ansari, Maboud. The Iranian Americans: A Popular Social History of a New American Ethnic
          Group. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013. Print.
     Dumas, Firoozeh. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America. New York:
          Random House, 2004. Print.
     Dumas, Firoozeh. Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of a Global Citizen. New York:
          Random House, 2009. Print.
     Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, 2008.
          Print.

Professional Review
Patten, Amy. “Farzan, Sara: Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel.” The Horn Book Guide 26.1
     (2015): 106. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 June 2015.

Read it for yourself!
Farizan, Sara. Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Young
     Readers, 2014. Print.

I’ll Give You the Sun

Plot Summary
Jude and her twin brother Noah have grown up being NoahandJude, sharing thoughts, souls, and dreams. When the twins turn thirteen, things start changing. Their mother wants them both to attend a prestigious art school, which triggers a competition between the twins. Dynamics within the family and with Jude and Noah’s friends begin to twist, and the twins are keeping secrets from each other. Initially they want to keep each other safe, then they try and hurt the other.
     The story is told in alternating viewpoints across the span of three years. Noah narrates chapters when he and his sister are thirteen years old, just starting to explore their world and what is outside of their insulated twin life. Jude’s chapters are when the twins are sixteen, coming into their sexuality and understanding the world at large. Both characters are drastically different, their voices ringing true and unique with each chapter, though the reader can sense their twin connection. The twists of drama in the story will push the reader to read just one more chapter!, desperate to reach the fantastically satisfying resolution.

Critical Analysis
The characters in I’ll Give You the Sun are very unique, but in an approachable way. The reader is immediately immersed in Jude and Noah’s worlds, seeing things through their eyes, needing to read both sides of the story to learn what is really going on. Changing narrators, especially across the span of years, can sometimes be difficult to pull off, but Nelson has done this flawlessly, and teens will not feel lost in the story as the voices and times change. In fact, using both twins to tell the story is the book’s major strength. Getting into both Jude and Noah’s heads rounds out the action, and the span of three years switching back and forth each chapter keeps the reader in the dark about interesting things happening in the twins’ lives. While the story is strong enough to work even in a straightforward narrative format, the alternating viewpoints makes the book very alluring for teens.
     This book is great for the typical Young Adult reader, aged 12 to 18—and beyond! The depth of emotion in the story makes it easy to relate to whether the reader has experienced events from the book, or is living vicariously through the characters. Jude is a great role model for girls as she regrets past decisions that once made her proud, and strives to change herself for the better. Noah is struggling with his sexuality, trying to decide if he should be true to himself, or try to avoid bullying and disappointing his father. Regardless of teens’ sexuality, this book is a great way to show different sides of a situation that often gets overlooked in fiction.

Related Activities
I’ll Give You the Sun is a beautiful book that tackles a lot of complicated issues. As a librarian, I would have a program about the book in general, with activity stations teens could explore according to their interests.
     The Art Station. Noah and Jude are both artistic in different ways—Noah creates gorgeously realistic sketches and paintings, while Jude prefers to work with her hands in sand, clay, and stone. The Art Station has sketch pads, pencils, pastels, and paints for teens to draw whatever’s on their mind. There are also lumps of clay and kinetic sand they can use to sculpt. If no inspiration strikes, there is also a jar of prompts from the book teens can pick from. The slips of paper have scenes and topics from the book, as well as the titles of Noah’s art that could serve as a great jumping-off point to creating some beautiful works of art.
     The Twin Tank. Jude and Noah had a lot in common, but they are drastically different people. The Twin Tank is a creative writing station for teens to write about an event—real or fictional—from their point of view, then rewrite it as their twin might have seen it. Their twin doesn’t have to be the opposite of the teen, but they definitely won’t be the same! This gives teens a chance to step out of their own lives and see things from a slightly different view.
     Rule the World. Throughout their lives, Jude and Noah have been trying to rule the world. They barter with the sun, moon, sky, grass, flowers, trees, and other elements of earth to get small gifts of favors from each other. Break teens into partners or small groups and give them small symbols of the earth to barter with (either paper cutouts of each element, or scale model figures). Put a topic or item up for grabs and let them get to it! After ten or fifteen minutes, ask each teen or group to talk about what they traded and why.

Resources
Noah is a young teenager when he realizes he’s gay. He struggles with his identity, wanting to keep a secret to avoid teasing and to keep from disappointing his father. It takes time, and many mistakes, before Noah feels comfortable with who he is—but things don’t have to be that way. Teens have many resources at their fingertips, like:
- Gay-Straight Alliance
- It Gets Better Project
- StopBullying.gov
- Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network: Student Action

Professional Review
Devore, Linda. “I’ll Give You the Sun.” Library Media Connection 33.6 (2015): 66. EBSCOhost.
     Web. 14 June 2015.

Read it for yourself!
Nelson, Jandy. I’ll Give You the Sun. New York: Dial Books, 2014. Print.