Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!

High school senior Ruby finds herself in a precarious position when her alcoholic mom ditches her and she is left to fend for herself in the six months left before her eighteenth birthday. She tries making a go of it on her own, hiding the fact that the water and heat in her rented house have been turned off, but she is eventually found out and sent to live with her uber-successful lawyer sister Cora (who she hasn’t seen in years) and Cora’s technological whiz-kid husband Jamie. Being catapulted from skid row to the equivalent of VH1’s The Fabulous Life of… leaves Ruby suspicious and unwilling to believe that the good times will last. In fact, she still keeps the key to the old house around her neck just in case she needs an escape hatch. But as she begins to collect new friends who gently but insistently begin to demand her attention (bossy, cell-phone obsessed classmate Olivia, OCD-suffering boss Harriet, more-than-just-a neighbor and smokin’ hot Nate) Ruby begins to relax into her suddenly safe and spacious new life. Until she discovers that perfect Nate has some family secrets of his own, secrets that she unfortunately understands all too well. Can these two fiercely independent teens learn to lean on each other? Or will their pride keep them apart? Sarah Dessen maintains her signature deep and introspective style in this, her eighth novel, and fans will recognize some familiar characters from Dessen’s other works embedded in Ruby’s story. If you like Lock and Key, you’ll want to go back and read Dessen’s backlist, especially my favorite title of hers.

The Power of One meets Cheaper by the Dozen in this hilarious, heart-breaking memoir by Robyn Scott. When Robyn was seven, her New Zealand hippie parents moved her and her brother and sister to live in rural Botswana, where her father took a job as a bush doctor. He flew a small engine plane three days a week to different far-flung clinics where he would see more than 100 patients a day, and treat everything from pnemonia (real) to witch doctor’s curses (fake) and soon, the terrifying symptoms of AIDS. Robyn’s mother was into holistic food, medicine and home schooling, and her wacky lessons were like nothing you’ve ever seen in OR outside a classroom. Robyn and her sibs grew up swimming with crocodiles, taming house snakes, and riding bareback on half-broken horses. But they all managed to make it to adulthood with their limbs intact. This well-written and rollicking memoir may be just the ticket next time you’re feeling a little bored with your suburban existence. I guarantee you’ll get at least ten giggles and ten lumps in your throat from reading Twenty Chickens!

I already know what you’re going to say: “Jen! Why do you post about books that aren’t coming out for MONTHS, knowing full well I won’t be able to get my hot little hands on them anytime in the near future?” I know, I feel your pain and I apologize, but I just couldn’t wait to share my joy after reading the sequel to Octavian Nothing, the most amazing historical fiction ever. I was gifted with an early review copy and promptly sped through the 500+ pages in just a few days, dying to know what became of the experimental slave man-child raised by 18th century philosophers who used him as an example to prove that an African slave had all the same intellect and reason as a European man. After escaping his captors with the help of his tutor, Dr. Trefusis, at the end of the first book, now Octavian and the good doctor find themselves trapped in the besieged city of Boston, where resources are scarce and the rebels await just outside the city’s fortifications. Then Octavian hears that Lord Dunmore, the exiled Tory governor of Virginia, has issued a proclamation that promises freedom to all slaves who will join with his troops against the rebels. So Dr. Trefusis and Octavian travel to Norfolk, Virginia, where Octavian joins the Royal Ethiopian Regiment, in service to the King of England. But Octavian has a hard time fitting in with the rest of his escaped colleagues, as his exquisite manners and proper speech make him seem fussy and prim. In addition, the REG seems to spend more time sitting around and waiting in the hold of a stinky ship as they do actually fighting their former slave masters. Soon Octavian begins to wonder, “Rebel or Redcoat, were there none who needed to use us sufficiently to save us?” Beautifully written in the vernacular of the 18th century, this throughly researched sequel both stands alone and also answers all the questions readers had at the end of the first volume of Octavian’s unusual history. The action is fierce, the philosophy thought-provoking, and the characterizations complex and compelling. The incomparable M.T. Anderson poses questions about the meaning of liberty and the relativity of loyalty in the midst of war, while making connections between the American Revolution and the society we live in today. While they are in no way easy or quick reads, if you are a student of history or life, it would be well worth your while to read both volumes of the Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. Coming to a bookstore or library near you (don’t hit me!) October 2008.

Four upper crust NYC siblings take on the stone cold world of celebrity in this brilliant debut novel by playwright Theresa Rebeck. After a picture of the three girls in the title is published with much fanfare in an issue of the New Yorker, the newly minted celebriteens must learn how to navigate the shark-filled waters of fame. Each sib takes his or her turn at telling the story of how reporters staked out their school, how their aging ex-beauty pageant mother sold them out, and how they finally brought their borderline evil agent to heel. After her wild ride on the unstoppable fame machine, eldest sister Daria decides that fame “feels like a disease to me, and everyone is sick, the reporters, and the photographers and the commentators and the people, everyone has this disease, and what the disease does is it makes them hungry all the time…only for everyone else in America, me and my life and my family’s lives are the things that they’re hungry for, and they can never be satisfied, and so there is no ending.” Consider THAT next time you snap open your latest issue of People magazine! Sharply observed and incredibly well written in realistic and riotous teenspeak, this is THE novel for fans of Britney, Perez and Entourage. Consider it the perfect beach book for you AND your mom.