Heretics Anonymous, by Katie Henry -- teen angst, student activism and personal reflections (ages 13-16)

As a teen, I bristled against rigid authority and strict policies--I wanted to understand why rules were made, and insisted that they were fair. As a teen, I would have fit right into Heretics Anonymous, the secret club at St. Clare's in Katie Henry's debut novel. Henry weaves together a story full of teen angst and student activism as she presents a multifaceted look at religion in a Catholic prep school.

Michael resents moving once again, having to start a new school a month and a half into his junior year of high school just because his dad has a new job. Now he finds himself struggling to fit in at St. Clare's Preparatory School, even though he doesn't believe in any kind of God. How is he going to make friends here, with "a bunch of mindless Catholic sheep people"?

Fortunately, Michael soon meets a group of St. Clare's students who question the school's rigid policies and dogma: Lucy, a feminist  Colombian-American who's a devout Catholic determined to reform the church; gay, Jewish Avi; Eden, a self-described pagan; and Max, a Korean-American Unitarian. At their secret club meetings of Heretics Anonymous, they share their grievances about St. Clare's.

We believe in one fundamental truth:
That all people, regardless of what they worship, who they love, and what they think,
Have a right to exist, and a right to be heard.
(from the Heretics Anonymous Creed)

Michael urges his new friends to do something to change St. Clare's, to go public to make it better for everyone. In a series of hilarious episodes, they take on the school administration, first by annotating the school's outdated sex-ed DVD to make it more accurate, informative and entertaining. Then they create an alternative newspaper to challenge the dress code. But Michael's family tensions impact his judgement and he rashly carries his mission to change the school too far.

I especially appreciate how Katy Henry develops her characters' friendship and respect for each other, even though they are all so different. Through their relationships, they begin to reflect on their own beliefs and accept each other. And in doing so, Henry invites her readers to do the same.

Personally, I identify more with Michael's world view, but I found myself appreciating Lucy's perspective the most. She's a fierce feminist, and she's also a committed Catholic--and both sides fit together in her well-rounded character. Religion can bring comfort, faith and support to people, and Michael sees this in Lucy. But religion has also been used throughout history to enforce social norms and uphold the existing power structures. Above all, I appreciate how Henry asks readers to separate these two strands and think about what they value.

Full discloser: Katie Henry writes in her acknowledgements about her childhood church, Newman Hall-Holy Spirit Parish in Berkeley, California. This was also my childhood church (although in different decades). She tells Kirkus how this liberal Catholic upbringing was so different from what she discovered when she went to college. While this novel stems from Henry's attempt to create a space for kids to think about the complexities and nuances of religion, she keeps it grounded in humor and everyday relationships.

Hand this to teens who want a heartwarming story with characters who question the rules and fight to make the world better for all of us. I purchased the review copy for my school library. If you make a purchase using the Amazon links on this site, a small portion goes to Great Kid Books. Thank you for your support.

©2018 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books

After the Shot Drops, by Randy Ribay: authentic, relatable & fast-paced -- a great combination for teen readers (ages 12-16)

When high school basketball star Bunny Thompson transfers to a private school to play ball, his best friend Nasir feels betrayed and left behind. In this powerful dual-narrative, readers hear from both boys as they struggle to repair their friendship. Randy Ribay creates relatable characters, authentically capturing the teens’ voices and struggles. Hand this to teens who loved Kwame Alexander’s Crossover and Jason Reynold’s Ghost.

During the summer after freshman year, Bunny Thompson transfers from Whitman High, his neighborhood public school, to St. Sebastian’s, a private school in the suburbs. It’s a difficult transition—he misses his friends, struggles to fit in, and knows his old friends don’t understand.

“Pride in Whitman High’s basketball team runs real deep around our way, so a lot of people didn’t like that one bit. My main man, Nasir, straight up stopped talking to me.”

Nasir feels left behind and betrayed. Bunny was so focused on himself that he didn’t even tell Nasir about his decision to leave Whitman. Nasir hangs with his cousin Wallace, and is concerned when Wallace tells him he’s about to get evicted from his apartment because they’re behind on rent. Wallace fuels Nasir’s anger at Bunny:

“Wallace lets out a sarcastic laugh. ‘He ain’t your friend. He up and left you to go play ball with some rich-ass white boys. He doesn’t care about you. Bunny Thompson’s looking out for Bunny Thompson. That’s it, Nas.”

Wallace’s anger and resentment build, and he turns to betting against Bunny in order to make rent money. Readers will relate to Nasir’s difficult decision whether to support his cousin’s reckless behavior and how to walk away.

Race and economics play an explicit part of this story, although in a nuanced way. Whitman is a primarily Black community in Philadelphia, and Bunny’s parents work long hours to make ends meet. Nasir’s family is Filipino and Black, providing an alternative to the reductive black/white tropes of urban life. I appreciate how supportive both Nasir and Bunny's families are.

Teens will appreciate the fast pace of this story and the tense climax as Wallace pulls a gun on Bunny. I also appreciated the layered themes of friendship, identity and loyalty. Plus, I’ve got to give a big shout-out for Keyona, Bunny’s girlfriend. She’s a great character, who’s never afraid to set Bunny straight.

For more about After the Shot Drops, check out Rand Ribay's 5 Questions over at the Horn Book. Randy Ribay now teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read in The Horn Book about his experience teaching in Philadelphia, and why school libraries are so important.

The review copy came from my local library. If you make a purchase using the Amazon links on this site, a small portion goes to Great Kid Books. Thank you for your support.

©2018 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books

Girl Code: Gaming, Going Viral and Getting It Done, by Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser (ages 12 and up)

Here's a truth that won't surprise many teens: our society has normalized video games that are full of violence, shootings and death, and many have hypersexualized images of women. Here's another truth: while images of violent bloodshed has become normalized, our society still shuns mention of women's menstruation and periods.

Two teens decided to take action to change this. Read their story in Girl Code, a terrific memoir to hand to teens interested in using coding to make a difference and have their voice heard.

Girl Code: Gaming, Going Viral and Getting It Done
by Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser
HarperCollins, 2017
Amazon / your public library / read a sample
ages 12-17

Andrea (known as Andy) and Sophie are two New York teenage girls who met at the summer program Girls Who Code. Andy, from the East Village and the Bronx, had some coding experience before from previous summer camps. Sophie, from the Upper West Side, had never coded before. While Andy has been a lifelong gamer and is a programmer's daughter, Sophie was drawn to Girls Who Code as a way to get experience speaking out and finding her voice. Both write clearly about their own nervousness coming into the program and the coding world.

As soon as they started working together, Sophie and Andy knew that they wanted to create a project that combined social commentary with coding in a fun, fresh way. The started talking about the social taboo surrounding menstruation and how it might be fun to create a game that made people talk about this. Their result was Tampon Run, where the protagonist throws tampons at her enemies.

Tampon Run went viral, bringing Andy and Sophie attention and networking opportunities. It's pretty astounding how quickly they went from being kids goofing around with coding to young adults on the national stage. These opportunities presented challenges of their own, and they speak frankly about how they're trying to evaluate their futures.

Teens will enjoy seeing how Andy & Sophie grappled with self-doubt, worked together and persevered to create something fun and meaningful. Most teens know that coding is an important skill for their futures; this memoir shows what it might actually look like.


Find out more at Andy & Sophie's site: Girl Code. The review copy came from my public library. If you make a purchase using the Amazon links on this site, a small portion goes to Great Kid Books. Thank you for your support.

©2018 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books

Social media & engaging teen readers: Goodreads & Pinterest

It's no secret that many teens love social media. They want to know what their friends are doing, liking and sharing. At Berkeley High, we've been using Goodreads & Pinterest to engage our readers, encouraging them to find more books to read. Goodreads is a social media site for readers, letting you mark books you've read or want to read, add reviews and share them with friends.

BHS Library on Goodreads

While reading might be something you do alone in your own head, its true power comes from sharing the experience. What do our friends think of this? Have they read it, or does it remind them of something like it? If I liked this book, is there another one that I might like reading?

Key to this process is valuing all of the books our students are reading. The masterful teacher Donalyn Miller writes passionately about how we must value and encourage our students' choices in what they read.

Using Goodreads has let us honor and value our students' reading choices, whether they love horror graphic novels like Tokyo Ghoul, powerful nonfiction like The 57 Bus or contemporary YA like Libba Bray's The Diviners.  Each reader is different, with different tastes, preferences and interests. I have loved the conversations that come from learning more about what they like.

Yesterday, I was talking with a freshman who liked reading Nightfall, by Jake Halpern--an intense action-adventure story that kept him up all night reading. When I read his review, it made me think of how much I had liked reading Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. So I built a Pinterest board focusing on wilderness adventures. My student said to me, "Wait, you created this just because I liked Nightfall? Just for me?" It was a powerful moment--and he left the library with a new book to read: Trapped, by Michael Northrop.

Berkeley High Library's Pinterest page:
Survival & Wilderness Adventures @ BHS Library

The true power of using social media to engage teen readers is that it lets our students develop their own authentic voices. I have loved working with fellow Berkeley High librarian Meredith Irby to focus on how we can encourage teens to write authentically about their reading experiences. I so appreciate how thoughtful she is, helping teens develop their writing styles. This type of writing is actually a lot like the personal essays teens will write for college applications. As Donalyn Miller writes in Reading in the Wild:

“If we really want our students to become wild readers, independent of our support and oversight, sometimes the best thing we can do is get out of the way.”

Follow Berkeley High Library on Goodreads & Pinterest  to see what our teens are reading and what we love sharing with them.

©2017 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books

Audiobooks for teens: June is Audiobook Month (ages 13-16)

What draws teens into a story more than anything? Voice. They want to read about a teen that's going through intense experiences--whether it's realistic fiction or fantasy. There are many brilliant YA audiobooks; I'd just like to share a few of my favorites. Think of it as a sampling, and see if anything strikes you as interesting.

Contemporary issues through fiction

As racial issues and gun violence continues to plague our communities, teens want to read and think about how these affect individual people. 

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, is absolutely outstanding--riveting, powerful and thought-provoking. Over spring break, sixteen-year-old Starr is the only witness to her friend's fatal shooting by a police officer. As she returns to school, she must navigate the worlds of her poor, predominantly black neighborhood and the wealthy private high school she attends in the suburbs. This is an intense story, even more so with Bhani Turpin's evocative narration that pulls listeners right into Starr's fight to find her voice.

All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, also explores the impact of police brutality, alternating between the perspectives of a black high school boy and a white boy at the same school. Two talented narrators portray these different points of view, as these teens are involved in a complex situation.

Gripping fantasy

Many teens love reading fantasy, both as a way to escape but also a way to contemplate "what if..."

In Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld, we see Europe on the cusp of World War I--but it isn't quite the world we know from history books. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germans have Clankers, huge manmade steam-driven machines with guns, but the British are Darwinists who harness fabricated animals to wage war. Alan Cummings nails the different accents, as we get pulled into the excitement of battles and intrigue.

The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater, is a gripping fantasy that focuses on the Scorpio Races, where riders try to master Water Horses--carnivorous horses that are captured from the ocean. I was totally sucked in by the alternating narration, as I felt both Sean and Puck's yearning for a better life, determined to try to risk it all to win The Scorpio Races.

Modern romance with a twist

Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell, is a nuanced, compelling story of first love. The narrators bring alive the inner voices of both Eleanor and Park as they struggle with family, school and their own complex feelings. 

In Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Green and David Levithan had me laughing out loud and cringing at the same time as I followed two boys, both named Will Grayson, and their quests to survive high school, find friendship, and grow up--whatever that means. Witty, cynical and irreverant, this book is definitely for older teens with its snarky jokes about sex, relationships and life.

Free audiobooks through SYNC Audiobooks for Teens

SYNC is a free summer audiobook program for teens 13+ and these are two titles I'm especially looking forward to listening to this summer. Each week, listeners can get two free audiobook downloads, provided through the OverDrive app. Check out the full schedule here.

Between Shades of Gray (available August 3-9) is a moving historical fiction novel that centers around the persecution of Lithuanians under Stalin's rule in World War II. Fifteen year-old Lina is forced to go to a Siberian labor camp with her mother and young brother. They survive the harrowing journey on the crowded, dirty train car to find themselves in the coldest reaches of Siberia.

Shadowshaper (available August 10-16) is a vibrant urban fantasy that I can't wait to listen to. Here's the publisher's description: "With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a thrilling magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one -- and the killer believes Sierra is hiding their greatest secret. Now she must unravel her family's past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for generations to come."

Every day this week, I am sharing audiobooks for different ages. I'm also happy to offer a giveaway sponsored by the Audio Publisher’s Association June in Audiobook Month celebration. Winners will receive a pair of earbuds and 3 free audiobook downloads from Audiobooks.com! There’s an easy entry form at the bottom of this post.

Click the Rafflecopter form below for an easy entry. Enjoy listening and sharing.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

The review copies come from my personal and school libraries. If you make a purchase using the Amazon links on this site, a small portion goes to Great Kid Books. Thank you for your support.

©2017 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books