Celebrate Teen Read Week

This week is Teen Read Week, sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association. Celebrate a little by reading some teen books. I have read several young adult novels this year that I have really enjoyed. So far, my favorites are Delirium by Lauren Oliver and Every Day by David Levithan.

Delirium is the first in a trilogy (of course, as all teen dystopian series must be trilogies by some unwritten law) by Lauren Oliver.  The premise of Oliver’s series is enticing: in the very near future the United States has identified the disease that is at the root of all of society’s ills – amor deliria nervosa, otherwise known as love.  Everyone gets “the cure” when they turn eighteen, and 17-year-old Lena is only 95 days away from her procedure. Bet you can guess what happens next. That’s right; Lena meets a boy and falls in love.  But Alex is not just any boy; he is one of the Invalids, a group of the rebellious uncured who live in the wilderness surrounding the cured territory.  As time runs out for Lena, she is attracted to the passionate freedom of Alex’s world, torn between her socially acceptable desire for safety and her longing for a world where she makes her own choices.  I can’t wait to read the sequels, Pandemonium and Requiem.

David Levithan’s Every Day shares some aspects of speculative fiction with Delirium, but Every Day is even more imaginative.  A leads a very unusual life; every day he wakes up in a different body.  The only thing that never changes is that A is always 16, although sometimes A is a girl, sometimes, a boy and sometimes A is gay, sometimes, straight.  A has no idea why he lives this way; he has always been like this.  But he does have a code of ethics of a sort; he tries his best to do nothing to change the life of his host.  Then A wakes up in the body of Justin, and, for the very first time in his life, he falls in love - with Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon.  Now what happens to his code?  Levithan does an amazing job of creating more than thirty characters for A to inhabit, each one different and each giving the reader more insight into A’s character.  Every Day is truly a unique journey for the reader, allowing life to be experienced from a very inventive point-of-view.

There are many more fabulous young adult novels out there, so read one for Teen Read Week.  If you need help picking out a teen book to read, I’d be happy to help.

(I’m reading The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan right now.  What are you reading?)