Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Best YA Titles You May Never Have Read, part 2

I loved Patti's previous post, so here's my take. I made myself stop at 5.

Toning the Sweep by Angela Johnson (33 collections on LibraryThing)
I have a warm place in my heart for this book. I don't know how I came to read it years ago, but I fell head over heels for this lovely story.
On a visit to her grandmother Ola, who is dying of
cancer in her house in the desert, fourteen-year-old Emmie hears many stories
about the past and her family history and comes to a better understanding of
relatives both dead and living.

Keturah And Lord Death by Martine Leavitt (196 copies)
This had better be on your "Twilight read alike" list. A National Book Award finalist the year it was published. Exceptional!

When Lord Death comes to claim sixteen-year-old
Keturah while she is lost in the King's Forest, she charms him with her story
and is granted a twenty-four hour reprieve in which to seek her one true love.

Green Angel by Alice Hoffman (246 copies)
I read this on a plane to my first ALA conference in DC a couple years ago. I wanted to hit myself over the head with the book for not having read it much earlier. Left me breathless.

Haunted by grief and by her past after losing her
family in a fire, fifteen-year-old Green retreats into her ruined garden as she
struggles to survive emotionally and physically on her own.

This Is What I Did: by Ann Dee Ellis (82 copies)
I found this to be a remarkable book, both for its writing and its design. I reviewed it here.


The Canning Season by Polly Horvath (60 copies)
Polly Horvath is an author I just started reading last year. Shame! The Canning Season won the National Book Award, but this title never took off. Perhaps because an old lady drops the F-bomb. For me that's a plus. (It did have a weird cover. A bad cover is hard to overcome.)
Thirteen-year-old Ratchet spends a summer in Maine with her eccentric
great-aunts Tilly and Penpen, hearing strange stories from the past and
encountering a variety of unusual and colorful characters.

6 comments:

Jenn H. said...

Katurah and Lord Death and Green Angel are so great!

Patti said...

Those are all sooooo good! I loved them all. With the exception of Toning the Sweep, but only because I haven't read it!

Anastasia @ Here There Be Books said...

I'm always a little surprised when big authors have little-known books, like the Alice Hoffman you listed. It just kinda weird to me, since I suppose I expect every book a popular author's written to be extremely popular as well, you know? :D

Also, my word verification is "hates"! Today is full of ironies.

Kelly said...

I love that you decided to make your own list after seeing Patti's! She's such a trendsetter. :)

I've read NONE of these...dang! My TBR is just growing and growing...

joanna said...

I seriously could have made this list 10x longer. It's been fun to go to YAnnabe.com and read all the lists. My TBR is bottomless.

Memory said...

I keep seeing KETURAH AND LORD DEATH on display at my library. It sounds wonderful!