Charlotte's Library

Wide Awake written by David Levithan I adore political young adult novels.  I just love them.  Despite many falling in the 'young adult' category not yet being able to vote, we are people and we are passionate about the world we live in.  It is so great to hear voices of fictional teens who feel the same.   Wide Awake  is the stuff of a beautiful liberal idealistic heaven, and has to be one of the best books I've had the pleasure of reading.  And he does it so great, too, with his typical mindblowing writing combining with perfection of a plot. He could have easily used the political victory as the ending, but instead took the hard and ultimately more rewarding road of tackling the end at the beginning.  While some of the made up historical events seem a little hokey, once they're explained, it's totally believable, albeit idealistic.  And while this may be deemed a 'political YA', more than anything this novel is about finding who you are and rec...

Keep Holding On written by Susane Colasanti This is the YA novel about bullying that the world's been waiting for.  So many books addressing bullying take on a preachy stance, ignoring the realities that this bullying consumes a teen's life with shame, making it so difficult for bullying to be addressed.  Colasanti knows what she's talking about.  We are getting the raw, real story here.  I really love that the reader doesn't have to dig deep to find the morsels of meaning, the depth is all there, laid out, ready to be applied to the bullied lives of actual teens.  I have a lot of things I could say here.  I wish, and don't we all, I could one day have a one-on-one conversation with Colasanti about her books and her life, but for now, I'll revel in knowing that I am not alone, and neither are you.  The one adjustment I would have loved would have been either a sequel or an expansion of the story beyond the ending, because as with most endings, the endi...

Dreamhunter  written by Elizabeth Knox I wasn't expecting to love this book as much as I did.  I thought it would be just another one of those fantasy novels written by a wanna-be fantasy writer, full of weird names with too many consonants and desperate clumsy attempts at world-building.  Wow, was I in for a surprise.  Yes, there are new names and you're immersed in a totally new world, but you're learning right beside the main character, rather than being plunged into a pre-existing confusing universe.  The novel explores a subject not explored much in YA books (with the possible exception of Lisa McMann's Wake series), the world of dreams.  There are some passages that drag a bit, but once the story gets going, you are immersed in an intricately developed universe where dreams are the basis for society's continued productivity.  All of the questions, the set-up, everything is addressed and if it isn't resolved in this novel, it is rapidly picked u...