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Welcome back to Upcoming Titles, our monthly feature where we highlight books releasing this month. As always, this is by no means a comprehensive list of forthcoming releases, just a compilation of titles we think our readers (and our contributors!) would enjoy.
Summer is in full swing and two of our PubCrawl contributors have books coming out this month, including our very own Jodi Meadows and Julie Eshbaugh! Julie’s debut will be coming out this month and we are so, so, so excited for her book to finally be out in the world!
When I talk about my students at the University of Pennsylvania—when I speak of their commitment to our work and to our community, the quality of their search and the depth of their answers, their sentences on the page—I am reflecting on what I love best about the school that once educated and now employs me. I am looking past the rumors and gossip and seeing straight into the heart of young goodness.
Because that goodness resolutely lives.
This semester I have again been blessed by the company of young people and their great talent. A few of my students have brought to class not just an interest in poetry or memoir or fiction, but a specific interest in young adult literature—an interest that has been heightened by my Penn colleague, Melissa Jensen. I've extended an invitation to any in the class to read from the library of new books that make their way to me—and to offer, here, their thoughts.
In this case, Emma Connolly—a young woman who practically defined memoir in her expectations essay, a young woman now looking ahead to a no-doubt stellar career (at least to start) as a middle grade teacher—took home my copy of Tara Altebrando's new and thrilling book, The Leaving. I'd blurbed the book for Tara. I wanted Emma's thoughts. Here, in Emma's words, is what The Leaving is all about.
You see what I mean about talent? Intelligence? Can you imagine Emma as the teacher she will be?
This is the Penn I love.
(And I love Tara, too.)
Who are you without your memories?
For the characters of Tara Altebrando’s engrossing, twisting, mysterious, “The Leaving,” this is not a hypothetical question. When five teenagers are dropped off in an abandoned playground eleven years after they went missing, they are celebrated and intensely questioned. Where were they? Who took them? And how can they be telling the truth that they don’t remember any of it?
As Scarlett and Lucas, two victims of the event known as “The Leaving,” and Avery, the left-behind sister of the only victim who has not returned, try to solve their own history, Altebrando confronts questions of identity, family, and memory. When Scarlett returns home to a mother who has attributed her disappearance to alien activity, she can’t shake the feeling that they are the ones who are from different planets. What if you don’t fit in where you’re supposed to? Lucas is disturbed by the discovery of skills that he must have learned during his absence. Can you be afraid of your past self? Meanwhile, Avery watches their return unfold as she continues to deal with the devastation that her brother’s disappearance has had on her family. Would she be better off like the victims of the “The Leaving,” able to essentially skip over a difficult childhood?
The characters discover unfinished leads from passed-away relatives and potential clues from past selves. They chase after jerkily recovered blips of memory that Altebrando visually represents by scattering words all over the page and interrupting the narrative with blocks of remembered images. With each revelation, we are drawn deeper into the search for answers before being thwarted yet again. Each time the story approaches acceptance of the fact that one might simply be better off not remembering, though, Altebrando reminds us, “Forgetting meant not knowing, meant ignorance, meant maybe making the same mistakes again and again.” So we keep searching, unable to leave this book until the very last page.
0 Comments on The Leaving/Tara Altebrando: reflections by my student, Emma Connolly as of 3/24/2016 7:37:00 AM
The Battle of Darcy Lane by Tara Altebrando is a great pick for our middle school readers!
All Julia really wanted to do this summer was hang out with her best friend, Taylor - and maybe her neighbor/friend/secret crush Peter, too. Then Alyssa moves into the neighborhood. Julia immediately doesn't like her; Taylor does. And just like that, Julia's best friend has a new friend, and Julia has a rival.
Alyssa is really into a ball-bouncing game called Russia. At first, Julia doesn't care for it, but then she realizes that she might be able to beat Alyssa at her own game. Over the course of the summer, while Julia tries to hang on to her friendship with Taylor, she also attends band camp, bonds with Peter over a TV show she's not supposed to watch, and challenges Alyssa to an epic game of Russia. She also avoids cicadas and tries to talk her parents into letting her move into a different room in their house.
Julia's an only child, born to parents who love her and - get this - love each other. It's refreshing to read a book in which the parents are happy together, and it's wonderful to see how the child reacts to that relationship. In this case, Julia feels left out, not only because she is the youngest member of the household AND the only kid AND she has to go to bed earlier than her parents, but also because her parents are so close, she feels like there's no room for her sometimes - like she's interrupting something. There's a beautiful moment in which Julia overhears her parents talking outside, their voices drifting up to her window:
They were laughing a lot, and they sounded like something other than a husband and wife, something other than a mom and dad: they sounded like best friends.
Not only does this perfectly capture their relationship, it also ties back to Julia's concerns about her own best friend. Taylor is spending more and more time with Alyssa and less time with Julia. Teasing, confusion, and jealousy ensue. (Goodness, I don't miss middle school!) But thankfully, instead of being your typical mean girl story, this book offers something more plausible, something more satisfying and more age-appropriate, with the Russia showdown and the additional revelations in the denouement.
The Battle of Darcy Lane is a solid story for young readers. It's kind of like a modern-day Now and Then. Julia tries to test the boundaries a little a couple of times, and she sometimes struggles over the right thing to do, but overall, she has a pretty good head on her shoulders. Though the word "tweens" or the term "tween fiction" may not appeal to everyone, it's appropriate when you consider what it means: between. When you're eleven and twelve, you might feel trapped between your little kid years and your teens, torn between wanting to feel more grown up and wanting to stay a kid. This is best exemplified by the scenes in which Julia feels compelled to put away her dolls and knickknacks, even though she still kind of likes them.
Tara Altebrando has a knack for depicting honest relationships between protagonists and their families and friends, and I regularly recommend her YA books to teens looking for realistic modern-day stories. Now I can give The Battle of Darcy Lane to slightly younger readers. I also plan to read her other middle grade novel, My Life in Dioramas.
And who knows - maybe I'll have the opportunity to play Russia somewhere along the way, too.
This review was originally published at Bildungsroman.
The end of the book includes instructions on how to play the ball-bouncing game referred to as Russia or Onesies, Twosies. I also found instructions at the website howstuffworks.com. Have fun!
Roomies is the story of the summer before college, told from the alternating perspective of two future roommates. Elizabeth, or EB, lives in New Jersey with her single mother, and looks forward to traveling across the country to UC Berkeley at the end of August. Lauren, or Lo, lives in San Francisco, and worries about how her parents will cope with her five much younger siblings once she has moved across the Bay. The two young women get to know one another slowly, with fits and starts, via email throughout the summer. The entire book is not told in email, though - details about the girls' lives are filled in via alternating first-person chapters.
Although both Lauren and Elizabeth have summer relationships with boys, I liked that the core relationship that Roomies is exploring is that of the two future roommates. The romances are both nice (one inter-racial, one inter-socioeconomic-status), but neither demonstrates much conflict. Authors Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando reserve that for EB and Lo's relationship. The alternating viewpoints allow the reader to glimpse each girl from the outside, and their voices are quite distinct. The digital version that I read also used a much larger font for one of the viewpoints, which helped, too. I never had that problem of wondering which character I was reading about (something I frequently notice in first-person multiple-narrator stories).
I also liked the authors' choice to set this book during the summer before college. This is a such a pivotal time for teens - preparing to leave family and high school friends, uncertain about the future - or at least it was for me. I'm thrilled to find another novel that takes this on. (Roomies could paid well with Justina Chen's Return to Me).
Another aspect of Roomies that I appreciated was that the authors weren't afraid to take on discussions about race and sexual preference. Elizabeth's long-absent father is gay, while Lauren's simmering relationship is with a boy who is black (as she is not). More to the point, Lauren and Elizabeth discuss these things - Elizabeth's awkward feelings about having a gay dad, and the uncertainty that Lauren feels in dating someone black (Keyon), because this is new for her. Here's a quote:
"Race. It's so tricky, even though we're all supposedly enlightened and color-blind. I don't want it to be a Thing. But it kind of is a Thing, isn't it?" (Lauren, describing her first visit to Keyon's house)
Both Lauren's and Keyon's parents are well-meaning but also awkward. All in all, I found this refreshing.
I did find some of the text (mostly from Lauren) a little ... deliberately profound. Like this:
"As much as I love to imagine being alone in an orderly lab, I also know you can't stay in there forever and expect to do good work. Life is one of those experiments meant to be conducted in a stimulating, messy environment."
But that's a minor quibble from an adult reader. The style of writing will probably work well for actual teens who are thinking about heading off to college, and all of the change that this implies.
Roommates getting to know one another over the summer before college is the perfect vehicle for teen self-exploration. Roomies is a relatively light take on relationships with friends, boyfriends, and, of course, roommates. There is some adult behavior discussed (including sex), though nothing described in detail. This is still YA, not new adult, in other words, but I don't see it having much interest for kids who aren't yet in high school. For kids (mainly girls) approaching the end of high school, though, Roomies would make a great gift.
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (@LBKids)
Publication Date: December 24, 2013
Source of Book: Advance digital review copy from the publisher
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Even though I’ve been out of school for ages and ages, there is something about September that says new beginnings.
Here are five Fall titles I’m eager to read ...
Read the rest of this post
You thought that title was a tease? Because when do I ever tease? And why would I? And do I even have the shape and general vocabulary of teasing in me?
I do not.
Proof: In a friendly battle currently being conducted on behalf of Tara Altebrando's distinctly unpathetic new novel, The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life (nothing Tara writes is pathetic; she's too clever and language invested and talented for that; read my review here of Dreamland Social Club), I have gone up against true literary greats—Gayle Forman, E. Lockhart, Sarah Miynowski, Arlaina Tibensky, and Lauren Myracle—and been found to be the reigning queen (at least in this hour) of pathetic-ism.
Wait. Is this a good thing? A boast-worthy thing? Should I be trumpeting this all over e-creation?
Oh, never mind. I am the temporary champ of something. I can count the times that's happened to me on one hand of five fingers with variously filed fingernails. I am running with this.
The contest (grueling, requiring months of training and a Michael Phelps diet) all came down to a tricky little Tara questionnaire. I answered as honestly as I knew how, between gulps of Phelps-style pasta. I answered, tone and fit. But of course, I answered imperfectly and do feel the need here to say, about that high school friend, that we found each other years later, and became quite close again, and really, that guy wouldn't have been right for me anyway; my friend was doing me a favor. I also feel the need to confess, as those of you who follow me on Facebook now know, that I may not have ever purchased Twilight tickets, but I am now ballroom dancing to Twilight music.
(You have no idea what I'm talking about. That's the point of links like these. You have to go and find out for yourself.)
Tara's questionnaire, which can be found here, includes the following tidbits. I choose this brief passage to underscore my obsession with winning—anything. Please check out the entire contest, and Tara herself, who is lovely beyond words (and who has some very exciting co-authoring news, concerning another great, Sara Zarr).
TA: See now I may give you some Special Points for this, just because it’s so awful and sad! What an evil cow! Do you know what an isocahedron is without Googling? If not, give us your best guess.
BK: I do, I do! I actually have this funky mathematical term in my YA novel YOU ARE MY ONLY, and not just once. This would be thanks to the fact that my brother is a math genius and I wanted to honor him. Can I have triple points for this one, please? I need something here to put me on a fair playing field. I hate losing.
TA: Again with the points!
1 Comments on Beth Kephart Temporarily Wins the Most Pathetic Award, last added: 8/16/2012
I'm not quite sure who this lovely lady is—Dionysus, I'm guessing—but I found her standing tall within a Philadelphia street festival, utterly and peaceably alone above the crowds (she was stilts-assisted). I return to her on this rainy morning because I feel her mood. Because I have looked out upon my pile of unread books and determined my short-term future.
Having just left Cleopatra (Stacy Schiff) in her tragic, epic Alexandria, I turn toward next titles. Some of them I've read before and will be re-reading. Some are brand-new both to the world and to me. Some are written by friends or friends of friends, one by a Pulitzer Prize winner who once surprised me with a glorious response to my Chicago Tribune review of her March, some by people I doubt I'll ever meet; two were gifts. I feel decadent, to be honest, to have found this time to read. But I have it; I'm claiming it; it will be forever mine.
My au courant (can I use that term this way?) book list, then:
Sweet Dreams, DeWitt Henry When We Danced on Water, Evan Fallenberg (a Kindle book—about dance! about Berlin! Becca recommended!) Dreamland Social Club, Tara Altebrando Caleb's Crossing, Geraldine Brooks A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers The Origin of Stories, Brian Boyd Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf The Liars' Club, Mary Karr Touchy Subjects, Emma Donoghue The Blue Flower of Forgetfulness, Cyrus Samii The Boneshaker, Kate Milford
Stay tuned for my responses.
3 Comments on My good book fortune(s), last added: 5/19/2011
And did you hear that Michael Ondaatje has a new one coming out this fall? My fingers are crossed that it will release in Australia at the same time. :) I have no way to get ARCs now!
Good for you, my friend. You've earned a reading break. I hope you look at this as time to fill the well. Two on my list: In Zanesville and This Life is In Your Hands. Maybe you'll get to them first. Enjoy!
For a short explanation and the first Flashback of the Month post, go here. And, yes, I'm getting this in just in time - August is just about over.
After long battle with cancer, Betsy loses her mother and is left feeling lost in Tara Altebrando’s The Pursuit of Happiness. After the funeral, Betsy’s boyfriend dumps her and her best friend disappears from her life. As if things aren’t miserable enough, her summer plans include dressing like an early American to work at a colonial village (all her father’s fault, of course) along with the class freak, Liza. What begins as work soon turns into an escape for Betsy – from her judgmental classmates, from her breakup, from her mother’s death, and from her uncomfortably quiet home. With the help of her co-workers Liza and James, Betsy learns to work her way through the stages of grief and discover hope for normalcy in the future. While she is taught many colonial crafts and means of cooking, it seems that cutting silhouettes out of paper combined with a certain surfer’s woodcarvings are the perfect recipe for beginning to mend a broken heart.
Though sometimes it’s hard to look past the MTV logo, The Pursuit of Happiness is hardly a fluff novel. So, looking past the cover (and the corny “Declare your independence.”), Tara Altebrando’s novel will appeal to fans of Sarah Dessen, Elizabeth Scott, and Susane Colasanti. This is certainly one of the best young adult novels I’ve read that deals with overcoming grief. Betsy is easy to connect to as a reader (and respect, as she turns into a more proactive character), and Tara Altebrando truly succeeds in writing dialogue that sounds like it actually came out of a few teenagers’ mouths. I also love the setting, having always been fascinated by historical villages, and enjoyed this peak into what it could be like working at one. 9 out of 10.
1 Comments on Flashback of the Month V: The Pursuit of Happiness, last added: 9/1/2009
Michael Buckley, a former comic stand-up comedian, has toured with Jon Stewart (no fourth graders recognized the name), Dave Chappelle (all the kids knew who THAT was), and Dane Cook. Mo Willems was apparently also a stand-up comic at one time. Coincidence? Or freaky deeky trend? You be the judge.
0 Comments on Things You Can Learn From Author Visits as of 5/14/2007 9:29:00 PM
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I remember your use of that word in You Are My Only...LOL