Category: young adult

Posted on

Mary’s Monster

Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein
by Lita Judge (Author / Illustrator)

Booktalk: An illustrated free verse biography of Mary Shelley, the pregnant teenage runaway who wrote Frankenstein.

Snippet:
SCOTLAND HAS
BECOME MY EYRIE
OF FREEDOM

The wind is my friend,
the sea, my sister.
The mist drinks my tears,
and stars hold my hopes.

A thousand gales rage
before Father insists
I come home again.

I am no longer a girl
weary with disappointment.
I have become rock
and wind and fiery sea.

A 2018 Cybils Poetry nominee

BONUS! Download the Teacher’s Guide

Copyright © 2018 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Long Way Down

Long Way Down
by Jason Reynolds (Author)

Booktalk: Will has known about the rules ever since his childhood friend was killed on the playground, and he’s followed the first two: no crying, and no snitching. When his older brother, Shawn, is shot and killed while walking home from the store, Will knows he is expected to follow the final rule and avenge his brother’s death. He knows where Shawn keeps his gun, and he thinks he knows who the shooter is: a member of a rival gang named Riggs. Even if Will has never used a gun–never even held a gun before–rules are rules. But in the elevator on the way down to meet Riggs, Will encounters family and friends who died playing by the rules, and now Will has to decide what he is going to do when the elevator reaches its final stop.

Snippet:
IN CASE YOU AIN’T KNOW

gunshots make everybody
deaf and blind especially
when they make somebody

dead.

Best to become invisible
in times like these.
Everybody knows that.

Even Tony flew away.

A 2018 Cybils Poetry nominee

BONUS! Download the Reading Group Guide

Copyright © 2018 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.