Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Popular Young Adult Historical Fiction Book List

Are you looking for something to read? Are you in the mood for historical fiction? Check out this book list...




1) "Born Wicked" by Jessica Spotswood

Ever since their mother died, Cate has been responsible not just for raising her sisters, but for making sure that they stay safe and undiscovered by the Brotherhood priests as witches.

Protecting her sisters, who chafe under her too-watchful eye, was the last request that Cate’s mother, a fellow witch, asked of her before dying. Unfortunately, her mother neglected to leave much guidance. A discovered witch is subject to terrifying penalties, and the Brotherhood has been intensifying its witch-finding efforts. Cate is pulled between family obligations and societal pressures—she has only a few short months to find a husband lest the Brotherhood assign one, but marriage will take her away from her sisters. The lukewarm love triangle between her and two generic suitors is just formulaic, especially when compared to the more compelling relationship with society. By keeping the sisters away from their town’s social scene, Cate meant to keep their secrets safe, but their absence has attracted attention. The two plots tie together through the arrival of governess Sister Elena, tasked with smoothing the girls’ rough edges and matchmaking. Searching for answers while hiding under everyone’s noses, Cate discovers pieces of a prophecy revealing an immediate danger and that she isn’t the only one keeping secrets.

An imperfect heroine, strong female supporting cast and measured tension counter underdeveloped male characters. (Fantasy. 12-17)



2) "Never Fall Down" by Patricia McCormick

A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.

The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.

Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)



3) "One Crazy Summer" by Rita Williams-Garcia

A flight from New York to Oakland, Calif., to spend the summer of 1968 with the mother who abandoned Delphine and her two sisters was the easy part. Once there, the negative things their grandmother had said about their mother, Cecile, seem true: She is uninterested in her daughters and secretive about her work and the mysterious men in black berets who visit. The sisters are sent off to a Black Panther day camp, where Delphine finds herself skeptical of the worldview of the militants while making the best of their situation. Delphine is the pitch-perfect older sister, wise beyond her years, an expert at handling her siblings: “Just like I know how to lift my sisters up, I also knew how to needle them just right.” Each girl has a distinct response to her motherless state, and Williams-Garcia provides details that make each characterization crystal clear. The depiction of the time is well done, and while the girls are caught up in the difficulties of adults, their resilience is celebrated and energetically told with writing that snaps off the page. (Historical fiction. 9-12)






4) "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly

“Mother was awakening to the sorry facts: My biscuits were like stones, my samplers askew, my seams like rickrack.” The year is 1899, the place Texas and the problem is 11-year-old Calpurnia Virginia Tate, who is supposed to want to cook, sew and attract future beaux, not play in the dirt, examine insects and, perhaps most suspect of all, read Darwin’s controversial The Origin of Species, the source of the novel’s chapter introductions. A natural-born scientist, she alone among her six brothers has discovered the rare specimen under her own roof—a funny-smelling, rather antisocial grandfather who preoccupies himself with classifying flora and fauna...when he’s not fermenting pecans for whiskey. Their budding friendship is thoughtfully and engagingly portrayed, as is the unfolding of the natural world’s wonders under Calpurnia’s ever-inquisitive gaze. Calpurnia is not a boilerplate folksy Southern heroine who spouts wise-beyond-her-years maxims that seem destined for needlepoint—her character is authentically childlike and complex, her struggles believable. Readers will finish this witty, deftly crafted debut novel rooting for “Callie Vee” and wishing they knew what kind of adult she would become. (Historical fiction. 10-14)






5) "Venom" by Fiona Paul

A romantic potboiler set in turn-of-the-17th-century Venice.

Readers meet Cassandra at the funeral of one of her best friends. Distraught, she leaves the funeral and bumps into a cocky young artist. That night, Cass goes wandering in the graveyard next to her guardian aunt's villa across the lagoon and discovers that her friend's body has been taken from its tomb and replaced with another's, a murder victim. Readers will not be nearly as astonished as Cass that she meets the artist again next to the tomb. Though she is betrothed to another, she and Falco quickly team up to solve the mystery. Their investigations involve many hugely unlikely excursions into Venice proper: to a charnel house, a brothel and a masked ball, all at night. Fortunately, Cass' aunt is wealthy, so she has gowns aplenty to replace the ones that get ripped, rained upon and otherwise ruined. Though the setting should be evocative, worldbuilding is continually hamstrung by clichéd and clunky American colloquialisms that overwhelm the occasional mild Italian imprecation. Steamy make-out sessions with Falco tempt Cass to adopt hiscarpe diem attitude—but could he be hiding a sinister secret? Her betrothed returns from France, setting up a love triangle that may prompt readers who make it to the end to pick up subsequent volumes.

Those reading the book for the mystery will have given up long before it grinds to its tepid, 400-plus–page conclusion. (Historical mystery. 14 & up)


Book One of Three: Belladonna and Starling


6) "Clockwork Prince" by Cassandra Clare

This sequel to Clockwork Angel (2010) pits gorgeous, attractively broken teens against a menacing evil.

There's betrayal, mayhem and clockwork monstrosities, and the Shadowhunters have only two weeks to discover—oh, who are we kidding? The plot is only surprisingly tasty icing on this cupcake of a melodramatic love triangle. Our heroes are Tessa, who may or may not be a warlock, and the beautiful Shadowhunter warrior boys who are moths to her forbidden flame. It's not always clear why Tessa prefers Will to his beloved (and only) friend Jem, the dying, silver-eyed, biracial sweetheart with the face of an angel. Jem, after all, is gentle and kind, her dearest confidante; Will is unpleasant to everyone around him. But poor, wretched Will—who "would have been pretty if he had not been so tall and so muscular"—has a deep, dark, thoroughly emo secret. His trauma puts all previous romantic difficulties to shame, from the Capulet/Montague feud all the way to Edward Cullen's desire to chomp on Bella Swan. Somehow there's room for an interesting steampunk mystery amid all this angst. The supporting characters (unusually well-developed for a love-triangle romance) include multiple compelling young women who show strength in myriad ways. So what if there are anachronisms, character inconsistencies and weird tonal slips? There's too much overwrought fun to care.

A purple page turner. (Fantasy. 13-16)





Book Two of Three: Clockwork Angel and Clockwork Princess


7) "The Lions of Little Rock" by Kristin Levine

The remarkable story of the Little Rock Nine is familiar to many, but what happened next? In this quietly powerful page-turner, Levine focuses her attention on the events that unfolded in Little Rock the year after the integration of the city’s public schools.

Readers meet quiet, 12-year-old Marlee and her outgoing and warm-hearted best friend, Liz, who is instrumental in Marlee’s burgeoning ability to speak her mind to anyone outside of her family. To Marlee’s dismay, Liz suddenly vanishes from school, and the rumor is that she has been passing for white. Marlee initially feels betrayed by her friend, but her understanding of the complicated nature of race relations and politics matures. Levine sensitively portrays her process as she sorts out these feelings, finds a way to stay friends with Liz and becomes involves with the Womens’ Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC) after the city shuts down all of its public schools to prevent integration. When Marlee’s father, a schoolteacher, is fired because of his pro-integration stance, the entire family becomes involved in the Stop This Outrageous Purge (STOP) campaign in an attempt to have all of the teachers rehired and the public schools reopened.

This engaging story, with its emphasis on the impact of friendship and on finding one’s voice when it is most important to be heard, will no doubt appeal to a broad range of readers and inspire many interesting conversations. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)





8) "Revolver" by Marcus Sedgwick

“Even the dead tell stories,” begins Sedgwick’s slim yet taut and complex thriller about a family barely surviving in 1910 along the Swedish-Finnish border, 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Sig pieces together the story his father, Einar Andersson, is trying to tell after he discovers his frozen body on a slowly thawing lake, a risk his father would never take, and a one-thumbed, vengeful man named Gunther Wolff arrives, demanding the gold he claims he was cheated out of by Sig’s father. Alternating chapters between Sig and his older sister’s struggle with Wolff and their life ten years ago in the mining town of Nome, when their father was an assayist testing the purity of gold during a rush in the Alaska Territory, untangle Einar’s clues. Always looming in Sig’s past and present is his father’s Colt revolver and the moral dilemma: “To pull the trigger, or not to pull the trigger?” Is violence ever necessary? A chilling, atmospheric story that will haunt readers with its descriptions of a desolate terrain and Sig’s difficult decisions. (author’s note) (Thriller. YA)





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