Going Bovine

by Libba Bray. New York: Delacorte Press, c. 2009. 480 pages. ISBN 9780385733977

A disappointment to his parents and an embarrassment to his twin sister, lackadaisical Cameron Smith is simply getting by in high school when he gets the news he has a disease that is going to kill him--Creutzfeldt-Jacob or "mad cow" disease. Clues from a punk angel (or a hallucination?) lead Cameron to break out of the hospital with a video game-obsessed dwarf and take them on a quixotic road trip in search of a Dr. X, the cure and possibly a chance to save the world.

2010 Michael L. Printz Award Winner

tales of the MADMAN underground: an historical romance 1973

by John Barnes. New York: Viking. c. 2009. 532 pages.
ISBN 978-0-670-06081-8

Karl Shoemaker has decided to turn over a new leaf at the start of his senior year, 1973. He is going to be normal. The first step is to avoid therapy. Not so easy when your dad is dead, your mom is a drunk who steals your money (the money you make from working five jobs!), you're in AA and you and all of your friends are self-proclaimed "madmen."

Set in a small, depressed town in Ohio, Barnes' book spans six days in the life of Karl Shoemaker. Told in the first person, this book is so honest, sad and hilarious that teen readers will tear through these 500 plus pages.

2010 Printz Honor Book, 2010 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults

Liked it? Try Benjamin Alire Saenz's Last Night I Sang to the Monster: a novel, Julie Anne Peters' Between Mom and Jo, Jaye Murray's Bottled Up: a novel, Blake Nelson's Paranoid Park.

Punkzilla

Punkzilla by Adam Rapp. Westminster, MD: Candlewick Press, c. 2009. 244 pages. ISBN 0763630314

Jamie, known as Punkzilla, has been living in a low rent hotel in Portland since he went AWOL from military school. He went off his meds and survives on money he makes stealing iPods and doing cheap drugs. When he finds out his older brother Peter, a gay playwright, is dying of cancer, he begins a harrowing journey to Memphis. Told in a series of unsent letters to Peter and mixed with old correspondences from family and friends.

A Junior Library Guild Selection and 2010 Michael L. Printz Honor Award, 2010 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, 2009 Booklist Editor’s Choice-Books for Youth-Older Reader’s Category.

If you liked it, try Steven Herrick’s The Simple Gift: a novel and Willo Davis Roberts’ Blood on His Hands

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (2008), 342 pages, 2008 National Book Award Finalist

my review:

Elite boarding schools often provide a popular backdrop for young adult novels. They also provide the young adult novelist numerous opportunities to create situations where parental involvement and adult supervision is lacking; money and resources may abound for the characters. Many times, these characters live in a world that most young readers have never experienced--that of a life of privilege and status. All of these elements are a part of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks but the title character of Frankie is such an odd (in a smarty, funny way) girl that she is more realistic and relatable for many readers than the usual prep or boarding school characters.

Frankie becomes obsessed with her plans to infiltrate and be a part of the all male secret society (the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds) at Alabaster Prep. At the same time, she is experiencing her first love and a relationship where she struggles to not lose her own identity. More than just a pretty girl, Frankie fights for her place in the academic institution and in the world where the “Old Boys Club” rules.

The Disreputable History… is filled with clever wordplay and even more boarding school and college pranks, ideas of interventionist art, subverting the institutions of power and notions of gender roles and breaking the rules (whether written or just understood). Written in the third person, the narration is a welcome change from the usual first person narratives of many young adult novels. This is a coming of age book that defies many of the conventions of this genre.

2009 Michael L. Printz Honor Book