Pasadena Public Library
Review by Genevieve Ruth Harvey, 16 Butterfly Yellow By Thanhha Lai The lacuna that separates Hang from the Texans is evident in the first chapter as she munches on ginger, isolating herself on the boat from others around her, desperately attempting to suppress the memories of her experiences at sea in the […]
Review by Jasmine Sov, 14 Yes No Maybe So By Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed When Jamie, who considers himself to be awful at public speaking, and Maya, who’s going through the worst possible time of her life, somehow end up doing political canvassing for their local state senate candidate, they’re […]
Review by Jasmine Sov, 14 What I Want You To See By Catherine Linka Winning a full-ride scholarship to California’s top art school previously seemed like a crazy, awesome, happily-ever-after for Sabine Reyes, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The renowned professor Colin Krell, who she’d hoped to be […]
Review by Nina Dinan, 16 Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong (Young Readers’ Edition) By James W. Loewen, Adapted by Rebecca Stefoff “In his novel 1984, English writer George Orwell said, ‘Who controls the present controls the past.’ He meant that those in power shape the way […]
Review by Jasmine Sov, 14 Don’t Read Comments By Eric Smith Divya Sharma, a popular teenage streaming gamer known as D1V, seems like she’s got it all—a host of fans, companies tripping over themselves to be her sponsor, and a huge, established presence in this year’s hottest game, “Reclaim the Sun”. […]
Review by Nina Dinan, 16 Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir By Nikki Grimes Ordinary Hazards is a memoir in verse. As the daughter of a paranoid schizophrenic mother and a struggling violinist father, Nikki Grimes spent her early years in and out of foster care, contending not only with poverty but with an […]
Review by Nina Dinan, 16 Shout: The True Story of a Survivor Who Refused to be Silenced By Laurie Halse Anderson In the poem “emergency, in three acts”, Laurie Halse Anderson recounts her experience giving a speech at a New Jersey high school. In this scene, she “stands in the spotlight […]
Review by Nina Dinan, 16 The Terrorist’s Son: A Story of Choice By Zak Ebrahim with Jeff Giles In writing The Terrorist’s Son, Zak Ebrahim does not mince words. He writes, “My father was the first known Islamic jihadist to take a life on American soil. He worked with the support of […]
Review by Jasmine Sov, 13 Let’s Call it a Doomsday By Katie Henry Let’s Call It a Doomsday is about a girl named Ellis Kimball, who, because of her overwhelming anxiety, is prepared for every possible way that the world could end. Maybe even over-prepared. When she meets Hannah Marks, a […]
Review by Nina Dinan, 16 Slave Stealers: True Accounts of Slave Rescues Then and Now By Timothy Ballard “Today, there are approximately twenty to thirty million people enslaved. Close to six million of these modern-day slave victims are children. Human trafficking brings in an estimated 150 billion dollars annually and is the […]