Young Adult Literature Fiction Book Reviews

Book Review: Paper Towns

Image courtesy of Amazon.com

Author: John Green

Genre: Young Adult Literature, Mystery

Publisher: Dutton Penguin

Copyright Date: 2015

Pages: 305

Awards: Edgar Award for Best Young Adult (2009)

Summary: Quentin was kind of a nerd who had his close group of friends and they constantly hung out and played video games together. However Quentin always had a crush on the mysterious girl next door Margo Roth Spiegelman. Margo takes Quentin on a night of his life while she goes on her revenge tour. Then after that night Margo is gone, she just disappears. Margo has left clues for Quentin as to where she can be found. Quentin becomes obsessed on his journey to find Margo, and gets his friends involved. Along the path Quentin begins to discover that Margo the girl he thought he knew so well, is not really who he thought she was.

Grade Level: High School (9^th-12^th) This book is placed in the high school category because the text is more complex. The characters are familiar because they are in a similar age group as the reader. This book contains controversial topics such as sex and drinking and has inappropriate language at times. The Lexile for this book was 850L. 

Ratings:

					Comments
Plot	Excellent plot that is clever and has many surprising twists.	Good plot that has some surprises.	This is an okay plot that is kinda interesting.	Loose plot with many holes, and fails to grab the readers attention.	Detailed plot, and good backstory.  Interesting twists and resolutions to the conflicts. My only critique would be that the book ended very quickly and did not really feel complete.
Character	Excellent characterization. The characters are complex and provide a strng emotional impact on the reader.	The characters are believable and the reader can relate to them, and feel an emotional tie to the characters.	The characters are lacking but likable. There is some emotional attachment to the characters.	The characters are poorly described, and leave the reader feeling detached from the book.	Developed characters but a little cliché. Nerdy boy falls in love with the popular girl. Strong bonds of friendship between characters.
Illustration	Excelent illustrations. Very detailed, creative, and connected to the book.	Illustrations were good and showed something important about the book.	The illustrations were okay, they were not very creative.	There was no illustrations, or they were not interesting.	No illustration available.
Recommendation	Excellent book that I highly recommend having in your classroom or library. This book will captivate, enchant, fascinate, and basically make you obsess about it.	Good book that I recommend having in your classroom or library. The book was interesting and kept my interest and was overall very engaging.	This book was okay. I believe this would be a book to check out from the library if your feeling bored.	This book was awful and I cannot recommend it for your classroom or library. This book will leave you wishing you could rewind time so you don’t read it.	I would recommend this book because it is a good mystery. High school students  would be able to relate to the characters but also the problems that they face.

Educational Purpose: I'm not sure that you would be able to use this book because of the mature content discussed. Topics such as sex, drugs, drinking and some of the language.  However young adult literature is important because it offers teenagers answers, or it challenges their views, and helps prepare them for adult hood. This book could be useful to help a reader feel connected because the characters are very typical and relatable to real world teenagers. 

Book Review: The 5^th Wave

Picture courtesy of Amazon.com

Author: Rick Yancey

Genre: Science Fiction

Publisher: Penguin Group

Copyright Date: 2013

Pages: 457

Awards: Winner of the 2014 Red House Children's Book Award

Summary: Aliens have invaded the earth and have decided to eliminate the humans from earth in waves. Cassie has survived the first, second, third and fourth wave. She has witnessed her fathers and mothers death and has vowed to find her brother no matter what. She misses her earlier life where her biggest problem was her crush on Ben Parish, but now she is a survivor who fights for her life. Cassie faces many complications and runs into many problems while she is being hunted down. Her lack of trust plays a major role in her life especially when she meets the mysterious Evan Walker who is more than what he appears to be.  She begins to trust Evan only in the hopes of rescuing her little brother Sam. During this time she begins to connect to Evan and eventually falls in love. Cassie ultimately is forced to choose between life and death.

Grade Level: High School (9^th-12^th) This chapter book is quite long in length, but it contains simple text. There is some adult content and objectionable language making this more suitable for a mature audience. There some abstract ideas presented in this book and some content that is for more mature readers. The Lexile for this book is HL690L.

 Ratings:

					Comments
Plot	Excellent plot that is clever and has many surprising twists.	Good plot that has some surprises.	This is an okay plot that is kinda interesting.	Loose plot with many holes, and fails to grab the readers attention.	This is a very interesting plot that has many twists and surprises that keep you engaged through the entire book.
Character	Excellent characterization. The characters are complex and provide a strong emotional impact on the reader.	The characters are believable and the reader can relate to them, and feel an emotional tie to the characters.	The characters are lacking but likable. There is some emotional attachment to the characters.	The characters are poorly described, and leave the reader feeling detached from the book.	The characters were very relatable and you could feel their emotions at times. The author provided a good sense of who these characters were and what they were feeling.
Illustration	Excellent illustrations. Very detailed, creative, and connected to the book.	Illustrations were good and showed something important about the book.	The illustrations were okay, they were not very creative.	There was no illustrations, or they were not interesting.	There was no illustrations available in this book.
Recommendation	Excellent book that I highly recommend having in your classroom or library. This book will captivate, enchant, fascinate, and basically make you obsess about it.	Good book that I recommend having in your classroom or library. The book was interesting and kept my interest and was overall very engaging.	This book was okay. I believe this would be a book to check out from the library if your feeling bored.	This book was awful and I cannot recommend it for your classroom or library. This book will leave you wishing you could rewind time so you don’t read it.	This is one of my favorite young adult literature books to read. There are sequels that follow this novel that I would  highly recommend. This is a good story with great characters, and interesting twists.

Educational Purpose: You could use this book to predict what is going to happen in the chapters before you read them. The teacher could use student groups to read and then generate a class discussion after groups to bring them together. Using a dialog journal could help to make sure all students are understanding the text. Overall the goal with young adult literature is to encourage individuals to become lifelong readers. When you provide time and material to develop the habit of reading just for the pure enjoyment you can help foster a love of reading.