YA Historical Fiction
AN EMOTION OF GREAT DELIGHT by Tahereh Mafi
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In just a year, Shadi’s life has been upended. Since her brother died, her mother has unraveled. Her father is in the hospital, likely to die, and Shadi can’t even pretend to be sad about it. Her sister only speaks to her to pick a fight. Her best friend hates her. And worst of all, her country has gone to war with Iraq, and though her family doesn’t come from Iraq, because Shadi wears hijab, her entire community seems to blame her for the tragedies and consequences of 9/11. As Shadi shuffles through her life, trying to keep her head down and to keep her grief at bay, her ex-best friend’s brother suddenly reappears in her life, and her delicate balance collapses. She will finally have to confront the traumas in her life and process the heartbreak that preceded it all.
A story of love, family, heartbreak, and forgiveness, this recent-historical novel will appeal to readers of YA contemporary fiction and difficult, gut-wrenching romances. The poetic prose elevates what would already have been a beautiful narrative into something truly exquisite. I highly recommend it to YA readers and book clubs.
THE FOREST OF STOLEN GIRLS by June Hur
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Hwani hasn’t returned to the island of Jeju in years—not since the Forest Incident, when she and her sister were found near the body of a murdered young woman, an incident which Hwani cannot remember.
But Hwani’s father never forgot. The woman’s murder was the one case Detective Min never solved, and the continued disappearance of young girls from the forest caused him to return to Jeju over the past five years. Until the day he disappeared. Disguised as a boy and clutching her father’s journal, Hwani returns to the village of her birth, determined to find her father and solve the mystery of the stolen girls. But when the mystery brings her to the door of her estranged sister, Hwani discovers that the forest isn’t the only source of secrets, and she begins to wonder if finding the truth of her past will be worth the cost.
Set in 15th century Korea, this historical mystery is suspenseful, atmospheric, and thought-provoking. It gripped me from start to end. Though it is YA, adult historical fiction readers will find lots to love here, too. My favorite book of the year so far, and a must-read for YA mystery or historical fiction fans!
A SPY IN THE HOUSE by Y.S. Lee
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Mary Yang should have been hanged. She would have been–in fact–had the headmistresses of Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls not been interested in her promising skills and personality. Because more than an Academy, Miss Scrimshaw’s is a cover for a feminist spy ring called the Agency. And at 17, Mary (now under the pseudonym of Mary Quinn) is ready for her first assignment. She infiltrates the household of wealthy merchant as a companion for his vapid daughter in the hopes of finding clues as to the whereabouts of missing cargo ships. It is supposed to be an easy job for a beginning agent. But Mary and her supervisors didn’t count on the presence of a charismatic (and persistent) young man. Or on the fact that this particular job has a connection to Mary’s long-buried past….
A fun Victorian mystery with crossover appeal for teens and adults, A SPY IN THE HOUSE is the first in THE AGENCY series. Lee has a PhD in Victorian literature and culture, and her credentials show in her meticulous world-building. Recommend to readers who (like me!) enjoy a touch of romance in their mysteries.
LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott and LITTLE WOMEN (2019)
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In 1860s Massachusetts, four sisters and the boy next door grow up from a childhood of wild imagination and adventure to an adulthood of loss, love, and hope.
So I may be the only American white girl who was not a fan of LITTLE WOMEN as a kid. I mean, I liked most of the first half (the original Book One) but I never, never, never forgave Amy for burning Jo’s book. And I got very bored by Book Two, and also annoyed that Laurie married Amy (because again, SHE BURNED JO’S BOOK) and also super-super-annoyed that Jo married some random middle-aged German guy she just met because just because she was kind of lonely….
But I think that Greta Gerwig either read my childhood mind, or was also me as a child, because her adaptation was everything I wanted it to be. Florence Pugh made me like Amy. Genuinely understand and like her. The chaos of every scene must have been a nightmare to film, but it created such a joyful sense of community and family and connection between the four girls. I was mad at Amy for burning Jo’s book, but I was also mad at Jo for not noticing how much Amy looked up to her and wanted to spend time with her. And I loved the two-pronged solution to the “random German guy” problem: first, introducing him at the beginning of the film so he doesn’t come out of nowhere, and second, crafting an ending where Jo morphs with real-life Alcott, who didn’t believe women (including her character Jo) should have to get married (as she didn’t) but was forced to marry Jo off in the end to make it palatable to contemporary readers. In the film, you can take some delight in the unbelievable, silly, head-over-heels, love-at-first-sight ending because the director has hinted that it’s a fantasy and that the real Jo that you’ve known and loved is actually off somewhere, self-confident and content, living her dreams, publishing her books, and creating this fairytale ending for us to enjoy and for her to roll her eyes at.
P.S. I should note that I actually enjoy much more of Book Two as an adult. Especially now that I have kids. Especially that scene where Meg and John are trying to get their son to go to sleep and John ends up passed out in bed with his kid and Alcott remarks that trying to get a two year old to go to sleep is more exhausting than an entire day of work. Yeah. That. I read that part out loud to my husband. It’s somehow both comforting and discouraging to know that in 200 years of parenthood, nothing has changed….
DREAD NATION by Justina Ireland
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Jane would have grown up in slavery if not for the War Between the States. Instead, she grew up helping her white mother defend the plantation against the onslaught of the undead who began to rise after the Battle of Gettysburg. Although the agreement to end the War so that North and South could join forces against the undead shamblers included the abolition of slavery, Black people are far from equal—arguably not even free. When Jane was rounded up with the rest of the Black teens on the plantation and sent to a finishing school where she would train to defend wealthy white women from shamblers, she hoped it would be an opportunity to gain some sort of liberty and life experience. Instead, she finds herself hampered by the racism and sexism that pervade her society. But when she and a classmate uncover a deadly conspiracy, they find themselves in grave danger and caught between the desire for self-preservation and the knowledge that if they don’t do something, the entire world could be lost to the undead.
This novel is stunning: well-written, nuanced, thought-provoking, timely, and with a gripping and richly imagined historical sci-fi that is nearly impossible to put down. Jane is a compelling and complex protagonist, and it is a pleasure to root for her against both the zombies and the disturbing social institutions that try to hold her back. For all of its thrilling adventure, it never shies away from a powerful and disturbing look at racism and its impact. I loved every page and highly recommend it to teen and adult fans of sci-fi, dystopia, or even historical fiction.
THE ARRIVAL by Shaun Tan
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A man travels to a foreign country, seeking a better life for his family. He arrives in a strange new land with bizarre language, buildings, and creatures. Even food is unrecognizable. As he begins to find his way, he encounters immigrants from other places, each with a different story of how they came to this unfamiliar land. By the time his wife and daughter are able to join him, he is ready to help other new arrivals navigate the world he once found so unnavigable himself.
Though its pages are few, this wordless graphic novel contains a wealth of meaning in its detailed and imaginative illustrations. The artist has captured the alien feeling of being isolated in a new place through fantastical cityscapes, while moving his character through a chain of interactions with other immigrants that builds a sense of community and universality around the immigrant experience. This beautiful story is not one to rush through. I’d recommend it to teens and adults who enjoy graphic novels and character-driven historical fiction.
OKAY FOR NOW by Gary D. Schmidt
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Whenever everything seems to be going well, something terrible is going to happen soon. When Doug gets a baseball cap signed by Joe Pepitone (the Joe Pepitone of the Yankees!), it is inevitable that his jerk older brother steals it. And when he is finally feeling happy on Long Island with friends and a baseball team, it is inevitable that his father mouths off to his boss, loses his job, and moves the family upstate to stupid Marysville, New York. Which means that they’ll be living near Ernie Eco (the jerk). Which means that Doug’s father will be going out drinking every night with Ernie Eco (the jerk) and his brother will still act like the evil criminal mind he is and his mother will still stare into the distance like she’s wishing she had a different life–or maybe wondering when Lucas will come home from Vietnam. And it turns out that everyone in stupid Marysville looks at Doug like he’s the scum of the earth. Terrific. But when Doug discovers a book in the library with an extraordinary painting of a terrified bird plunging toward an icy sea, he is inspired to uncover a new side of himself and the people of Marysville. Of course whenever everything seems to be going well, something terrible must be about to happen. . . .
Through brilliantly written first person narration, Schmidt gradually reveals Doug’s transformation and the evolution of his relationships with friends, family, and neighbors. Not only is the coming-of-age story compelling and accessible, but tense character relationships add suspense that makes this book difficult to put down. It will appeal to middle grade readers and teens (and even adults, especially those who grew up in the sixties) who enjoy coming-of-age stories and historical fiction.
Doug’s voice makes this book exceptional, and Lincoln Hoppe’s performance of the audiobook is perfect. I highly recommend listening to this one!
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN by Ransom Riggs
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When Jacob was a young child, he believed his grandfather’s stories about growing up in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and fighting monsters. He believed that the photographs of the flying girl, the invisible boy, and his grandfather’s other peculiar playmates were all real. By age 16, however, Jacob has grown to understand that the photographs are fake and his grandfather’s stories merely fantasies invented to mask the horrible reality of growing up in Poland and being hunted by human monsters, the Nazis. But when Jacob finds his grandfather dead in the woods, he has to admit that either he is going crazy or the tentacled creature he saw slithering away from his grandfather’s bleeding body was no fairytale. Finding a letter from Miss Peregrine in his grandfather’s study, Jacob travels to England in search of the Home for Peculiar Children, all too aware that if Miss Peregrine is real, the monsters must be real too.
I absolutely loved this book. From its beginnings playing with the blurred lines between true horrors and fantastical horrors to the full-fledged fantasy of Miss Peregrine and her wards and through all of the photographs in between, the book was fascinating and fast paced. I couldn’t put it down. Unfortunately, the ending was not as strong as the beginning and middle. It was clumsy and poorly timed, and instead of providing the cliff-hanger incentive to read a sequel that the author intended, it just seemed awkward and dissatisfying. If only he had ended it about a page earlier! But I hope that the poor ending will be remedied by the sequel that is promised for 2013. For that reason, I will give this book a strange recommendation: I highly recommend reading it, but if you are picky about endings like I am, you may want to wait to read it until the sequel is released to avoid an awkward interruption in the action.
THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak
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The first time Death met Liesel Meminger, the book thief, she was on a train with her mother and her little brother, traveling to a foster home near Munich where the children could escape the shadow of their father’s identity as a Kommunist. It was the little brother’s soul that Death had come to collect. As he cradled the little boy’s soul in his arms and watched the living grieve, Death did not know that he would meet the book thief two more times during her childhood, nor that he would find her journal in the wreckage of a bomb-torn city and would read it again and again, memorizing her story and always carrying it with him. He shares Liesel’s story with the readers in his own way–recounting the mischief she concocts with Rudy Steiner, the complicated but ultimately loving relationships in her foster family, the struggle of learning to read, poverty and hunger in the Third Reich, the terrifying business of hiding a Jew and the powerful friendship that results from it, the complex intertwining of patriotism, loyalty, and morality–all over-layed with Death’s observations of the tragedy of war and the enduring hope and beauty of life.
Ultimately, it is the words—of the author, of the characters, of the past—that bring the story to life so vibrantly and unforgettably. This is a book to be savored. It is at once heartbreaking and heartwarming. There are no real plot twists; Death tells you the ending at the beginning. The book is about the journey of the characters and their complex, beautiful relationships. Zusak does not neglect even the minor characters, making them all irresistibly complicated and human. I warn you, you will fall in love with characters in this book, and their stories will stay with you–as they did for the narrator, Death. Your heart will likely break at some of the tragedies they endure. But it is worth it for the journey you share with them, just as Death demonstrates that even the shortest lives captured in Liesel’s journal have profound and enduring beauty and meaning. The Book Thief has been my Favorite Book Of All Time since I first read it in 2006, and it will take an extraordinary book to ever supplant it in my affection. I cannot recommend it highly enough for teens and for adults.
If you liked The Book Thief for its themes and characters, you might like The Fault In Our Stars by John Green.
If you liked The Book Thief for its subject matter and narrative style, you might like Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
THE ROCK AND THE RIVER by Kekla Magoon
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In some ways, Sam has led a sheltered life. He has experienced some of the racial prejudice that his father, a well-known Civil Rights activist, is fighting against, but living in his middle-class neighborhood, he has never quite understood the struggle in the same way that others seem to. His older brother, Stick, on the other hand, seems to be getting involved in things that are over his head. He has grown frustrated with his father’s methods of peaceful protest and joins the Black Panthers. Sam is stuck in the middle of the fight between his father and brother, trying to understand the implications for the struggle for Civil Rights and figure out on which side he should take his stand.
This wonderful historical novel weaves realistic family tensions into the political tensions of an important historical period. The story is gritty, realistic, action-packed, and thought-provoking. Not the feel-good book of the year, but a gripping read. The well-researched historical backdrop of the story along-side the intense, character-driven fictional story would also make this an enjoyable book to use in a high school classroom.
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