MADreads for Teens

Book reviews for teens by library staff and guest contributors

The concierge is available

Unclaimed Baggage book cover
A review of NPR's Best Books of 2018 by

NPR's Book Concierge is back for 2018 and there are more then 300 titles for you to sort and peruse. You can look at all 319 titles or you can break it down by category. Or if you want to narrow it down even more, pick a couple of categories and see which titles fit your new criteria. There is quite simply something for everyone in this massive catalog. So take a look. Do you want to see which two books work for Art Lovers and Book Clubs? It's possible. How about the Comic/Graphic Novel that is Rather Short? You got it.

Posted by Jane J on Nov 28, 2018

The power of YouTube

Cover of An Absolutely Remarkable T
A review of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

How often are two siblings really good at the same thing? There’s Venus and Serena Williams, Orville and Wilbur Wright, the Bronte sisters... it’s not unheard of, but it’s not super common either. Anyway, after reading An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, I would definitely add John and Hank Green to the list of talented siblings. I’ve been a John Green fan for a long time and I knew that he and his brother Hank made great YouTube videos, but I didn’t have super high expectations for Hank’s debut novel.

Posted by Kylee on Nov 27, 2018

Secrets and lies (oh and ghosts)

Cover of A Dangerous Collaboration
A review of A Dangerous Collaboration by Deanna Raybourn

Veronica Speedwell and her cantankerous companion Stoker return in their fourth adventure. Veronica is just back in England after a lengthy butterfly hunting trip abroad. She'd been using the time away to try and figure out where her feelings stand in regard to Stoker but still hasn't figured anything out. So an invitation from Stoker's brother, Tiberius, to attend a house party at the estate of Lord Malcolm Romilly, which is on an island off the coast of Cornwall, seems just the ticket to distract her.

Posted by Jane J on Nov 19, 2018

When a book becomes a movie

Cover of Now a Major Motion Picture
A review of Now a Major Motion Picture by Cori McCarthy

Imagine your grandmother was as big as J. K. Rowling and had written the number one fantasy series of all time - with all the fandom that that entails. Now imagine the first book in that series is being made into a movie, which has pushed the fandom into an even more frenzied state. And though you've tried your hardest to distance yourself from everything to do with the books, you're now being forced to join the set of the movie being made. That's just where Iris Thorne finds herself. Her grandmother, M. E.

Posted by Jane J on Sep 17, 2018

All girl "Empire Records" plus vigilante fight club

Cover of Heavy Vinyl
A review of Heavy Vinyl by Carly Usdin

I am a proud Gen X-er and the 1995 film Empire Records is part of my lexicon. This graphic novel replicates the independent record store vibe, the staff is all female and it's set in 1998, so for me, it's the coolest. It's also about a girl fight club hiding underneath the record store. And the girl vigilantes must save missing rock stars. Like I said. The coolest.

Posted by Molly W on Sep 5, 2018

Magical steampunk

Cover of The Clockwork Witch
A review of The Clockwork Witch by Michelle Sonnier

In this first of a series Sonnier offers a vibrant and fast-moving tale that melds steampunk and magic to great effect. Arabella is the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of England's most powerful family of witches. As such she was expected to do great things. But Arabella has aged past the point where her powers should have been revealed with nary a spark of talent showing, much to the dismay of her mother and delight of some of her more competitive sisters.

Posted by Jane J on Aug 27, 2018

Pages

Subscribe to MADreads