Cupcake by Rachel Cohn is the third book following the misbehaviors and adventures of Cyd Cherisse, which begin in Gingerbread and continue in Shrimp.

C.C. aggravates the hell out of me a lot of the time, being all rich-girl angsty and so on, but she ends up scootching toward “responsible” with each book without turning all goody two shoes. Plus, who wouldn’t eventually love an avowed bad girl in miniskirts and combat boots who also carries a rag doll (Gingerbread) around in a metal lunchbox and makes friends with old people with names like Sugar Pie?

If you enjoy snarky humor or are looking for books that unpack the real challenges of coming from a wealthy family and yet wanting to chart a unique course, check out this trio of novels.

Bonus: the narrator for the audio version of all three books is just great. Her voice is a cross between the Nanny (Fran something or other—you folks who grew up in the nineties know who I mean) and a sexy French teacher. So much better than my description would seem to suggest.

One of the things I love about reading YA is discovering new company for books I love--especially imagining how I'd group them and what recommendations I'd offer to folks who've loved a book.

Here's the Library of Congress book summary:

In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna’s life at home and school has been a nightmare, but while dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness.

A while back I blogged about connections between Blythe Woolston's The Freak Observer and my first novel, What Can't Wait. For readers who liked either or both, my next recommendation would be Story of a Girl. Some common denominators: family tensions, financial stress, a sibling/niece who is a source of concern and love, identity quests, and less-than-healthy encounters with the opposite sex.

In Story of a Girl, Zarr cracks open and humanizes a character whose self-esteem has taken a hit because of bad choices and the bad luck of living in a small town where fresh starts are hard to come by. And everything about Deanna's thought process (as a very young teen drawn to the attention of an older guy) rings true--to be desired (and noticed) at that age is just intoxicating--and dangerous for sense of self. I had similar thoughts and responses when I got a little of the wrong kind of attention from my older brother's friend when I was twelve.

Another something amazing: Zarr shows how friendship can reshape our lives--and our ways of responding to hurt. When Deanna betrays a friend and receives forgiveness for it, that starts to change how she relates to other people in her life, including her dad and the boy who took advantage of her when she was just a girl.

Read more about my thoughts on teens and sex here. Because teens do have bodies that matter, and sex is part of what we all think and live.

PS I give Deanne permission to like her English teacher and keep a writer's notebook because she isn't all dorky and pretentious about it (as I probably was back when I was in high school). Consider her untouched by the gripes in this earlier rant.

I admired Jordan Sonnenblick before I even knew his books. Like me, he put in a number of years teaching in the public schools of Houston through Teach For America. Plus he's a funny, unassuming guy who is unstinting when it comes to sharing his experiences. Among other things, he gave me heaps of advice about managing publicity and pulling off high-quality author visits.

 Maybe all this awesomeness contributed to the moment of fear that struck my first-time-author heart: what if I don't like the work as much as I like the person?

Not to fear, though: Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie and the companion novel After Ever After hit all the right notes. These are middle-grade fiction at its best. Put it out there for guys or girls. Serve it up in class or outside. These books are real without crossing any of those tricky boundaries that are so worrisome for librarians and teachers of the younger crowd.

Here's a quick summary of the two books (excerpted from the positive Kirkus reviews of the books) before I touch on some of the things that I liked best:

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie (2005): Steven Alper, who is untalented in sports but terrific on the drums, is giving his pesky five-year-old brother Jeffrey oatmeal when Jeffrey, who has been complaining recently that his “parts hurt,” falls off a stool and gets a nosebleed that just won’t quit. That night Steven finds out that Jeffrey has leukemia.

After Ever After (2010): In this companion novel to Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie (2005), Steven’s little brother Jeffrey, now in eighth grade and in full remission from leukemia, discovers that happily ever after isn’t quite what he expected.

I accidentally listened to these books out of order, hearing Jeffrey's story in After Ever After before Steven's. It didn't really matter, though, because After Ever After really is a companion book, not a sequel, and nothing is lost for readers who haven't read D,G, and DP. The self-deprecating humor and general wholesomeness of the guys is a common thread, but Steven and Jeffrey's challenges, strengths, and outlooks are appropriately distinguished. Together, the two novels offer a view of how childhood cancer affects--and continues to affect--families.

After Ever After in particular helps readers think about something that they might not consider: the many costs and complications of life for a childhood cancer survivor. Jeffrey and his friend Tad (also a cancer survivor) have to live with side effects from treatment that touch everything from their fine motor control to their walking ability, their memory to their problem-solving skills. (FYI I was intrigued to hear mention of Gleevec as a treatment for one of the boys as this is the medication my Dad has been on as a treatment for gastrointestinal cancer.)

For all their differences, both Steven and Jeffrey are the kind of sweet but not too sweet boys I hope that Liam will grow into. The books are clean but not squeaky; Sonnenblick's pitch-perfect voice keeps the reader from ever thinking for a second that the writer is writing at a younger audience. This is writing for middle-grade readers at its best.

I know I mentioned the humor already, but really. Really. So funny. Like Tad in After Ever After calling his little sister the "emergency replacement child" that his parents cooked up just in case he croaked. In light of my colossal inability to generate humor, this kind of funny floors me.

Liam, will you please read these books with me when you are approaching your middle-school man-child years? 

I just finished listening to Chris Crutcher’s Deadline, and doing so was both a pleasure (I’ve loved Chris Crutcher since listening to his fabulous Whale Talk) and a chance to think about the relationship between realism and diversity in YA.

But first, here’s the skinny on Deadline, courtesy of the Library of Congress (where I go for the best book summaries):

Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned. Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world. 

How can a pint-sized, smart-ass seventeen-year-old do anything significant in the nowheresville of Trout, Idaho? 

First, Ben makes sure that no one else knows what is going on—not his superstar quarterback brother, Cody, not his parents, not his coach, no one. Next, he decides to become the best 127-pound football player Trout High has ever seen; to give his close-minded civics teacher a daily migraine; and to help the local drunk clean up his act. 

And then there's Dallas Suzuki. Amazingly perfect, fascinating Dallas Suzuki, who may or may not give Ben the time of day. Really, she's first on the list. 

 Living with a secret isn't easy, though, and Ben's resolve begins to crumble . . . especially when he realizes that he isn't the only person in Trout with secrets.

Discounting the mention of Dallas Suzuki, you might be wondering where diversity would come into play in the white, white world of Trout, Idaho. And that’s what I love about this book: it’s true to its rural setting without giving up on the idea that diversity matters. Ben is white, as are almost all of the kids at his school and in his town. But—like my younger self growing up in rural East Texas—he cares about what’s happening in the rest of the world.

He’s fascinated by The Autobiography of Malcom X as well as Lies My Teacher Told Me, both of which influence him to discover the subtext of discrimination and prejudice in his hometown. (Without, by the way, ceasing to care deeply about the town and his neighbors.) BTW, I’m guessing that the cranky Kirkus reviewer who criticized “Crutcher’s heavy-handed lessons on the ills of racial prejudice and the need for gun control” read the good ole boy attitude of some of Trout’s citizens as exaggerated. I don’t think it was. And for the record, I’m from Kilgore, Texas, a town where the concentration of Republicans and guns is just about as heavy as it gets. (I still love you, East Texas.)

Now, there are many other things I enjoyed about Deadline, including Ben’s self-deprecating sense of humor and his dream conversations with a wise man who goes by Hey-Soos. (Yes, Ben’s therapist helpfully points out that Hey-Soos is phonetically identical to the Spanish pronunciation of Jesus.) They talk about free will, moral relativism, relationships, and how premarital sex can be healing for Dallas, who turns out to have survived sexual abuse. Fascinating stuff that leaves readers thinking.

So: the challenge of embracing a diverse world from a not-so-diverse corner of that world isn’t the focus of Deadline, but it is there. And it’s there in such a way that it never subverts the realism of Crutcher’s world.

I’ve wanted to read The Freak Observer ever since I first heard about it (even before it won the prestigious Morris award). I mean, who wouldn’t want to read a book “about death, life, astrophysics, and finding beauty in chaos”?

Now that I’ve read The Freak Observer, I can see that folks aren’t kidding when they talk about the amazing, distinctive voice of Loa, the protagonist. Although in some ways her world is very different (rural, white) from the one I write about in What Can’t Wait (urban, mostly Hispanic), Loa and Marisa (my protag) would have plenty to talk about.

Loa is a bit more cynical and a bit more wounded than Marisa, but they both know what it means to be critical caregivers for younger siblings, contributors to family finances, and wallpaper to the lives of those around them. Marisa would relate to another gal who thinks things like, “The only time I look in the mirror on purpose is when I brush my teeth” (90). This bit is like something from Marisa’s world, too:

“Mom would sit at the kitchen table with the checkbook, a piece of scratch paper, and any bills that were waiting to be paid. It is one thing to be good at theoretical math; it’s another thing, probably better, to be able to figure out how to skate from one week to the next without pissing anybody off or getting stuck in the Payday-Cash-Now-Check-Into-Cash hamster wheel of economic hell” (98).

Another thing I liked about the book was how changes in Loa’s parents’ lives (like her mom going back to college) forced Loa to rethink her own notions of who she was. This reminded me a bit of the protag in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Catalyst. Loa thinks of herself as the one who keeps things running, the one who doesn’t fall apart. The idea that her parents aren’t locked into the dead-end path that she thought they were sort of shakes her up. This is classic Loa:

“We don’t accept welfare, we don’t buy shit on credit, and we don’t eat anything with paws. I though those were the rock-hard truths about this family, about who we are, but I may need to fiddle with the focus a little more. “We” may not be exactly who I thought. And that leaves ‘Me’ a little fuzzy around the edges (154).

Oh, and The Freak Observer gets bonus points in my book for the following passage:

“I try not to remember what they looked like, the skeleton puppets in brown dresses. I am not successful. It is very hard not to remember something. It’s easy to forget but very hard not to remember on purpose... I know that I can’t choose not to remember. I can’t choose the slide show in my imagination. I can practically hear my own neurons laughing at me. The little shits” (147).

Why the bonus points? I mean, aside from the awesome voice, which reminds me of a younger version of my best writing buddy (who also happens to be the funniest pessimist in the world)? The bonus points are because here’s a YA novel featuring something that actually relates to my own academic work. Because Loa is basically describing the shortcoming I see in a recent debate over this idea called “imaginative resistance.” But that’s sort of technical and boring, so I will save it for a post where I can figure out how to make the topic riveting.

The Freak Observer isn’t a plot-driven book, but it is a page-turner. Loa’s description of a collection of photography actually applies nicely to the book itself. The subject of these pictures was seeing... They were about looking and seeing...I just want to keep looking at pictures, swallowing up other people’s visions. It is better than vodka” (88).

The Freak Observer is better than vodka. Now go read it.

For more visions you’ll want to swallow up, check out Blythe Woolston’s blog.