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.

I accidentally listened to these books out of order, hearing Jeffrey's story in After Ever After before Steven's in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie. 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.

For all their differences, both Steven and Jeffrey are sweet but not TOO sweet boys. 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.

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.

I accidentally listened to these books out of order, hearing Jeffrey's story in After Ever After before Steven's in D, G, and DP. 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 sweet but not TOO sweet boys. 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.

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.

You might be wondering where diversity would come into play in the white, white world of Trout, Idaho, where the book is set. 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.

Steve Brezenoff's latest novel, Brooklyn, Burning, sets the bar high for punk-friendly, slacker-sweet, gender-indifferent YA. And it takes on the issues facing many LGBT teens in the wisest way possible: by refusing to make those issues all that the book is about.

Brooklyn, Burning's strongest statement about gender and sexual identity comes through what goes unsaid. The biological sex of the two main characters is never explicitly identified, and the "you" and "I" and strategic phrasing that make this possible work without calling too much attention to themselves. And yet, of course, the reader notices what has been strategically elided. But by the end, we're convinced (or at least I was) that a love story can be a love story without being the story of boy meets girl (or boy meets boy, or girl meets girl). It's kind of like Georges Perec proving that a novel can be written without the letter "e" (L'Apparition). Only maybe less extreme. And a bit more to the point. But you know what I mean.

I, for one, stand in awe. Brooklyn, Burning belongs in library collections, bookstores, and your bookshelf. So get on that.

Drowning Instinct by Ilsa Bick takes hold of you and doesn't let you go until the very last page. I'm proof: I read it in two sittings. Even knowing that Liam would be up at 7:00, I stayed up till 3:00 in the morning to finish it. Here's the description, courtesy of NetGalley.com:

There are stories where the girl gets her prince, and they live happily ever after. (This is not one of those stories.)

Jenna Lord's first sixteen years were not exactly a fairytale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother—until he shipped off to Iraq. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire.

There are stories where the monster gets the girl, and we all shed tears for his innocent victim. (This is not one of those stories either.)

Mitch Anderson is many things: A dedicated teacher and coach. A caring husband. A man with a certain...magnetism.

And there are stories where it's hard to be sure who's a prince and who's a monster, who is a victim and who should live happily ever after. (These are the most interesting stories of all.)

Drowning Instinct is a novel of pain, deception, desperation, and love against the odds—and the rules.

Where to begin? As an author, I stand in awe of the number of plot threads Bick weaves masterfully together here. As a reader, I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. And the writing--it's good. Really good. This book works on so many different levels. It's hard to know how to talk about it without spoiling things. So let me tell you about a few things I loved:

The conceit: Jenna Lord is telling her story aloud into a hand-held recorder given to her by a police detective who has asked her for the truth about what happened. She's in a hospital emergency room. There's been an accident; she doesn't know if she's in trouble or if she's the victim. And by the time she finishes the story--when we have all the pieces--we still don't know, exactly. But in a good way.

The nuances: As you can tell from the description, there's a teacher-student involvement in this novel. As a former high-school teacher, usually I steer way, way clear from these stories because they just piss me off. And at first, I wanted to shout at Mitch Anderson, "Never, ever, EVER have a student over to your house alone. Do NOT let her shower in your bathroom. Do NOT cook her breakfast." But gradually we come to see him in his flaws and his needs, to understand his motivations, however flawed. Also Blick deals with cutting, grief, sexual abuse, and lots of other serious stuff with subtlty and wisdom.·

The voice: Jenna Lord reminds me of the girl from Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why. Maybe it's the similarity of the conceit, the simultaneous closeness to the listener (Jenna addresses the detective directly from time to time) and distance from events since they're being narrated after the fact). But Jenna is smart, self-aware, and astute. The language of the book is just right for her.

The suspense: There was so much of it. Seriously. I had a list of questions about a mile long and it felt urgent to find out how everything could come together. Bick parcels out some of the secrets partway through, but there are always more brewing...

This book is one you don't want to miss.

Note: This review is of the uncorrected NetGalley proof of Drowning Instinct. The official release date for the book is February 1,·2012.