Special Collections
United States of YA
Description: Go on a vacation this summer without ever leaving your couch. Whether you choose to visit the Alaskan wilderness, the beaches of Hawaii, or the cornfields in Kansas, adventure awaits in this collection of young adult novels. Ages 13 and up. #teens
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Outside In
by Karen Romano YoungCherie Witkowski is twelve, and she doesn't want to turn thirteen this year. This is the year, 1968, that everything -- absolutely everything-seems to be changing. At home her parents are expecting a new baby, her mother is fixing up the house so they can sell it and move who-knows-where, and everyone is starting to tease her about the boy next door.
Meanwhile her newspaper route brings the changes of the outside world crashing in on her: the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the disappearance of a girl from a few towns away -- a girl who more braids like Cherie, who was about the same age as Cherie, who could have been Cherie.
Suddenly Cherie is scared; nothing seems safe and simple anymore. She longs for easier fears-for playing hide-and-seek in the dark, skipping school, daredevil bike tricks..She builds her own inside world: an elaborate elf house under a bush, complete with staircases, elevators, and carefully designed furniture.
But you can't keep the outside world away forever, especially when you're delivering the daily paper. And maybe Cherie has the strength to deal with it after all, and even to change some of the bad to good...
How to Save a Life
by Sara ZarrJill MacSweeny just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she's been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends--everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she's somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one.
Mandy Kalinowski understands what it's like to grow up unwanted--to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she's sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It's harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?
As their worlds change around them, Jill and Mandy must learn to both let go and hold on, and that nothing is as easy--or as difficult--as it seems.
Critically acclaimed author and National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr delivers a heart-wrenching story, told from dual perspectives, about the many roads that can lead us home.