Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A.S. King (Booktalk)

Glory O'Brien, age 17, has not been having a glorious life so far. Her mother killed herself years ago; her dad has eaten his grief and went from an original 120 pounds to 240. He won't get rid of the oven that his wife used to kill herself with, either. He won't go into his wife's photography darkroom or even discuss her. Glory doesn't have many friends, and she often actively dislikes her "best" friend, Ellie. Glory is happy to be graduating from high school in a few days: she wants to get away from all that is trivial and tedious. Why bother having anyone sign her yearbook? There's no point.

The only thing Glory likes is taking photographs; that was about all her mom liked, too, it seems. So when Ellie - often the holder of illogical and harebrained ideas - suggests that the two girls drink the remains of a dead bat, Glory decides to comply. What's the harm? Ellie had joked that the dead bat was God. Ellie is just plain weird.

Here's the good news: neither girl gets sick from drinking dead bat remains. But there's bad news, and it's literally "the future": the future that you and I will inhabit, if we live long enough. Both girls start seeing visions of it, and it's no place that women would want to live in.

Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A.S. King. 307 p. 2014. Little, Brown. Booktalk to upper high school: contains mature themes.

Booktalk: The Knife of Never Letting Go (Virginia Readers' Choice, 2011-2012)

It can be really embarrassing if you inadvertently think out loud. Much of the time, you really don’t want other people knowing your private thoughts. But for Todd Hewitt, a young teen, everyone else is privy to your thoughts: all the time. Your thoughts are broadcast out loud, in what’s called Noise. It’s almost as if you have speakers broadcasting what you’re thinking. Zero privacy: try keeping a secret.

Todd lives in a settlement called Prentisstown, which is part of the New World, a world without women, all of whom died. Todd has never seen a woman when we first meet him. His parents are dead, and he’s been raised by two of their male friends. Todd’s closest friend is his dog, Manchee, with whom goes on walks. In one of his walks, Todd encounters a physical presence: silence – an absence of Noise, a freedom from it. It has a powerful effect on him, and when he goes back to town, he leaks his secret about what he experienced through his Noise. Todd’s adopted parents are scared to death for him and urge him to leave Prentisstown immediately. From reading their Noise, Todd can tell that he is very grave danger. All he’s got is his dog, his knife, and a book of his mother’s which he can barely read. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. 479 p. Candlewick Press: 2008. Booktalk to high school. Virginia Readers' Choice, 2011-2012.

From Russia With Love: Booktalk 2

Yuri is a teenage boy living in Russia in the 1930s, under a brutal Stalin-like leader. The old rule of the Czars is over: they’ve been murdered and exiled, and no one dares speak of them anymore. The new regime – which Yuri is taught to praise at school – is harsh and unforgiving. People in Yuri’s town live in perpetual fear of being kidnapped and sent away to the work camps, where their chances of survival are slim. Yuri’s parents urge him to keep his mouth shut and his eyes down at the ground. In an unstable police state, anyone can be singled out and disappear without a trace. Yuri’s school is shut down, and he’s forced to do brutally hard manual labor.  When he’s sent to a mining camp in the north for answering a question incorrectly [sentence: ten years], Yuri senses that his life is over. Even if he does manage to get home, his parents may be dead or just gone, like so many others. But youth may be on his side: “Sometimes the sunlight had sparkled so brightly across the boundless sheets of snow. Or, in the stinging wind under the china-blue sky, I’d smelled the blessed spring melt. Once I stood under a tree and my heart sang to see the way its tall brave trunk soared …. I’d watch the eagles soaring overhead. I couldn’t help it” (138).  In a world of bleakness, illness, and semi-starvation, Yuri takes what consolation he can get. The Road of Bones by Anne Fine is gripping historical fiction.

The Road of Bones by Anne Fine. 213 p. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 2006. Booktalk to high school, adult.

Fight Back: H.S. Booktalk 2

Marena is a teenager in a country, probably our own, ruled by the Zero Tolerance Party, which is the only political party, under which it is perfectly legal to arrest anyone at any time for anything. It is a country now ruled by fear, oppression, and ruthless indoctrination. At Marena’s school, which is actually run much like a prison, Marena and her classmates are forced to read [almost religiously] from a huge red tome called the Commemorator. But Marena is having a hard time being a true believer. Her mother, whose memory she clings to even as it fades, was captured and probably killed by the state for protesting their lack of rights. Marena’s a lot like her mom, and so are her two close friends - Eric and Dex. The three of them have been sneaking off their fenced-in compound to a secret, abandoned, empty old building they found - a place where they can be themselves and dream of resistance. However, there are signs that there is another group of resisters trying to make inroads at their school. Unfortunately, one must be extremely careful in this police state to make zero mistakes: punishment entails [among other things] a brain operation which causes you to lose the ability to read, write, or speak. And Marena, Eric, and Dex have been sloppy. Marena may have trusted someone she thought would never betray her, especially to the authorities. She now runs the risk of becoming just like her mother: one of the “disappeared.” The Silenced by James DeVita is about fighting back against a government which has zero tolerance for basic human rights.

The Silenced by James DeVita. Grades 7 up. 512 p. HarperTeen, 2007.