Jen Violi’s Putting Makeup on Dead People immediately comes across as both a bit morbid and witty, and it delivers on that promise all the way through. I loved this book more than I ever would have expected; it’s the kind of book I want to buy just so that I can pass it around [...]

Tags: career planning, coming of age, death, family problems, grief, identity
Filed under: Book Review

Julia’s mother was shipped off to Iraq to work as a nurse in the National Guard. Her father is too busy to watch her, so she spends her summer with relatives, including best friend Eliza. The two girls are inseparable, spending their time at the resort where Eliza’s father works, a place where they get [...]

Tags: coming of age, family problems, friendship, war
Filed under: Book Review

Anna expects her 16th summer to be like every other. She lives on an island off the Georgia coast; every summer tourists flock to the beach locale and Anna helps her family serve them ice cream by day and then hangs out with her friends by night. While she enjoys her work creating and dishing [...]

Tags: beach, coming of age, dating, identity, social classes, summer, sweets
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Jude Farraday is a helicopter parent and she knows it. She does everything she can to protect her kids, assuming that if she keeps their home a welcoming place then her children and their friends will remain safe under her watchful eye. This becomes increasingly difficult, though, as twins Mia and Zach get older, start [...]

Tags: coming of age, family life, friendship, grief, incarceration, social classes
Filed under: Book Review

High school freshman Janie Gorman just wants to fit in. She doesn’t need to be most popular or rule the school, she merely hopes to feel normal. However, when Janie shows up to school with goat poop on her shoe, joins a jam band, befriends a behemoth upperclassmen named Monster and a couple elderly civil [...]

Tags: animals, coming of age, family life, high schools, humor, identity, music, race
Filed under: Book Review