YA Wednesday: What's Stuck in Your Head?

Last Friday, Meg Cabot posted video#2 for Being Nikki (Airhead novel#2). It has bloopers!:

New this week: Punkzilla and The Uninvited
I finished Adam Rapp’s Punkzilla a few days ago and Jamie’s (aka Punkzilla’s) voice is still in my head. I was impressed by how Rapp portrays street kids without condescension, and allows for funny moments in the midst of some really scary situations.

Rave reviews for this book are popping up; here’s a snippet from Reading Rants:

This rough, introspective novel reads like a stark modern take on Jack Kerouac’s classic On the Road and features secondary characters so realistically rendered that I could touch the scars on their faces and see the dirt under their fingernails.

Another new book that’s getting attention is Tim Wynne-Jones’s The Uninvited, about a girl who drives to a remote cabin in Canada to get away from her stalker-professor. From Quill and Quire:

The story is genuinely scary, as Wynne-Jones evokes both the beauty and the potential violence of country life. … With its dark legacies, intriguing relationships, hidden chambers, forbidden love, and flowing blood, The Uninvited has all the appeal of a sexy vampire, sans the fangs.

Quick links…
Dear Author’s First Page Saturday features an unnamed YA novel, critiqued by the Dear Author community. They’re tough!

Guys LitWire encourages you to donate books to incarcerated teen boys.

The New York Times reviews Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls. Jezebel responds to the review: Are Teen Girls Really that Fragile?

Jen Robinson’s “Reviews that Made Me Want the Book” includes Justine Larbalestier’s upcoming Liar (mini-reviewed by Tea Cozy) and Caroline B. Cooney’s If the Witness Lied (reviewed by Sarah at The Reading Zone).

Newish blog: Worst Review Ever, where authors respond to bad reviews of their books. Brilliant!

Review that made me wish this was a whole blog: YA Booknerd despairs about being misled about Alisa M. Libby’s The King’s Rose. If any enterprising blogger wants to start the “Misled” blog, I’ll link to you. (Now, try to get that Kool and the Gang song out of your head. Sorry!)

Happy reading.–Heidi