Farmingdale Library Teens

  KELLY JENSEN Mar 29, 2023 If you thought we hit “full names in book titles” in YA prior to this seasonal roundup, you’d be wrong. This trend continues to grow, and in the world of spring 2023 YA books, it’s one that will showcase how YA is becoming more thoughtful and intentional when it comes to creating more diverse, inclusive stories. Perfect? Absolutely not. On par with the fact the US is nearly 40% people of the global majority and books should reflect that? Nah. But the more these books succeed–and they do–the more we’ll see the needle continue pushing forward…if publishers aren’t being intimidated by rampant book bans on titles by BIPOC and queer creators. That lengthy introduction is to say welcome to the spring 2023 YA book roundup. As always, this list of new spring 2023 YA books will not be comprehensive, especially as book publication dates are  still  periodically shifting. It is far less common now than it was even a couple of seasons ago, but I’m finding ...

  MIKKAKA OVERSTREET Mar 21, 2023 When I’m not reading, one of my favorite past times is watching movies and consuming media about movies. Among my favorite YouTube channels is WhatCulture, an online culture magazine covering film, gaming, TV and more. They make top 10 lists that send me down rabbit holes for hours. Seriously, I watch these videos enough to identify nearly all of their presenters by voice alone. Recently, while watching a video comparing Rotten Tomatoes viewer and critic scores, my husband suggested I take the idea, but for books. I figured my friends Jules, Josh, Ash, Ellie, Gareth, and the rest of the WhatCulture crew would support it. Thus, I decided to dig around and see if I could find some YA books that critics and readers disagree on. I soon discovered that various search terms and Goodreads perusals were time-consuming and yielded varied results. I began to regret my choice of topic. Enter my ever-logical, engineer-brained husband once more. “Did you G...

Tirzah Price   Mar 10, 2023   Welcome to March, YA book nerds! It’s the start of the busy spring book release season, and March is full of some truly great releases by some beloved YA authors! I’ll confess: March is usually my least favorite month of the year. The snow starts melting and everything is muddy and gross for a while, and while spring is coming, I also live in the Midwest and know better than to get excited by a warm day in March. One bright spot to the month is the sheer number of great releases that hit shelves in this month, and I know that my library card will be getting a workout this month. You can expect new books from some of your faves like Marie Lu and Mindy McGinnis and Mark Oshiro! Interestingly, the releases are heavily weighed down on the first and last Tuesday of the month, leaving the middle of the month a little light. We’ve got some great mysteries set in Midwestern towns and magical forests, retellings of Austen and Stevenson, and two not-to-be-m...

  K.W. Colyard   Feb 27, 2023 It’s 2023, and while fat representation has come a long way since  Shallow Hal , it’s still a media minefield. If you’re looking for fat-positive or body-neutral reads, check out the YA books with fat protagonists I’ve picked out for you below. Millennials remember the serious dearth of fat representation in children’s media back in the 1980s, ’90s, and ’00s.  Mean Girls  taught us that fat was the worst thing a girl could be. Stephen King and that one Scottish author depicted their fat characters as disgusting and unintelligent, worthy of ridicule, shame, and mockery. On the big screen, we saw actresses like America Ferrera, Martine McCutcheon, Amy Schumer, Mae Whitman, and Renée Zellweger portrayed as fat. All of this taught us that gaining weight was to be avoided at all costs, that being fat made a person undesirable and inhuman, and that a fat person was anyone who wore something larger than a...