Melody Carlson is a prolific Christian author who specializes in fiction for teen girls. Her Life at Kingston High trilogy portrays a group of such girls dealing with life's challenges at a California high school. Those challenges include navigating relationships with friends, family, and the opposite sex; developing a healthy self-image; and learning to live out their faith in God.

The first book in the series, "The Jerk Magnet," focuses on Chelsea, who's just moved to the area and gotten a makeover from her new stepmother. All these changes leave her questioning who she really is and what she wants other people to see in her. Next is "The Best Friend," in which Lishia gets caught up in a friendship that leads her into unethical and even dangerous behavior. Finally, "The Prom Queen" concentrates on Megan, who becomes obsessed with capturing the crown just like her older sister before her -- at the expense of higher priorities. Read More >

This summer, Youth Reads is partnering with Redeemed Reader for "Lemonade and Lit," a summer read-along for teens and their parents. We're going to be reading and discussing three books:

1. "Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me" by Karen Swallow Prior. (Read Eric Metaxas's remarks on "Booked" here.)

2. "Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast" by Robin McKinley. 

3. "The Last Thing I Remember" by Andrew Klavan. (Read my 2011 review here, and an excerpt from the book here.)

Keep checking Redeemed Reader for discussion questions, podcasts, and even lemonade recipes! We hope you'll enjoy a great summer of reading with your teen.

When I was in third grade, I discovered Walter R. Brooks’s Freddy the Pig series—26 (!) volumes recounting the adventures of a sophisticated and resourceful talking pig and his barnyard friends. That I was still reading such fare two years later, in fifth grade, troubled my mother, who had higher academic hopes for her son.

She needn’t have worried (on that account, at least). Research now suggests that the more a child reads, regardless of the content of the reading material, the better a student the child is likely to be. Wise parents balance this perspective with the knowledge that some books have inappropriate content, and should not be foisted on unsuspecting readers, especially young ones. The Hippocratic Oath’s “First, do no harm” principle applies to literature as well as to medicine.

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Upcoming seventh grader Robert Arthur, protagonist of the Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series, is nervous and lonely. As far as he knows, he’s the only student from his old elementary school sent to the new, state-of-the-art middle school. Without friends to share the experience with, Arthur isn’t excited about the fact that Lovecraft had a huge pool and other state of the arts amenities.

His luck goes from bad to worse when, on the first day of school, he realizes that he isn’t the only student from his old school after all. He spies his nemesis, Glenn Torkells, a few bleachers up from where he’s sitting.

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On the day when Mr. Melendy is having a tremendously important meeting, he is interrupted by his youngest son, Oliver, bringing a dripping fish into the room to detail precisely how he caught it; by his oldest daughter, Mona, wandering through the room practicing Ophelia’s mad scene from “Hamlet”; by his youngest daughter, Randy, coming in to give a detailed explanation of her difficulties with knitting (like Ulysses’ wife continually ripping out her stitches, only without the suitors); by the two family dogs chasing each other around the room; and by the sounds of his oldest son, Rush, trying to learn how to walk on stilts.

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He sees the looks of horror people give him when he walks past them on the street. He desperately wants to be an “ordinary” looking kid, but he’s not.

Ten-year-old August “Auggie” Pullman, protagonist of “Wonder” by R. J. Palacio, suffers from a recessive mutant gene that left him with mandibulofacial dysostosis. In short, Auggie was born with serious cranial-facial deformities (think of the character of Sloth in “The Goonies,” played by John Matuszak).

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The first time I was ever so absorbed in a book that I was literally disoriented by the familiar surroundings of my bedroom when I finished it, I was about 15 years old and reading “Ender's Game.” Orson Scott Card’s most famous book remains one of my all-time favorites, a book I can go back to and reread with nearly as much absorption and interest as the first time my dad lent it to me.

“Ender’s Game” is finally, after years of waiting, coming out as a movie this November, with Harrison Ford as a major character and Orson Scott Card himself as the guiding hand behind it.

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(Note: This review contains spoilers.)

As a fan of Rainbow Rowell’s delightful debut novel, “Attachments,” I was intrigued when I heard that she had written a new Young Adult novel. What I expected from “Eleanor & Park,” though, wasn’t quite what I got.

“Eleanor & Park,” set in Omaha, Nebraska, in the mid-1980s, tells the story of two teenagers who seem completely different at first. Park, who’s half-Korean, is one of the few minorities in town, but he’s successfully managed to stay in with the in crowd. But everything starts to shift the day Eleanor gets on the school bus for the first time.
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In the Acknowledgements section at the end of “Things I Can't Forget,” author Miranda Kenneally writes, “To me, nothing was scarier than understanding that my truth wasn’t everyone else’s truth. It took a while, but I discovered that’s okay—it’s better if I do the things I want to do and believe what I want to believe. I hope you find your truth.”

That’s the theme of this young adult novel about 18-year-old Kate Kelly, lifelong church attender, talented artist, and soon-to-be camp counselor at Cumberland Creek (Christian) Camp. Kate is carrying a huge load of guilt into the summer over her betrayal of her own moral standards in helping her best friend, Emily, in a crisis.
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The year 1969 was an exciting time in U.S. history: The nation was at war, the hippie movement was in full swing, and the first man walked on the moon. It’s also momentous for 16-year-old Scarlett Blaine: She’ll taste true love for the first time, sell several peach pies, help her brother Cliff build a rocket, and experience tragedy and loss beyond her wildest imagination. More importantly, she’ll learn to trust in God to an extent she never thought possible.

“Chasing Jupiter” is a sweet, nostalgic tale of true love and wild dreams that will put many readers in mind of the popular Wendelin Van Draanen novel “Flipped.” What makes “Chasing Jupiter” stand out—in addition to its colorful characterization and expert first person narration—is the age of its author, a teenager not much older than her enchanting heroine.
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Novelist Patricia McCormick specializes in dark themes. Her first book, “Cut,” involves a teenage girl who is sent to a psychiatric facility because she cuts herself in order to relieve emotional pain; another novel, “Never Fall Down,” is about a child musician trying to survive the killing fields of Cambodia.

McCormick traveled to India and Nepal to research “Sold,” a harrowing—and important—story of a 13-year-old village girl who is sold to a brothel.
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As a lover of both Charles Dickens’s novels and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld fantasy series, I was delighted to learn that Pratchett had written a book set in Dickens’s London. “Dodger,” a tale of a street boy who “makes it” almost against his own will and becomes an inspiration to Charles Dickens himself, occupied my mind delightfully, as Pratchett tends to do—and, almost against its own will, highlighted vast differences between Pratchett’s voice and philosophy and those of Dickens.

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