Friday, April 17, 2015

Ten top controversial teen books

Brian Conaghan is the author of When Mr Dog Bites, first published in the UK in January 2014 to great critical acclaim and which has been shortlisted for the 2015 CILIP Carnegie Medal.

At the Guardian he tagged his top ten controversial teen books, including:
What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones

Sophie, the 14-year-old narrator discusses her first love, then her second, and then her third. Oh, she also talks about her breasts, her desires and the tensions within her family and peer group. I’m aware that this all sounds like an evil fusion between Home and Away, Mean Girls and Beverly Hills 90210 (the original), but what you have here couldn’t be further away from that bubblegum world; this is an honest, and sometimes beautiful, portrayal of teenage relationships. The fact that it’s written in Sones’s stunning verse adds to its appeal.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue