A Troublesome Boy by Paul Vasey
Summary: Labelled a troublesome boy by his old school, Teddy’s mother’s boyfriend decides to send him to St. Iggy’s, a Catholic boys boarding school. Once there he makes friends and gets along well with his classmates, but the priests and brothers who run the school often abuse their power through the use of physical discipline and intimidation. When one of the priests begins using Teddy’s friend Cooper for sexual favours, Teddy feels powerless to stop what becomes Cooper’s gradual descent into depression and hopelessness. The one good part of their lives comes...
Read MoreWanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan
Summary: When her mother dies, Jameela and her father move quickly to Kabul, Afghanistan, where her father remarries. His new wife doesn’t like Jameela, and convinces him to abandon her in the marketplace. Taken in by a kindly butcher and his family, Jameela makes new friends until they send her to an orphanage because they can’t take on the responsibility of another dependent. It turns out though that the orphanage is the best thing to ever happen to Jameela because there she is educated and appreciated, plus a surgeon from the American army fixes her cleft lip. Circumstances...
Read MoreThis One Summer by Mariko Tamaki & Jillian Tamaki
Summary: Up at her family’s cottage for the summer, Rose and her friend Windy are inseparable, watching horror movies, checking out the local guy at the corner store, spying on the older teens in town and talking about growing up. Often overlooked, Rose is an observer, watching her parents struggle with their marriage in the face of her mother’s depression, and witnessing local girl Jenny try to make her boyfriend take responsibility for the fact that she’s pregnant. Being a woman is more complicated than Rose and Windy originally thought, and this one summer will show them...
Read MoreMoney Boy by Paul Yee
Summary: Living with his father and step-family in Canada after moving from China, Ray Liu is an eighteen year-old frustrated with his lot in life. He’s got two years left of high school because he’s an English-as-a-second-language student, and he’s hiding a secret from his strict father. Looking for some respect and acknowledgement that he is an adult, as well as the freedom to be who he really is, everything blows up when his father discovers the websites Ray has been visiting and kicks him out. Now Ray is living on the street, discovering that he may not be as much of an...
Read MoreThe Boy in the Burning House by Tim Wynne-Jones
Summary: Since his father’s disappearance, Jim Hawkins has been trying to deal with his grief while stepping up to help his mother with the farm. Some think Jim’s dad killed himself, while Jim is trying to hold on to the hope that he’s alive and will return. When Ruth Rose hijacks his attention with a theory about the local minister, Father Fisher, being involved in what she thinks is Jim’s dad’s murder, Jim questions her sanity. Ruth Rose is convinced Father Fisher is a murder who is coming after her next, while Father Fisher informs everyone Ruth is a very...
Read MoreAbout Amy
Amy Mathers has been passionate about reading from a very young age, and hopes others will share her enthusiasm for funding a teen book award. Read more Follow Amy
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