I read this book last month in the midst of a reading slump, when all I wanted to do was reread old favorites but the pressure of all the new books sitting on my library shelf was too much. I picked it up after getting home from work and read it in one evening, completely ignoring everything else I meant to do. I liked Medina’s Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass a lot–in fact, I was on the Cybils panel that shortlisted it the year it came out. But Burn, Baby, Burn is even stronger, in my opinion. It does so much so well that the only challenge is which of the threads to talk about.

For instance, there’s been a spate of YA set in the 1980s & 90s which seems to have no reason for that setting aside from nostalgia on the part of the author. By contrast, Burn, Baby, Burn not only engages with its historical setting, it could not possibly have been set in any other moment. Medina writes out of personal memory and experience, as her backmatter notes make clear, but she doesn’t stop there. The atmosphere of the summer of 1977 is woven into every scene and character.

There’s also a kind of mythologized, idealized NYC that exists in a lot of YA, as in a lot of other media. Medina resists that as well, pushing back against the idea of the glittering city full of a thousand possibilities. Nora’s city is on the edge of something, full of danger, full of people trying to make their way in a difficult world. It would be easy to say that it’s gritty, and I think that is wrong: it’s also full of hope and excitement. But it’s not smooth; when Nora visits her father and his new family, we see briefly the kind of NYC that usually appears in YA and feel the same relief that Nora does when she returns to her neighborhood.

Most of all, though, the setting here underlies and informs the characters. Medina draws everyone with understanding and complexity, but at the heart of the book is always Nora. Like her neighborhood, Nora is not smooth: she’s prickly, both self-assured and self-doubting, brimming over with hope and joy and fear. Medina shows a very specific Latina girl growing up in a particular neighborhood in NYC at a particular time in a particular family. But at the same time, Nora’s journey towards becoming a young woman resonates deeply.

I’m also grateful for the way that Nora’s story includes other girls and women on their own journeys. While she does navigate falling for a boy, the story starts and ends with Nora and her best friend Kathleen. We see their similarities and differences, but we also see the older generation. Kathleen’s mother and her black best friend (one of Nora’s neighbors) are both feminists, but we see the differences in their experiences as well. Without being the History of Feminism, we’re also given a picture of what the struggle for equal rights looked like in that moment, which doesn’t erase the experiences and legacy of women of color.

The final strand I wanted to note is the depiction of Nora’s family. Over the course of the book we see Nora slowly, slowly coming to terms with the fact that her brother Hector is truly dangerous to himself and to others. And once she realizes that, she also has to decide what she’ll do with that knowledge, in the face of her mother’s determination to not see. It’s a tricky thing to show that undercurrent of things not being okay, and Medina does it really well. Nora’s final decisions and determination in keeping herself and others safe is a really great and powerful way to tell this story. More teens than we sometimes realize or want to admit have families where things are broken, and a lot of growing up is learning to acknowledge this and find your own path.

This is definitely a book where difficult things happen, where the hard parts of being a teen aren’t shied away from. But there’s also a tremendous sense of hope and joy. There are second chances and learning to find your own place to stand and grow. There’s so much more to talk about here, but the heart of it–what’s stuck with me in the last month–is Nora’s courage and determination to do the best she can, by herself and by other people.

Teen heist book, featuring a really diverse cast & lots of secrets and twists. I did feel like the middle section went a bit long and was a different tone than the beginning–but I’m also not sure the degree to which it’s just my expectations being off. Regardless, if the concept piqued your interest, I’d definitely check it out!

Mirror in the Sky is Aditi Khorana’s debut, and it’s a pretty neat take on YA speculative fiction. Tara Krishnan is an outsider in her rich, white school. But when a mirror planet is discovered–a version of Earth that’s just a little different from ours–Tara is jolted out of her usual life. Her mother might be joining a cult, she becomes friends with unexpected people, and she starts to wonder about the other paths she might have taken.

Essentially, this book takes an SF premise, the discovery of Terra Nova, and uses it to tell a quiet, thoughtful story of family, friendship, and identity. The family strand is the one I had the most conflicted reaction to, which is mostly down to the depiction of Tara’s mom. I had mixed feelings about the fact that her choices are seen as selfish, that her decision to go to California is shown as being a bad mother. On the other hand, we’re seeing everything so much from Tara’s point of view, and from a teen perspective it rings pretty true. And by the end of the book, Tara has come to see some of why her mother might have made those choices. In the end, while I wasn’t wild about this storyline, I felt comfortable with the way it resolves.

Tara also becomes friends with Halle Lightfoot, one of the most popular people at their high school, and through Halle with a group of tight-knit kids. This opens her world, but also complicates it. A lot of this book engages with questions about friendship: who’s really a friend? How and why do we choose our friends? and having chosen them, when do we leave them behind? There aren’t really easy answers here, but the depiction of a group that is both close and at odds with each other was really well done.

And for Tara herself, the discovery of Terra Nova and her changing relationships call into question a lot of her identity. As the only brown, poor kid at Brierly, she’s often felt herself to be an outsider. Late in the book, there’s a powerful moment when Tara realizes, “I was afraid of the messiness that closeness brings, afraid of friendships that turn to something else, afraid of my own petty jealousies and the monstrous things that can come of them.” This is partly a book about learning to let people in and also stay yourself.

There are definitely some clunky moments in the story. Sometimes the images and thoughts are a bit repetitive and sometimes Tara’s conclusions are a little pointed. Nonetheless, this is an accomplished and impressive debut that’s both thoughtful and thought-provoking. I definitely recommend it for readers who are looking for a quiet, complex story.

I’ve been hearing great things about Tanita Davis’s books ever since her first, Mare’s War, was published. But (confession time!) I haven’t actually read one until now. That will be changing, because I loved Peas & Carrots.

The story is a contemporary YA, set in California. It’s told in alternating chapters between Dess, whose chapters are in first person, and Hope, whose chapters are in third. It took me a little bit to settle into this style, but I think it does a great job of differentiating the two characters and their perspectives.

As the story begins, Dess is being placed with Hope’s family temporarily. They’ve been fostering her younger brother, Austin, and Dess asked to see him. She didn’t expect to leave the group home she was in and go live with this family. Hope, meanwhile, is used to having foster kids in her family, but never one so close to her own age.

Given how many children are part of the foster care system, it seems important to have stories that reflect their realities. There aren’t enough, but this is a wonderful addition. Davis’s family fostered kids when she was young and I think that experience shows in the depth and complexity of the characters she portrays here. This is a story that it would be easy to get offensively wrong, and while I can’t say definitively, it certainly read as a sympathetic and nuanced look at one situation.

I also appreciated that Dess is a character who has a lot of integrity, and yet isn’t perfect. She refused to let her grandmother take her in if she wouldn’t also take in Austin, who’s biracial. And yet, she also judges Hope and her family because they don’t meet her expectations of how African-Americans* should be. We also see her pushing back against assumptions and stereotypes: she’s a good student and gets along well with most people.

Hope was a bit less clear to me as a character, but I also really enjoyed her sections. She’s a bookworm and scifi fan and later we find out that she read and liked The Goblin Emperor (!!!)**. Dess certainly pushes her to face her own assumptions, and to take chances that Hope might otherwise pass by. Mostly I loved seeing the slow growth of a friendship between them, as both girls learn to value each other. This is done subtly, but it’s really effective and I think fits their personalities and situation.

While there definitely is some plot here, this is a book that’s primarily focused on characters, and it really shines in that regard. Even the more minor characters seemed fleshed out and considered. Since I tend to be a character-based reader, this worked really well for me.

All in all, this is a thoughtful, complex book about a subject that needs more reflections in fiction. I’m really glad it exists and that I read it.

Book source: public library

Book information: 2016, Knopf Books for Young Readers; contemporary YA

* this the term that’s used throughout the book, so I’m using it here

** Tanita Davis knows all the people I do online, so this isn’t really surprising but it was very fun!

So–so I liked this book, and I liked Quinn, and I think Federle is a good writer who has a specific & unique voice that I enjoy a lot. But I have two quibbles. First, I recognize & respect what Federle is trying to do in the depiction of Quinn’s mom, but I’m not sure it works. Second, I think it wants to be both a serious book and a lighthearted book and it isn’t quite one or the other, or evenly balanced between the two.