Books : Young Adult : Social Issues: Fiction

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Books : Young Adult : Social Issues: Fiction

• The Basketball Diaries

  Jim Carroll

  
  
   

• No-no Boy

  John Okada

  
  
   

• Cry, the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation

  Alan Paton

  
  
   

• Always Running

  RODRIGUEZ

  
  
   

• Children of the River (Laurel-Leaf contemporary fiction)

  Linda Crew

  
  
   

• Good Moon Rising

  Nancy Garden

  
  
   

• Asylum for Nightface

  Bruce Brooks

  
  
   

• Autumn Journey

  Priscilla Cummings

  
  
   

• Baby Be-bop (Weetzie Bat Books)

  Francesca Block

  
  
   

• Babylon Boyz

  Jess Mowry

  
  
   

• Blue Coyote

  Liza Ketchum

  
  
   

• Breaking Boxes

  A. M. Jenkins

  
  
   

• Buried Onions

  Gary Soto

  
  Eddie can always smell onions in the air--the sharp bitter odour of hopelessness and anger that haunts the poor side of Fresno. "I had a theory about those vapours, which were not released by the sun's heat but by a huge onion buried under the city. This onion made us cry. Tears leapt from our eyelashes and stained our faces." Eddie tries to escape from the poverty and gang society that surrounds him by taking vocational classes and staying away from his old "cholos", (gang friends). But when his cousin is killed, his aunt urges him to seek out and punish the murderer. To avoid the pressure building in his neighbourhood, Eddie takes a landscaping job in an affluent suburb. But this too goes awry when his boss's truck is stolen while in his care. In the end, with his money gone and a dangerous gang member stalking him, Eddie's only choice is to join the military and hope that they can give him a better future than the one Fresno seems to offer.

  There is no tidy closure--certainly no happy ending--to this bleak novel. But that is exactly what gives Buried Onions its strong, acidic flavour. Teens with a low tolerance for any type of pretence will appreciate Gary Soto's honesty in not trying to force a fairy tale ending. In spare but always striking prose, Soto has written an unrelentingly grim story that teens will savour because it rings true. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert, Amazon.com

  
   

• Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Hispanic in the United States (Edge Book)

  
  
   

• The Cuckoo's Child

  Suzanne Freeman

  
  
   

• Danger Zone

  David Klass

  
  
   

• Desire Lines

  Jack Gantos

  
  
   

• Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

  M. E. Kerr

  
  
   

• Edge

  Michael Cadnum

  
  
   

• Go Ask Alice

  Anonymous