Tales of the Peculiar

Ransom Riggs

This collection of legends and fairy tales about the Peculiar (people born with strange and sometimes grotesque powers) includes stories reminiscent of the original Grimms’ fairy tales—whimsical, sometimes gruesome, and often tinged with dark humor. In contrast to the Grimms’ tales, the moral of a story is often not obvious, either in the world as Riggs paints it or in our own. Riggs’ world (see also Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) is fantastic, well-written, and compelling, but often cruel or twisted. It is a worthy if not always pleasant addition to the growing supernatural genre.

Salt to the Sea

Ruta Sepetys

Salt to the Sea made the 2016 WORLD novel of the year shortlist, but it deserves a second look in the Young Adult category—though its graphic depictions of war make it best for mature teens. The novel features a Polish orphan, a defector, a Lithuanian nurse, and a Nazi soldier fleeing the Soviet front at the closing of World War II and seeking refuge on the infamous Wilhelm Gustloff. Through four related stories Sepetys weaves a haunting story about one of the most tragic maritime disasters of modern times. Her detailed research and beautiful writing bring the desperate situation of war refugees to life.

Challenger Deep

Neal Shusterman

Fifteen-year-old Caden Bosch lives between two worlds, the one inside his head and the one outside. He can only choose one. Led along by a pirate captain and chased by a beast wanting to devour him, Caden embarks on a terrifying, dark, but ultimately triumphant journey through his own mind. Informed by Shusterman’s journey with his own son, who provides the illustrations, Challenger Deep is a knowledgeable and gripping portrait of mental illness from the inside. It asks the hard questions about mental illness and the self without losing sight of the boy fighting through it and his inevitable sense of loss.

A Bird on Water Street

Elizabeth O. Dulemba

Set in a declining copper mining town on the Tennessee-Georgia border, this story follows 13-year-old Jack Hicks’ family and friends as they face a strike and eventual closing of the mine that keeps their little community alive. The mining halt brings some welcome changes—the trees and animals Jack loves return to the desolate landscape. But it also means the already-poor miners’ families plunge further into poverty. While Jack and his family find a happier ending than many families at the time, Dulemba does not shirk portraying the very real hardships facing rural Appalachian workers.

Afterword

Salt to the Sea, Challenger Deep, and A Bird on Water Street were compelling stories because of their scope. They broaden the reader’s world so he or she can empathize with people in difficult situations: war refugees, the mentally ill, and the rural poor. Writing fiction doesn’t let writers off the hook—they still must tell the truth.

That’s what makes Everything, Everything, by Nicola Yoon, so disappointing. Eighteen-year-old Maddy Whittier has severe combined immunodeficiency (or “bubble baby” disease) and can’t leave her house. She also has a crush on the boy next door. Instead of taking the opportunity to tell a true story about chronic illness, Everything, Everything concludes an intense, teenage romance with a jarring and dissatisfying ending. Yoon’s world is not the real world. It is the world as it exists in a teen’s mind—where parents are crazy and sex has no lasting consequences. —R.L.A