YA Book Nostalgia

A lovely surprise waiting for me when I arrived home from work ... a parcel filled with secondhand books. All are Young Adult novels I found for sale on Better World Books (a fantastic site, which sells cheap secondhand books and uses some of their profits to fund literacy programmes in developing countries) and intend to write about on this blog over the coming months. (Along with about a thousand other topics. Actually, I quite like the eclectic nature of this blog.) All of these are books that I read at one point or another during my early teens, but have subsequently been lost or given away, or were borrowed from the library.

Anyway, the books I received in the post today are:

Find A Stranger Say Goodbye - Lois Lowry

I used to love reading Lois Lowry's novels when I was in my early teens. For one reason or another I never read this title. I'm guessing my local library and my school library did not have copies. I suspect this one is for older teenagers anyway, given the blurb:

Natalie has everything - beauty, a loving family, and terrific boyfriend and entrance to the college of her choice. But she is haunted by a missing link in her life - who is the mother who gave her up when she was only a few days old. 
The Summer She is seventeen, Natalie decides to find out who were her natural parents and what has happened to them. Old newspapers and a high school yearbook yield clues that start to unravel the mystery of her past. From a small town in Maine to New York City, Natalie's search leads to anger, hope, even love and finally a confrontation with her real mother. 

A Summer to Die - Lois Lowry 

I'll probably feature this title a post along with Say Goodnight Gracie by Julie Reece Deaver. Both novels mean quite a bit to me, as they discuss the death of a young person and the complex feelings that the young protagonist (in A Summer to Die, a sister, in Say Goodnight Gracie a friend,) experience as they grieve. Through firsthand experience, I know how easily an adult can dismiss or misunderstand these feelings. I'd actually go as far as to recommend the books to the parents of a young adult who has experienced the death of a close friend.

Tiger Eyes - Judy Blume
Are You There God? It's Me Margaret - Judy Blume

I hope to use these along with the Judy Blume book that I have in my collection (just as soon as I can locate copies of Just as Long as We're Together and Here's to You Rachel Robinson,) to make up a larger piece on this wonderful author.  

Shockwaves - Carolyn Keene

Seeing as I spent such a long time commenting on the picture of Nancy's bathing suit on the front cover, I thought it might be nice to actually read the book. That, and it sounds like an interesting mystery. (Perhaps.)

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