Beige

Beige

By Cecil Castelucci

320 p

Candlewick

ISBN-10: 0763642320
ISBN-13: 978-0763642327

Annotation:

Katy, a quiet French Canadian teenager, reluctantly leaves Montréal to spend time with her estranged father, an aging Los Angeles punk rock legend. Dad's an aging L.A. punk rocker known as the Rat. Daughter's a buttoned-up neat freak who'd rather be anywhere else. Can this summer be saved? Now that she's exiled from Canada to sunny Los Angeles, Katy figures she'll bury her nose in a book and ignore the fact that she's spending two weeks with her father -- punk name: the Rat -- a recovered addict and drummer for the famously infamous band Suck.

Summary:

"Katy won't complain....Katy won't complain" Even though Katy doesn't want to be there, even though she feels abandoned by her mom, even though the Rat's place is a mess and he's not like anything she'd call a father,

Is she really the nice girl everyone thinks is she really "Beige" or is there a rough and rockin' punk persona underneath all that nice?

Teens will love this over the top novel about the punk scene in Los Angeles. Castelucci writes a funny and emotional novel about a girl who has to relocate and in the process may learn more about her almost always absent father and more importantly the woman she may become.

Chameleon

Chameleon

By: Charles R. Smith Jr.

384p

Candlewick Press

ISBN-10: 0763630853
ISBN-13: 978-0763630850


Annotation:
The summer before starting highschool in inner city Los Angeles, fourteen year old Shawn grapples with his first experience of love, the complicated bonds of friends and family, and the reality of street gang violence.

Summary:

Shawn is an intelligent and athletically gifted teenager on the cusp of his high school career, who is enjoying his last days of summer. Living in Carson, and traveling to Compton every weekday to be watched over by his alcoholic aunt offers Shawn a lot of free time. Time that is spent playing basketball with his group of friends and maneuvering through the dangerous streets. His days are plagued with the quest for free food and constant “color checks” to make sure that neither he nor any of his friends are wearing any red or blue for fear of being attacked.

During his summer, he is forced to reconsider his future after he and his friends are beat-up by a group of Pirus (red) after being mistook for Crypts (blue), when he is offered the opportunity to go to his local high school that is free of gang activity and therefor free of the stresses, instead of the school in Compton, he has a decision to make. Spending the rest of the summer trying to make the decision that could affect the rest of his life and more importantly his love life with his crush Marisol.

This book is well written even if the main character is wise beyond his years. Smith does drop cultural slang and young adults may be interested in this novel because of the local setting. Teen readers who enjoy the writing styles of Walter Dean Myers will quickly fall in love with Smith's writing style. This novels with hip-hop slang and realness that is hard to find in many other teen novels.