Wednesday, September 5, 1973: The first day of Karl Shoemaker's senior year in stifling Lightsburg, Ohio. For years, Karl's been part of what he calls "the Madman Underground" - a group of kids forced (for no apparent reason) to attend group therapy during school hours. Karl has decided that senior year is going to be different. He is going to get out of the Madman Underground for good. He is going to act - and be - Normal. But Normal, of course, is relative. Karl has five after-school jobs, one dead father, one seriously unhinged drunk mother . . . and a huge attitude. Welcome to a gritty, uncensored rollercoaster ride, narrated by the singular Karl Shoemaker.

For years, Karl has been part of the Madman Underground--kids forced to attend group therapy during school hours. Karl decides that for his senior year, he is going to get out of the group for good. He is going to act--and be--Normal. But Normal, of course, is relative. A Printz Honor Book.

With the explosion in YA publishing, it’s harder than ever to separate good books from the rest. Booklist magazine’s editors’ deep and broad knowledge of the landscape offers indispensable guidance, and here they bring together the very best of the best books for young adults published since the start of the 21st century.

Young adults are actively looking for anything that connects them with the changes happening in their lives, and the books discussed throughout Literature for Young Adults have the potential to make that connection and motivate them to read. It explores a great variety of works, genres, and formats, but it places special emphasis on contemporary works whose nontraditional themes, protagonists, and literary conventions make them well suited to young adult readers. It also looks at the ways in which contemporary readers access and share the works they're reading, and it shows teachers ways to incorporate nontraditional ways of accessing and sharing books throughout their literature programs. In addition to traditional genre chapters, Literature for Young Adults includes chapters on literary nonfiction; poetry, short stories, and drama; cover art, picture books, illustrated literature, and graphic novels; and film. It recognizes that, while films can be used to complement print literature, they are also a literacy format in their own right-and one that young adults are particularly familiar and comfortable with. The book's discussion of literary language--including traditional elements as well as metafictive terms--enables readers to share in a literary conversation with their students (and others) when communicating about books. It will help readers teach young adults the language they need to articulate their responses to the books they are reading.

""[A] vivid portrait of a world gone insane,"* S. M. Stirling's New York Times bestselling Novels of the Change have depicted a vivid, utterly persuasive, and absorbingly unpredictable postapocalyptic wasteland in which all modern technology has been left in ashes, forcing humankind to rebuild an unknowable new world in the wake of unimaginable--and deliberate--chaos. Now, in this startling new anthology, S. M. Stirling invites the most fertile minds in science fiction to join him in expanding his rich Emberverse canvas. Here are inventive new perspectives on the cultures, the survivors, and the battles arising across the years and across the globe following the Change. In his all-new story "Hot Night at the Hopping Toad," Stirling returns to his own continuing saga of the High Kingdom of Montival. In the accompanying stories are fortune seekers, voyagers, and dangers--from the ruins of Sydney to the Republic of Fargo and Northern Alberta to Venetian and Greek galleys clashing in the Mediterranean. These new adventures revisit beloved people and places from Stirling's fantastic universe, introduce us to new ones, and deliver endlessly fascinating challenges to conquer, all while unfolding in a "postapocalyptic landscape that illuminates both the best and the worst of which our species is capable,"** "a world you can see, feel, and touch." ***"--

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world. This venerable collection brings together short stories from award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Bear, Paul McAuley and John Barnes. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

For the first time in a decade, a compilation of the very best in science fiction, from a world authority on the genre. For decades, the Year's Best Science Fiction has been the most widely read short science fiction anthology of its kind. Now, after thirty-five annual collections comes the ultimate in science fiction anthologies. In The Very Best of the Best, legendary editor Gardner Dozois selects the finest short stories for this landmark collection, including short fiction from authors such as Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, and many many more.