
Here’s the fourth in our weekly series of short lists of great contemporary YA fiction titles created by our New Schools adviser. Take it away Magic, Mystery and Mayhem.
Beastly. Alex Flinn. New York: HarperTeen, 2007.
A modern retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" from the point of view of the Beast, a vain Manhattan private school student who is turned into a monster and must find true love before he can return to his human form. Suggested level: secondary.
Blart II: the boy who was wanted dead or alive, or both. Dominic Barker. London: Bloomsbury. 2007.
Blart is wanted, dead or alive. But it isn’t just Blart’s life that’s at stake. The greatest sorcerer alive has made a very big and rather embarrassing mistake, and now Blart must embark on a perilous mission to save his own life, his friends’ lives and potentially the world (again). Suggested level: primary, intermediate, junior secondary.
Darkside. Tom Becker. London: Scholastic, 2007.
City of bones. Cassandra Clare. London: Walker, 2007.
Suddenly able to see demons and the Shadowhunters who are dedicated to returning them to their own dimension, fifteen-year-old Clary Fray is drawn into this bizzare world when her mother disappears and Clary herself is almost killed by a monster. Suggested level: secondary.
Into the woods. Lyn Gardner. Oxford; New York: David Fickling Books, 2006.
Pursued by the sinister Dr. DeWilde and his ravenous wolves, three sisters--Storm, the inheritor of a special musical pipe, the elder Aurora, and the baby Any--flee into the woods and begin a treacherous journey filled with many dangers as they try to find a way to defeat their pursuer and keep him from taking the pipe and control of the entire land. Suggested level: primary, intermediate, junior secondary.
Ironside: a modern faery's tale. Holly Black. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
As the possessor of Roibin's true name, sixteen-year-old Kaye returns to Faeryland to try and complete a nearly impossible quest that will release him from the spell of the faery queen who holds him in thrall. Suggested level: secondary.
The Pinhoe egg. Diana Wynne Jones. New York: Greenwillow Books, 2006.
Two powerful young enchanters, Cat, the future Chrestomanci, and Marianne, who is being trained to be Gammer of the Pinhoes, work together as friends to try to end an illegal witches’ war and, in the process, right some old wrongs. Suggested level: primary, intermediate, junior secondary.
My swordhand is singing. Marcus Sedgwick. London: Orion Children’s Books, 2006.
Tomas and his son, Peter, arrive in Chust and settle there as woodcutters. Tomas digs a channel of fast flowing waters around their hut, so they have their own little island kingdom. Peter doesn’t understand why his father has done this, nor why his father carries a long battered box, whose mysterious contents he is forbidden to know. As surely as the snow falls softly in the forest Tomas and Peter face a soulless enemy of vampires and a terrifying destiny. Suggested level: secondary.
Troll Bridge: a rock ’n’ roll fairy tale. Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple. New York: Starscape, 2006.
Sixteen-year-old harpist prodigy Moira is transported to a strange and mystical wilderness, where she finds herself in the middle of a deadly struggle between a magical fox and a monstrous troll. Suggested level: secondary.
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