JCPL Teens

One of my favorite authors is Gail Giles , author of amazing books like Playing in Traffic and just this month, Dark Song. I met Gail when she was keynote speaker at the Colorado Teen Literature Conference a few years ago. Gail is, by her own words, a little old lady. She has grey hair and plump cheeks, and she’s not very tall. She is sweet, speaks quietly, and gentle. You would never guess that she has these books inside of her!

Gail’s first book for teens is called Shattering Glass. It starts like this: Simon Glass was easy to hate. I never knew exactly why, there was too much to pick from. I guess, really, we each hated him for a different reason, but we didn’t realize it until the day we killed him. It was challenged in 2008 because of language, not because it’s about teenagers murdering one of their classmates.
 

My favorite Gail Giles book is Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters. It’s about a girl named Sunny whose older sister, Jazz, was killed in an apartment fire. Sunny is only barely holding her family together when Jazz sends a letter to say she wasn’t in that fire and is coming home the next day. But when Jazz arrives, the girl who shows up is not Jazz, it is a girl who looks like Jazz and acts like Jazz, but just isn’t Jazz.

All of Gail’s books deal with the horrible – What Happened to Cass McBride is about a mean girl who is buried alive and must talk her way out of her own grave. Right Behind You is about a boy reentering society after intentionally set his friend on fire. Dark Song is about a girl who becomes the “bad girl rebel” when her parents destroy her life. I haven’t finished it yet but I am afraid she is going to use the gun her boyfriend has provided.

Books like those by Gail Giles, and many other authors, often get challenged or banned, especially in schools. I feel that books like this are entertaining reads because they are so far out of the reality of my own life. I would not do the things Gail’s characters do, but it is delicious to think about those situations and how they might play out.

What books do you read because you would never live that life?