Star-crossed Books: Feminist AF Edition

The novel: The F— It List, by Julie Halpern
The nonfiction pairing: The V-Word, edited by Amber J. Keyser
Oh, the list of things you want to do when it seems like there’s no tomorrow. Even the president has one of those. Generally, though, you don’t think of a list of things to do before you die as a teenager’s concern. In The F— It List, Becca has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and has enlisted her friend Alex to help live out her rhymes-with-bucket list, which includes everything from eating the hottest pepper she can find to having her first sexual experience. And that last one is where The V-Word comes in. Whether you’re considering your own first or just want to see how others have handled theirs, The V-Word will show you that nothing you’ve experienced is out of the ordinary. Seventeen writers, mostly YA authors, leave no details out in telling you about their first-time experiences, from perspectives across the gender and sexuality spectrum.

The novel: The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson
The nonfiction pairing: Blood, Bullets and Bones: The Story of Forensic Science from Sherlock Holmes to DNA, by Bridget Heos
An American girl, arriving in contemporary London just in time to witness a rash of crimes that look suspiciously similar to the Jack the Ripper murders, plays amateur detective. But this book is not as simple as a crime procedural with a copycat murder. After a near-death experience, our heroine, Rory, has developed the ability to see ghosts—who, despite being incorporeal, can still be killers. Once you’ve indulged in Johnson’s supernatural tale, read Heos’ book to bulk up your own actual detective skills. It chronicles centuries of forensic and scientific research that led to better crime-solving techniques today.

The novel: Endangered, by Eliot Schrefer
The nonfiction pairing: Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas, by Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks
Sophie rescues a baby bonobo, and he latches onto her as if she were his mother, because that’s what primates do. Then guerrilla warfare strikes (the setting is the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Sophie is separated from all the humans she lives with, stranded with the family of bonobos living at a reserve her mother runs. She has to keep safe from poachers and soldiers in order to find a way home. While Sophie is sort of an amateur naturalist, Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas are the real thing, and Ottaviani and Wicks’ three-part biography in comics form will broaden your own bank of knowledge about our cousins, the apes.

The novel: Infandous, by Elana K. Arnold
The nonfiction pairing: Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty, by Christine Heppermann
Sephora lives in the hub of weirdness that is the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, with a former model mother with whom she’s almost unnaturally close. She recently had an affair with a much, much older man who still permeates her thoughts, and meanwhile her mother is dating someone close to Sephora’s age. Sephora processes her life and emotions through myth and fairy tale, and in poetry collection Poisoned Apples, Heppermann retells fairy tales with an eye toward the real inner lives and outside influences of today’s teenaged girls. Both are gritty and raw and pull no punches.

The novel: Rose Under Fire, by Elizabeth Wein
The nonfiction pairing: For the Good of Mankind? The Shameful History of Human Medical Experimentation, by Vicki Oransky Wittenstein
Code Name Verity is Wein’s more known book, but Rose Under Fire takes another girl pilot and drops her in a prisoner of war camp, where she befriends the Rabbits. These aren’t animals but rather the human guinea pigs of Nazi doctors, who regularly used twins and disabled people to practice medical experiments on. The young women bond while sharing the horrors of mistreatment and imprisonment, and the book gives past terrors a human face. Nazis were not the only people who did unspeakable things in the name of science, and Wittenstein shines light on centuries of viewing certain groups of people as somehow human enough to be relevant to medical studies but not human enough to be treated humanely.