TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/cal/89choice.yad

Text File | 1991-05-04 | 19KB | 511 lines

Young Adult Editor's Choice

Nonfiction

Aebi, Tania and Brennan, Bernadette. Maiden Voyage. Simon &
Schuster, $19.95 (0-671-66653-3).

Encouraged by her father, 18-year-old Tania Aebi set out in 1987
to sail around the world aboard a 26-foot sloop, with a cat as her
only companion. This is the dynamic story of her 27,000-mile, 2
1/2-year voyage, which became as much a rite of passage as an
exciting adventure.


Bombeck, Erma. I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to
Go to Boise: Children Surviving Cancer. Harper, $16.95
(0-06-016170-1).

A familiar suburban humorist turns her considerable talent toward
a serious subject, giving "more than buckets of tears and public
pity" to children surviving the best they know how. A harsh,
inspirational, and also funny book, because "human nature is such
that we can't fell terribly bad all the time."


Carson, Jo. Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet: Selections from the
People Pieces. Watts/Orchard, $12.95  (0-531-05808-5).

Dramatic monologues and conversations, poetically distilled from
the stories of mountain people in east Tennessee, celebrate the
bonds of community and also voice its pain, from the wry idiom of
family fussing to the grid of poverty and the harmony of keeping
a piece of earth in working order.


Cohen, Susan and Cohen, Daniel. When Someone You Know Is Gay.
Evans, $13.95 (0-87131-567-X).

Considering lesbians as well as gays, the Cohen's frank, sensitive
account, written largely for heterosexuals, clears up
misconceptions and supplies a wealth of information to promote
better understanding of the gay experience.


Conway, Jill Ker. The Road from Coorain. Knopf, $18.95
(0-394-57456-7).

The president of Smith College writes in a spare, evocative
narrative of growing up female on an isolated Australian sheep farm
and of her struggle for acceptance as an intellectual.


Cunningham, Laura. Sleeping Arrangements. Knopf, $18.95
(0-394-56112-0).

In her comic and painful memoir, Cunningham is frank about
childhood cruelty and eroticism as well as about the haven she
found with the loving, eccentric uncles who raised her.


Greenberg, Harvey. Emotional Illness in Your Family: Helping Your
Relative, Helping Yourself. Macmillan/Collier, $15.95
(0-02-736921-8).

"Living with other people's troubles" is the subject of this
important contribution to the selfhelp genre, in which Greenberg
deals sensitively and practically with the stresses and confusions
that affect teenagers when someone close to them suffers.


Hanna, Jack and Stravinsky, John. Monkeys on the Intersate and
Other  Tales from America's Favorite Zookeeper. Doubleday, $18.95
(0-385-24731-1).

Like Herriot's books, zookeeper Hanna's warm, funny
autobiographical stories combine human and animal interest with
clinical detail.


Horror: 100 Best Books. Ed. by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.
Carroll & Graf, $15.95 (0-88184-417-9).

One hundred best classic and contemporary horror novels, from Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein to Stephen King's The Shining, have been
chosen and discussed by leading horror writers in an excellent
overview of both the gruesome and the subtle.


James Baldwin: The Legacy. Ed. by Quincy Troupe. Simon &
Schuster/Touchstone, paper, $10.95 (0-671-67651-2).

Tributes by contemporary writers, in-depth interviews, and some of
Baldwin's great essays together convey the strength and passion of
the writer who served as an outspoken witness of our time.


Kumin, Maxine. Nurture. Viking, $17.95 (0-670-82438-0).

"I am thankful for what's left that's wild." Kumin's poems are
spare and vivid, especially those about "the language of touch and
tremor" between humans and animals.


Landau, Terry. About Faces. Doubleday/Anchor, $29.95
(0-385-24975-6); paper, $14.95 (0-385-24981-0).

In a fascinating book that crisscrosses the sciences from
anthropology to biology, psychology, and sociology, Landau examines
the human face--its expressions, its adornment, and its structural
evolution.


Lederer, Richard. Crazy English. Pocket, $16.95 (0-671-68906-1).

From oxymorons like  flexible freeze and loose tights to the antics
of semantics, Lederer delights in revealing the confusion,
doublespeak, and nonsense that lie hidden in the way the English
language is spoken today.


McGhee, Fi. Photographers and Their Images. Amphoto, $27.50
(0-8174-5458-6); paper, $18.95 (0-8174-5459-4).

McGhee demonstrates considerable talent for black-and-white
portraiture as she captures some of the world's leading
photographers, putting their portraits alongside one of their
favorites from their own work in this unique and intriguing
collection.


Moyers, Bill. A World of Ideas. Doubleday, $24.95 (0-385-26278-7);
paper, $14.95 (0-385-26346-5).

The immediacy of Moyers' television-interview format makes
accessible the ideas of a wide range of interesting men and women
who talk with him about values and how they see the future.


Peace and War: A Collection of Poems. Ed. by Michael Harrison and
Christopher Stuart-Clark. Oxford University Press, $17.95
  (0-19-276069-6).

From the trenches of World War I and the London blitz to the menace
of nuclear war, nearly 200 poems from many times and places speak
with burning truth about the slaughter, muddle, and loss of war.


Reichel, Sabine. What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?  Hill & Wang,
$19.95 (0-8090-9685-4).

Filled with shame and fury about the Nazi past, German-born Reichel
talks to her parents and their contemporaries and remembers growing
up in a post-World War II Germany that repressed is guilt.


Ryden, Hope. Lily Pond: Four Years with a Family of Beavers.
Morrow, $17.95 (0-877-95979-X).

Ryden, who observed beavers at a pond over a four-year period,
takes us into their lives--following them through the perils of
food shortages, winter, human invaders, and the birth of kits. A
quiet, lovely story; a true celebration of nature.


Sandler, Martin. American Image: Photographing One Hundred Fifty
Years in the Life of a Nation. Contemporary Books, $40
(0-8092-4381-4).

Photographs (many of them famous) grouped with historical
commentary under themes like "The Civil War,"  "Moving West,"
"Immigrants," "Small-Town America," and "The Roaring Twenties"
create a splendid record.


Stoll, Cliff. The Cuckoo's Egg. Doubleday. $18.95 (0-385-24946-2).

Stoll's account of how he tracked a hacker invading military and
research computer systems around the country reads like a
fast-paced and fascinating computer espionage tale.


We Animals. Ed. By Nadya Aisenberg. Sierra Club; dist. by Random,
$22.95; paper, $10.95 (0-87156-685-0).

A small collection of poems from all over the world about
animals--past, present, mythic--and our human connection with them.


Wolff, Tobias. This Boy's Life. Atlantic Monthly Press; dist. by
Little, Brown, $18.95 (0-87113-248-6).

In a candid memoir, dark, tender, and funny, Wolff remembers
himself growing up in the Seattle area; deep down, he knows how bad
he is, but he longs to be a scholar-athlete, a boy of dignity, a
success.


Wright, Sam. Koviashuvik. Sierra Club; dist. by Random, $17.95
(0-87156-688-5).

An eloquent, sensitive recollection of 20 years spent in the
Alaskan wilderness evokes both the joy and the adventure found by
Wright and his wife, Billie.


Fiction

Ansa, Tina McElroy. Baby of the Family. HBJ, $18.95
(0-15-110431-X).

Steeped in the black culture of 1950s rural Georgia, this is the
affecting, loving, and often humorous coming-of-age story of Lena,
a "special" child born with a caul and the ability to see ghosts
and predict the future.


Atwood, Margaret. Cat's Eye. Doubleday, $18.95 (0-385-26007-5).

Atwood's sophisticated, intensely moving novel about a feminist
artist who remembers growing up in the 1940s and 1950s powerfully
evokes the vicious, obsessive power games among young girls who are
"friends."


Block, Francesca Lia. Weetzie Bat. Harper/Charlotte Zolotow, $12.95
(0-06-020534-2).

Punk culture in all its garishness is the setting for a delicate
story of love, grief, and enduring friendship, as Weetzie and her
gay friend Dirk each find their true loves and them all set up
house together.


Brooks, Bruce. No Kidding. Harper, $13.95 (0-06-020-722-1).

Brooks vividly and boldly captures the disturbing images and
sterility of an Orwellian future where rampant alcoholism has
caused the collapse of traditional society and a 14-year-old boy
has sacrificed his childhood to become the guardian of his little
brother and the caretaker of his rehabilitated alcoholic mother.


Carter, Alden R. Up Country. Putnam, $15.95 (0- 399-21583-2).

Vulnerable under his unflappable facade, 16-year-old city kid Carl,
who repairs stolen car stereos to make money for college, suffers
culture shock when he's sent up country to stay with relatives on
a farm after his mother is committed to a detoxification center.
Humorous, poignant, believable.


Cole, Brock. Celine Farrar, $13.95 (0-374-31234-6).

A funny, wrenching story of two lonely TV junkies--teenage artist
Celine and seven-year-old divorce-casualty Jake--who help each
other overcome despair and make a home in the city.


Cross, Gillian. A Map of Nowhere. Holiday, $13.95 (0-8234-0741-1).

In a provacative, fast-paced novel that juxtaposes the courages,
difficult struggle to do right with the thrill that can come from
purposeful wrongdoing, teenager Nick Miller has to choose between
friendship and the excitement he feels when he's around his older
brother Terry's unsavory but close-knit motorcycle gang.


Davis, Lindsey. Silver Pigs. Crown, $18.95 (0-517-57363-6).

This hard-boiled detective tale set in ancient Rome follows the
exploits of private informer Marcus Didius Falco, who rescues a
16-year-old girl and later has to investigate her murder.
Rollicking, exciting, and romantic, with a definite sense of the
period.


Dickinson, Peter. Eva. Delacorte, $14.95 (0-385-29702-5).

Eve wakes up in the hospital to discover that the doctors have
saved her life by transferring her neuron memory to the brain of
a female chimpanzee; she soon realizes that to be whole she must
integrate her human consciousness with her chimp nature and
instincts. A novel that transcends the science-fiction genre,
raising important moral questions.


Duder, Tessa. In Lane Three, Alex Archer. Houghton, $13.95
(0-395-50927-0).

An excellent swimmer with her sights set on competing in the
Olympics, outgoing, talented, and totally inner-directed Alex
Archer is shocked out of her self-absorption when her boyfriend is
killed by a hit-and-run driver. As impressive for its sports drama
as for its depiction of the emotional turmoil of coming-of-age.


Francis, Dick. Straight. Putnam, $18.95 (0-399-13470-0).

Francis is back in top form in this complex thriller in which
jockey Derek Franklin faces thieves, shady horse trainers, and
racketeers when he begins to investigate his older brother's death.

Gabriel, Eric. Waterboys. Mercury House; dist. by Consortium Book
Sales & Distribution, $18.95 (0-916515-54-0).

A turbulent New York city neighborhood in the 1960s is the expertly
realized setting for a telling novel in which sexual awakening and
racial prejudice become part of a search for love and acceptance--a
search that propels three boys as they deal with one another and
the various adults who protect, love, and cruelly use them.


Hilgartner, Beth. Colors in the Dreamweaver's Loom. Houghton,
$14.95 (0-395-50214-4).

Walking in the woods, Alexandra ("Zan") Scarsdale finds herself in
an alternate world where she is taken in by the gentle forest
dwellers, learning that she has been expected and is destined to
be their champion against encroaching city-dwellers. A distinctive,
exciting cliffhanger.


Klein, Norma. Learning How to Fall. Bantam, $14.95 (0-553-05809-6).

Outwardly self-assured but inwardly insecure and volatile,
17-year-old Dustin Penrose gets caught up in a destructive sexual
relationship that precipitates an emotional breakdown. Klein
vividly depicts what it is like as Dustin loses control--and how
difficult it is for him to get it back.


MacAvoy, R. A.  The Third Eagle: Lessons along a Minor String.
Doubleday/Foundation, $18.95 (0-385-24919-5).

As much a coming-of-age story as science fiction, this noteworthy,
witty story tracks the adventures of a young warrior descended from
Earth's native Americans as he makes his way around space,
acquiring friends and enemies among humans and aliens, in search
of destiny.


McDevitt, Jack. A Talent for War. Berkley/Ace, paper, $3.50
(0-441-79553-6).

A posthumous request from his uncle prompts Alex to investigate the
heroic captain Christopher Sim, the legendary hero of a war against
aliens that happened 200 years in the past. A must for readers who
relish space adventure.


Miller, Jim Wayne. Newfound. Watts/Orchard/Richard Jackson, $13.95
 (0-531-05845-X).

In a beautiful, quiet novel of an Appalachian boy's coming-of-age;
Robert slowly hears after the pain of his parents' divorce and
grows from shame about his "sorry" country ways to pride in his
roots and home.


Murphy, Pat. The City. Not Long After. Doubleday/Foundation, $17.95
(0-385-24925-X).

"Let's think of this war as an art project." Not long after a
plague has decimated the world's population, two young people
living in devastated San Francisco lead the city's artists in
waging art against the invading forces of a despotic general. A
tender, exhilarating novel about the nature of war, love, and art.


Paulsen, Gary. Murphy's Herd. Walker, $17.95 (0-8027-4094-4).

This involving tale with richly drawn characters rises far above
standard western fare as it follows grief-stricken Al Murphy in his
search to avenge the brutal murder of his wife.


Rodowsky, Colby. Sydney, Herself. Farrar, $12.95 (0-374-3069-4).

In a touching, funny story written in journal form, Sydney Downie
decides that the best way to cope with her life is to weave an
elaborate fantasy in which she becomes the daughter of a famous
Australian rock musician.


Sacks, Margaret. Beyond Safe Boundaires. Dutton/Lodestar, $13.95
(0-525-67281-8).

Growing up in a liberal Jewish home in South Africa, teenage
Elizabeth disapproves of apartheid, but she thinks it doesn't have
much to do with her--until its brutality invades the intimacy of
her own family. A powerful story that raises questions about
political responsibility.


Satterthwait, Walter. Miss Lizzie. St. Martin's, $17.95
(0-312-03400-8).

Thirteen-year-old Amanda Burton, whose family is renting a summer
home next to the infamous, now elderly Lizzie Borden, narrates this
riveting tale of murder, friendship, and family secrets.


Sevela, Ephraim. We Were Not Like Other People. Tr. by Antonia
Bouis. Harper, $12.95 (0-06-025507-2).

Dramatic interconnected stories of a Russian boy alone and on the
run during World War II, from the Urals to Siberia and the German
front, in orphanages and factories, scavenging, lying, yearning for
home.


Shannon, George. Unlived Affections. Harper/Charlotte Zolotow,
$12.95 (0-06-025304-5).

Clearing out his grandmother's house, teenage Willie finds a packet
of his father's letters, which reveal that his father was gay and
that Willie's mother never told his father about Willie's birth.
A plainspoken novel about love, leaving, and the fear of being
left, and also about lies.


Sieruta, Peter. Heartbeats. Harper, $12.95 (0-06-025848-9).

In nine gently humorous, simply told stories about contemporary
teenagers at home, at school, and in love, Sieruta rangers from the
unashamedly heartwarming to the bleak.


Svee, Gary D. Incident at Pishkin Creek. Walter, $18.95
(0-8027-4095-2).

A warm, involving novel in which young Montana rancher Max Bass,
who lives in a hillside dugout, blatantly lies about his situation
in order to lure spirited Irish immigrant Catherine O'Dowd as his
mail-order bride.


Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Putnam, $18.95 (0-399-13420-4).

These moving interconnected stories of Chinese-American daughters,
their mothers, and their grandmothers--in the U.S. and China--speak
frankly of the uneasy mix of love, pain, ambition, and family and
cultural conflict in the search for home.


Tempest, John. Vision of the Hunter. Harper, $17.95
(0-06-015684-8).

In an exciting and sensitive story of early human society, a young
outsider driven form the hunting tribe at a time of great scarcity,
saves his people by leading the way in domesticating the herds.


Tryon, Thomas. The Night of the Moonbow. Knopf, $18.95
(0-394-56006-X).

A group of teenagers falls victim to the influence of a
charismatic, selfishly competitive young man who orchestrates the
persecution of a boy who doesn't fit in. A morality play of sorts,
carefully and successfully calculated to compel.


Voigt, Cynthia. Seventeen against the Dealer. Atheneum, $13.95
(0-689-31497-3).

In a fine climax to the Tillerman series, Dicey, at 21, thinks she
has everything planned out, but this time hard work and drive
aren't enough to overcome failure, especially when people let her
down and her work obsession makes her neglect those she loves.


Wilson, David Henry. The Coachman Rat. Carroll & Graf, $13.95
(0-88184-508-6).

Wilson's slim but richly developed and darkly humorous tale follows
the fortunes of a young rat who is transformed into a coachman to
drive Amadea to the prince's ball and remains human in all but
physical form after the midnight deadline.


Wilson, Robert Charles. Gypsies. Doubleday/Foundation, $16.95
(0-385-24933-0).

"You could walk out of the world if you wanted to "Fifteen-year-old
Michael has to learn to cope with his inherited ability to make
doors to other worlds, and with the Gray Man who is following
Michael and his mother. An incentive, suspenseful page-turner.


Wrede, Patricia C. Snow White and Rose Red. Tor; dist. by St.
Martin's, $15.95 (0-312-93180-8).

Elizabethan England on the edge of the land of Faerie is the
cleverly realized setting for a wonderfully spirited version of the
classic tale that comes complete with a wicked sorcerer, an
enchanted prince, two beautiful sisters, and a pair of devious
mischief makers who continually gum up the works in both the real
and Faerie kingdoms.


Wu, William F. Hong on the Range. Walker/Byron Preiss, $17.95
(0-8027-6862-8).

Wu's zany spoof of re-creates the ambience of the Wild West in a
futuristic story narrated by Louie Hong, a young, intrepid, and
out-of-work cowboy, who is one of the disdained totally human
people in a cyborg world.


Source: Booklist Magazine, Jan. 15, 1990.