The Program
Suzanne Young
Teenage suicide has become an international epidemic, ending in the death of one out of every three teens in the United States, and as a result a few larger cities have been trying out a new solution to end the killing. Even London is moving towards instating the Program.
The Program is a place that teens can go to be cured of all the things that cause them to be upset, distraught, depressed, and desperate to end their lives. When teens go into the Program, they are in a very bad place, and when they come out they are calm and peaceful – and they remember almost nothing of their lives “before.”
Sloane, her boyfriend, and their friends are terrified of the Program, knowing that it leaves the cured as blank versions of themselves. So they hide their grief (because all life is a natural balance of inevitable joys and pains) as best they can, but when the Program starts to come after those they love, they might not have the power to stop it.
Sloane narrates the story, and being able to see all sides of the Program is a special treat. Readers will root for the characters every step of the way, through their love, their hurt, and their love again. The worst thing about this story is that the sequel, The Treatment, isn’t scheduled to be released until 2014!
Openly Straight
Bill Konigsberg
Rafe is a pretty average gay high school kid. He doesn’t get bullied, he doesn’t get beaten up, and his friends and family accept him just the way he is. The problem is that what he IS seems to equal the fact that he’s GAY, and that’s all anyone sees. He’s Rafe, the gay kid. So he decides to go off to the faraway east coast to an all-boys prep school, as the un-gay kid. He’s not straight all of a sudden, but he decides that he’s not going to “be” gay either.
Unfortunately, Rafe falls in love with one of his new friends, a guy that quickly becomes one of the best friends he’s ever had in his whole life. And when their relationship starts to get, um, intense, Rafe knows he needs to come clean. But he also knows that telling the truth could cost him his happiness. Or is it the lies that will have cost him everything?
Recommended to anyone – there is enough humor here to balance out the harshness of the situation, and everyone is forced to answer the question of self-acceptance.
Period.8
Chris Crutcher
Period 8 refers to Mr. Lodgson’s class, where honesty is the best policy and everything is confidential, where you can talk about anything or nothing, and where you can skip without getting into trouble, but nobody ever does. Period 8 is the “safe place.” Mr. Logs has respect for his students, and they have respect for each other. Everybody trusts that what they see and hear in that classroom is the truth.
Everything starts to go to hell when Paulie admits to his girlfriend Hannah that he cheated on her. He loves her and wants to explain himself – that it really isn’t what she thinks – but she won’t give him a chance at redemption. She’s pissed and he should definitely have known better. But as the story begins to unravel for the reader and the characters in the story, more and more questions are raised without any clear answers. There’s one guy, Arnie Stack, who seems to want to reassure everyone that everything is fine, and Paulie is convinced that Arnie knows more than he’s letting on. And when Arnie sets his sights on the now single Hannah, Paulie sets out to prove it.
This is a mystery of a different sort, combining the traditional with the psychological, and mixing our emotions up along the way. There’s quite a bit of intrigue here, and more than anyone’s fair share of danger. It seems that nobody and nothing is off limits.
Katherine Vasilik
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J. F. Kennedy Library
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