Book Review: Book Crush by Nancy Pearl

I started reading modern YA (post 2000 let's say) about the same time I started reviewing YA in 2008 (with some exceptions, including THE BOOK THIEF, Lemony Snicket, and Artemis Fowl), so while I'm very knowledgeable about super current YA and YA from the 1980s and 90s, my backlist reading is woefully inadequate.

That's why when I saw BOOK CRUSH at my library and saw that it was published in 2007, I thought it would be perfect for getting some backlist reading ideas.  A "celebrated librarian" Pearl offers up over 1000 titles organized into 118 lists.  The titles cover the entire spectrum of children's books - from board books to YA - and even include some adult titles of interest to teens.  That meant that I had actually read more recommended titles than I would have thought - including of course, those teen classics I read as a teen such as HERO AND THE CROWN and JACOB I HAVE LOVED.

Let's take a look at a list especially close to my heart: "Utopia - Not!"  Pearl recommends one YA series (Scott Westerfeld's Uglies - the first books I ever reviewed on my blog), 4 YA stand-alones (FEED by MT Anderson and HOW I LIVE NOW by Meg Rosoff which I've read and SHADE'S CHILDREN by Garth Nix and VIRTUAL WAR by Gloria Skurzynski's VIRTUAL WAR which I have not, 2 classics (BRAVE NEW WORLD and FAHRENHEIT 451 which I've read) and two adult novels (JENNIFER GOVERNMENT by Max Berry and PATTERN RECOGNITION by William Gibson which I've read, the latter never have seen classified as a dystopian). 12 books and I've read 10 of them, with the other 2 already on my wishlist.

On the other YA lists, which range from "Cry me a river" to "Girls kick butt", I also had heard of probably 80% of the titles already, due to my prodigious book blog appetite.  I did, however, add some titles to my wishlist:

WHERE I WANT TO BE by Adele Griffen (narrated by two sisters, one of them dead)

THE HOUSE OF THE SCORPION by Nancy Farmer (MC is a clone of a drug lord) (and yes, I have seen this around before, but never read the summary, so I didn't know it had such an awesome premise)

DEAD GIRLS DON'T WRITE LETTERS by Gail Giles (MC knows girl is pretending to be her dead sister, but why?)

So, overall a good resource to check out from the library, but maybe not to buy - unless you are pretty unfamiliar with children't lit as a whole.  Find out more about the book at the author's website.