Chinese New Year is celebrated this week as we welcome the year of the pig. Learn more about this annual event by clicking here. Another great way to celebrate is by immersing yourself in the culture and history of China! Check out these ten titles for some suggestions. Happy reading and happy year of the pig!
Here at 7 teen books that will be adapted to movies in 2019!
Between Shades of Gray (Ashes in the Snow) by Ruta Sepetys
Release Date: January 11th
Retitled and released first in Lithuania, this World War II story tells of a 16 year-old aspiring artist and her family who are deported to Siberia amidst Stalin’s brutal dismantling of the Baltic region.
Starring: Bel Powley, Peter Franzen, Jonah Hauer-King
The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking) by Patrick Ness
Release Date: March 1st
Todd Hewitt, a boy who grows up in a town of only men, discovers that despite everyone’s shared ability to read minds, his peers keep him from a terrible secret.
Starring: Tom Holland, Nick Jonas, Cynthia Erivo
Five Feet Apart by Rachel Lippincott
Release Date: March 22nd
Two teens with cystic fibrosis meet in the hospital and fall in love even though they can’t be within five feet each other.
Starring: Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
Release Date: May 17th
The son of Korean shopkeepers and a daughter from a family of illegal Jamaican immigrants meet and fall in love one fateful day in New York City.
Starring: Charles Melton and Yara Shahidi
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Release Date: August 9th
Artemis, a teenage criminal genius, kidnaps the fairy LEPrecon officer Holly Short for ransom to fund the search for his missing father and restore the family fortune.
Starring: Hong Chau, Josh Gad, and Judi Dench
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Release Date: December 25th
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young women in nineteenth-century New England.
Starring: Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan, and Meryl Streep
Little Darlings (coming in April 2019)
by Melanie Golding
4 stars
I love folklore and anything about faeries so this book appealed to me. I also love a good mystery. The book centers on new mom, Lauren, and her newborn twin boys, Morgan and Riley. Lauren swears that a woman tried to take her babies at the hospital and replace them with something else, some kind of horrible creatures. Everyone, including Lauren’s husband, believes she is imagining things. One day the babies disappear while Lauren accidentally dozes off at the park. When they are found, everyone is overjoyed, except for Lauren. Morgan and Riley look the same, but Lauren knows that something is very wrong. This book had me guessing until the very end whether Lauren was actually sane or not. Was she suffering postnatal psychosis or was there really an evil woman that traded her babies for changelings? I loved all the descriptions of early motherhood and it made me reminisce of those early days with my own kids. The descriptions of the “changelings” was creepy. I definitely recommend this book and it will make an excellent movie! Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!
Read-alikes
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
The Good People by Hannah Kent
Jennifer Garner recently posted that she has a tradition with her kids – one day a year, she says, “Yes” to anything her kids ask. This can be anything from going to a theme park or getting ice cream, but can’t be something that lasts more than one day, like a vacation or a pony. The idea has gotten to be trendy, and it is all based on Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld’s book Yes Day!
In the book Yes Day! the main protagonist is a little boy who wakes up excited for his favorite day of the year, Yes Day. He starts the day asking for pizza for breakfast, asks for hair gel to spike his hair, picks the most sugary cereals at the supermarket, and gets to stay up really late watching movies. None of his requests are really expensive. Mostly, they are things parents typically say “no” to because they would be unhealthy or inconvenient for children to have every day of the year, but it won’t hurt them to have on occasion.
If you’d like to have your own Yes Day, make sure your kids know up front what is allowed and what isn’t. (For instance, dying hair may be okay, but spending $500 in toys is not.) And speaking of toys, think about what you say when your child asks for a toy in the supermarket. Many parents will tell their children, “Not now, but remember to put it on your list for Santa” or “Maybe on your birthday.” A similar concept can be done with Yes Day. When you feel bad for having to deny your children’s request to read twenty stories before bedtime or go out for ice cream, you can remind them that they can ask for these things on Yes Day.
Have you tried a “Yes Day?” What were your experiences?
Pupcakes
by Annie England Noblin
4 stars
This past December, I read several Christmas novels involving dogs, and Pupcakes was one of my favorites. While this novel is technically a Christmas novel, it takes place over several months, so it doesn’t have the full Christmas feel as some other books. Which means, this can be a great anytime of the year read!
Brydie Benson is going through a rough time. She was recently divorced and lost her bakery, and is now looking for a place to start over. She finds a great opportunity to house-sit (and dog-sit) for a lady who has recently had to move into a nursing home. Brydie is a not a dog person, so is unsure how to handle living with Teddy Roosevelt, the small pug she now has to care for. As Byrdie starts to rebuild her life, she tries her hand at baking for her new canine buddy, which leads to some great new connections including a possible new love interest.
This was a sweet, fun read that I definitely recommend to fans of chick lit and dog fiction. This was the perfect book to read over the holidays.
Read-alikes
Recipe for Disaster by Stacey Ballis
Restoring Grace by Katie Fforde
The Debutante Divorcee by Plum Sykes