Archive | Young Adult Fiction RSS feed for this section

A Different View of Mulan: Reflection by Elizabeth Lim

11 Nov

In the Young Adult Department, we have an excellent young adult book called Reflection by Elizabeth Lim that is part of the Disney Twisted Tales Series. The story takes off as if you were channeling into the middle of an action-packed movie. You are thrown into battle with Mulan against Shan Yu’s Han Army at the snowy banks on a Mountain of the Tung-Shao Pass. Like the movie, Shan Yu pursues Mulan as she points the rocket towards the mountain’s peak. You, the reader, are put in her shoes as she can’t help feeling obligated to do her duty to save her fellow soldiers and China. But there’s a twist; just as Mulan was about to set the rocket towards the mountain, General Li Shang jumps into action to protect Mulan from Shan Yu’s lethal attack and is wounded instead of Mulan. The Hun Army is destroyed but at the cost of a gravely injured Li Shang.  

Here’s where the book takes off in a different direction than what we as Mulan fans are used to. Because of Li Shang’s declining health, Mulan is desperate to find a way of keeping him alive. When night falls, she’s approached by the spirit of Shang’s recently deceased father, General Li! General Li has Mulan agree to go into the underworld of Diya to ask King Yama to spare Li Shang’s soul from being reincarnated. This book pays respect to the Mulan movie while giving it an incredible twist. The reader gets to explore a new side of Mulan’s narrative, as well as learn about Chinese mythology through Mulan’s quest to save Li Shang’s spirit in a world of monsters, ghosts, and demons, oh my!

Besides print, you can also check out an ebook from Hoopla or eBCCLS/Overdrive and even come inside the library to check out some other Mulan oriented materials including the animated film.

Written by:
Elbie Love

Tags: ,

Historical YA Fiction Dealing with Pandemics

10 Jun

Events like COVID-19 have happened in the United States before! They just had a different name like the Yellow Fever Epidemic or the Spanish Flu. Regardless of its name, sicknesses like this have many of the same devastating effects on the people exposed to them. Here are two historical fiction YA books that can give you a new perspective on how people in the past fought their version of COVID-19. 

A Death-Struck Year
by Makiia Lucier
Death Struck Year

World War I is happening overseas, and the Spanish Flu is in town. Walk with Cleo on her journey of survival and coming of age in A Death Struck Year. She was stranded in her Oregon town with no one; her parents died years before, and her brother is in another city. A quarantine is enacted in her village. She learns of her mortality through her volunteer work with the Red Cross. Cleo goes door-to-door knowing that she’s putting herself In harm’s way, but can’t help but help others. 

Fever, 1793
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Fever 1793

 The Yellow Fever of 1793 is seen through the eyes of a teenage Matilda Cook in Fever, 1793. It was not enough that America had just gained its independence from Britain only ten years before. An epidemic runs rampant in what was then the capital of the United States, Philadelphia. People were getting sick, and no one knew how it was spreading or how to fight it. Matilda’s mother sends her to live with family outside of town but is turned away because of quarantine orders. When Matilda gets sick, she learns through the experience, how much this disease impacts the city. Just as she recovers, her widowed mother gets sick. The reader gets to see Matilda learn to grow up fast and even risk helping others in a time of chaos. A great nonfiction book to pair with this fiction book choice is An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy that is also available on eBook through Hoopla and eLibrary NJ.  Both eLibraryNJ and eBCCLS also offer Fever, 1793 as a digital audiobook.

Interested in sharing your own story during pandemic; click here to learn more.

Written by:
Elbie Love
YA Library Associate

Tags: , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →