by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Friends, it is a tense time. This week is an especially tense one. If there is anything that helps me during tense times (in addition to yoga, dark chocolate, and a nice glass of red wine...), it's reading an immersive story. Romance This past year (and especially in the time since the pandemic began), I've discovered that I really enjoy some romance books. It's been a welcome discovery, although I'm still learning what does

by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) I'm a big fan of books set in residential schools, whether they're boarding schools or colleges. There are a MILLION out there, so I just chose the first ones that popped into my head when I thought of this topic. There's something about residential schools that concentrates life experience--when I was in high school reading Lord of the Flies, we spent SO much time talking about how the boys' time on the island was a microcosm for human existe

by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) Purely by accident, I have read some excellent books recently that have involved--to some extent--questions about social media (or just going viral). Some of these books are really contemplating the nature of social media, its pros and cons, while others include going viral merely as a plot point. Farrah Rochon's The Boyfriend Project - There's a central viral video that kicks off the plot here, and protagonist Samiah Brooks has to deal with i

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) We at Unabridged stand with the Black Lives Matter movement. There are SO many books that we love by Black authors, and we look forward to lifting up those amazing books. We wanted to start our celebration of Black authors with some of our favorite YA authors and books that we think would be outstanding in any classroom library. This is by no means a complete list, but this features some of our favorite authors for YA, includ

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) “You have to decide for yourself. It is you who must live with the outcome.” “Lies are as dangerous as a sword. They can cut to the bone.” (from The Belles, book 1) "If I accomplish one thing in this life... it will be to ensure the old way of doing things is done." (from The Everlasting Rose, book 2) I loved Dhonielle Clayton's The Belles and was so excited to read the sequel, The Everlasting Rose. Set in the dystopian world

by Sara Voigt (@meaningfulmadness) Welp, this book is definitely a bit out of my wheelhouse. Justina Ireland's book Dread Nation is a young-adult, historical fiction novel with a (BIG) twist set right after the Gettysburg battle in the American Civil War. During the Gettysburg battle, something remarkable happens, and the fallen soldiers rise up from their deaths to become the undead (called shamblers in the book and are akin to zombies). The shamblers are able to infect othe

Here are three books coming out today that I (Jen) am excited to read! Alexandra Chang's Days of Distraction Description from HarperCollins: "The plan is to leave. As for how, when, to where, and even why—she doesn’t know yet. So begins a journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator of Days of Distraction. As a staff writer at a prestigious tech publication, she reports on the achievements of smug Silicon Valley billionaires and start-up bros while her own request for a rais

In this episode, we consider books that we'd recommend to students as great choices to read independently. As the world around us has drastically changed and continues changing, we decided on this topic and talked about some of our favorites, including R. J. Palacio's Wonder, Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before series, Nicola Yoon's books, and anything by Jason Reynolds, as well as some other favorites. We focus our discussion on books we think students can access w

All right, I (Jen) am back with the next two match-ups in the The Morning News Tournament of Books. (If you'd like to read a little more background on what I'm up to here, check out this post.) Today, I have, for me, the first TRULY difficult decision of the Tournament. Day 3 (March 11) - Lost Children Archive v. Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive - Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive in some ways defies description. On one level, i

You all may be well aware that I (Jen) am low-key obsessed with The Morning News Tournament of Books. I love to read as many of the books on the shortlist ahead of time as I can; I love to read the judgments throughout March (much refreshing happens until they're finally published each day!); and I love to see how my predictions fare compared to everyone else. This year, I've decided to share my OWN reviews from instagram and my picks. I'm just going to put my opinions out th

In this episode, we focus on classroom teachers and talk directly about how and why we incorporated Young Adult literature into our classrooms. We talk about series we saw our students loving like Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, and Veronica Roth's Divergent, and we talk about seeing our students fall in love with books. From classics like S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders to A.S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants, we talk about using YA lit in our clas

Just getting started with Unabridged Podcast? Welcome! We're Ashley, Jen, and Sara, and we are teachers and podcasters who are passionate about books. We have four kinds of posts here on our blog. On Mondays, we post about our Bookish Faves, on Tuesdays we do Pub Day Shout-outs, on Wednesdays our episodes drop, and on Fridays, we post book reviews. (Be on the lookout on Thursdays, too; we sometimes have an extra post then!) There are many ways to connect with us! In addition

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the egalley of Kelly deVos’s Day Zero in exchange for an honest review. The book released on November 12. “If you’re going through hell, keep going” (loc. 3896). Day Zero, a near-future YA thriller, launches the reader into a frighteningly familiar world dominated by political conflict between two parties. The Opposition focuses on rugged individualism and oppose taxes on the rich, while The Spark embraces identity politics and using government

For this short episode of Unabridged, we thought about journeys. Nearly every book contains some sort of journey--emotional, moral, time--but we wanted to focus on the physical journeys that often lie at the heart of novels to symbolize or catalyze something else. Our TBR lists explode (or shuffle, at the very least) as we each recommend two books with journeys at their centers. Listen to Jen remember our website's url, Sara get past not really loving journey novels all that

Thank you to Partner Netgalley for my advance copy of this novel. I loved The Belles and was so excited to read the sequel, The Everlasting Rose. Set in the dystopian world of Orléans , this novel reveals the way that quests for beauty and power can spiral out of control as the quest to become the most beautiful and most powerful gets in the way of compassion, equity, and all forms of understanding. The Belles opens in a world where most people are born gris, meaning that the

We'll let you guess just which one of us went shopping in her Kindle closet . . . and then cheated to share an extra book (or two . . . or three!) on this episode. Well, actually, we ALL cheated because we have SO many books coming out this fall that we're eagerly anticipating. As a sneak peek, we're including Peter Heller’s Celine, Rainbow Rowell’s Wayward Son​, and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys. Take a listen to our TBR lists, and then let us know what books you look f

For the second year, we are excited to explore three of the Global Read Aloud books. (You can find out more information about the Global Read Aloud here.) We'll discuss Kelly Yang's Front Desk, Padma Venkatraman's The Bridge Home, and Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves. We are thrilled to begin Season 3 with a discussion of these three amazing novels for middle grade, middle school, and young adult readers. Timeline Introduction and General Discussion: 00:00 - 01:16 Cherie

In this podcast episode, we return to our TBR lists for YA Literature that we discussed in Episode 47. The YA Books We Read from Our TBR Lists Ashley Danielle Paige's Dorothy Must Die​ Jen Tahereh Mafi's Shatter Me series Neal Shusterman's Scythe Sara Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before series To All the Boys I've Loved Before on Netflix Also Mentioned Neal Shusterman's Dry Tahereh Mafi's A Very Large Expanse of Sea ​ Interested in what else we're reading? Check out

In this Unabridged Book Club episode, we discuss Julie Murphy's YA lit novel, Dumplin'. When “self-proclaimed fat girl” Willowdean Dickson decides to shake things up in her small town by entering her former beauty queen mother’s beloved beauty pageant, she learns more about herself than she anticipates. “I think you gotta be who you want to be until you feel like you are whoever it is you're trying to become. Sometimes half of doing something is pretending that you can.” Spoi

In this Unabridged podcast episode, we're discussing our February Book Club book, The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, which centers on issues related to feminism. This novel focuses first on college student Greer Kadetsky who meets her mentor, Faith Frank, when Frank speaks at Greer’s college.  Their initial meeting leads to a productive and ultimately contentious relationship focused on advocacy for feminism. Along the way, a rich cast of secondary characters, including G