Childhood & Youth

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Swing Time (2016) is renowned author Zadie Smith’s fifth novel. Inspired by classic movie musicals and Smith’s childhood passion for musical theater, Swing Time is a story about women, how forms of privilege warp our worldviews, and the ways in which history informs our present. The novel is divided into seven parts, each narrated by the same unnamed protagonist sometimes as a child and sometimes as an adult.One of the most respected literary voices of... Read Swing Time Summary

In her memoir, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood (2007), Palestinian-American author and poet Ibtisam Barakat describes her early childhood in Palestine during the Six-Day War of 1967 and the life-changing effects that follow this pivotal event. Combining richly descriptive prose and free-verse poetry, Ibtisam shares often painful memories of childhood losses, from her home and sense of security to her childhood innocence. Writing from a child’s perspective, Ibtisam transcends politics to poignantly highlight how... Read Tasting the Sky Summary

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Watt Key’s 2016 children’s adventure novel, Terror at Bottle Creek, follows a group of children as they attempt to survive a hurricane that strikes the swamps and rivers of Alabama. This study guide uses the first edition published by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers in 2016. Plot SummaryCort is 13 years old and lives with his father on a riverboat in Alabama, along with his cherished dog, Catfish. His father works as a... Read Terror at Bottle Creek Summary

In small town Oklahoma during the 1970s, a rough-and-tumble teenager learns to navigate the world with his older brother and a mostly absent father in S. E. Hinton’s young adult fiction novel Tex. Published in 1979, the book was subsequently made into a popular movie starring young Matt Dillon in the title role. Hinton herself has written that Texas McCormick is the favorite of all her iconic characters, so good natured and even tempered that... Read Tex Summary

Set in the Tuscan region of Italy in the 1800s, by Carlo Collodi’s classic children's fantasy novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) follows the misadventures of a living wooden puppet and his poor puppeteer father. The story was initially published as a serial in a weekly children's magazine; due to reader demand, it was later turned into a book. The Adventures of Pinocchio, translated into more than 260 languages, is considered one of the most... Read The Adventures of Pinocchio Summary

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain written for both youth and adult readers. It is a story about Tom Sawyer, a boy from the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. Tom lives a life of constant adventure, drama, self-aggrandizement, and self-inflicted woes as he comes of age. The novel is equal parts comical and poignant, dark and light, and is one of Twain’s many odes to the pleasures and... Read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Summary

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“The Battle of Blenheim,” also known as “After Blenheim,” is a satirical, antiwar poem by English Romantic poet Robert Southey, written in 1798 and published in the Morning Post newspaper on August 9 of that year. The poem, which is in the form of a ballad, looks back at the Battle of Blenheim, which was fought around the Bavarian town of Blindheim, in southern Germany, on August 2, 1704, during the War of the Spanish... Read The Battle of Blenheim Summary

The Battle of the Labyrinth is a fantasy-adventure novel inspired Greek mythology and written in 2008 by Rick Riordan. It is the fourth in the Percy Jackson series.The novel begins with Percy Jackson is at his freshman orientation at Good High School. Rachel Elizabeth Dare helps him fight two empousai, spectres who were disguised as cheerleaders. Percy flees to Camp Half-Blood, but Rachel remains. Percy is reunited with Annabeth, and they learn Grover is in... Read The Battle of the Labyrinth Summary

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IntroductionBritish author Roald Dahl first made his mark as a leading writer of children’s literature in 1961, when he published James and the Giant Peach. His subsequent books include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Matilda, and his 1982 novel The BFG (Big Friendly Giant), which was illustrated by Quentin Blake and based on a segment of Dahl’s 1975 book Danny, the Champion of the World. His books have been viewed as darker... Read The BFG Summary

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