A look at some of the wonderfully creative staff recommendations in the Teen section!
One of our favorite tasks as booksellers here at BookPeople is creating staff recommendation cards. You may have seen them last time you visited, spread out on our shelves all over the store. You may have even bought a book because of a particular card!
These are fun, creative, personal recommendations from booksellers who genuinely loved a book so much they decided to sit down and tell you– or show you–how the book made them feel. Here are a few that caught our eye this week!
Tomoko loves Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On and is SO excited about the sequel (yes, finally, it’s official!!!) Tomoko is our art director, so it’s almost unfair how gorgeous her staff card artwork is. About Carry On, she says: “This book is so much fun! Based on the Simon Snow series at the heart of Fangirl, Carry On borrows from, diversifies, and talks back to familiar Chosen One stories (lots of HP references!). Rowell has crafted an incredible magical world that is not only (really) entertaining, but representational and thoughtful, so very British, so wonderfully meta with great characters and magic system, and so much fun! Carry On is everything! And can you really resist that cover?”
Merrilee absolutely LOVES historical fiction, and you can tell just from reading
her recommendations. Look at the detail in this card! About The Librarian of Auschwitz, she says: “Historical fiction based on a true story. I can NOT imagine having one tenth of the bravery of this 14 year old girl who risked her life and the lives of everyone around her. To protect books! The most amazing, sad, moving, uplifting book I’ve read in years.”
MK also got creative with her staff card for People Like Us by Dana Mele. The email format gives a glimpse into what the book is about, just as much as the content does! MK says:
“Dear Kay,
People Like Us is a riveting exploration into the world of upper class teen girls in the most gruesome way. When a girl turns up dead on the night of the Halloween dance, it’s up to Kay Donovan to find the killer and clear her own name. Told from the perspective of an outsider who found her way in the Elite world of Bate’s Boarding School, this book brings a fresh edge to the YA mystery genre.
P.S. At the risk of sounding cliché, picking up this book would go well for you. It always has, hasn’t it?” 
Moving into the Teen Fantasy section, we spotted a card by Ellen recommending Tochi Onyebuchi’s Beasts Made of Night. We hosted Tochi in partnership with the Texas Teen Book Festival last year and he was amazing! Ellen says: “A society where aki (sin eaters) are employed to absorb and absolve the sins of others, yet they occupy the bottom ring of society’s ladder. Sins manifest as animals, and mark the aki with a tattoo. Taj is the best aki around and gets mixed up with the royal family and political plots. He’s privy to many secrets… lush, epic, and magical.”
Our booksellers adore graphic novels and we’re so excited about new ones coming out in the coming months (*cough* Laura Dean *cough*), but we wanted to highlight an older favorite recommended by former bookseller, Walden! She calls The Backstagers “Lumberjanes queer brother” and says: “When freshman Jory changes schools he finds a stage crew family called The Backstagers. But something dark lurks behind the curtain in a secret, magical world and Jory must protect the magic of theatre.”
BookPeople 