When I decided to review all books in the top 100 of best Teen Fiction, most of the books were new to me. But obviously there are also a few on this list that I have read and the Harry Potter series is one of them. It’s kind of weird to review this series after everyone who wants to read them has done so already and everyone who hasn’t, has no intention of ever doing so. But The Harry Potter series is actually number 1 on that list, making it the best teen fiction ever, and that is not without reason.
The biggest issue for Christians with Harry Potter Series
Personally, I loved these books. I though the plot (which I’m not going to describe here, I assume everyone is familiar with it by now) was brilliant and well executed, I love it when small things in the first book turn out to have great importance in the end. Harry, Hermione and Ron are great characters that you love to read about, even in their struggles. The secondary characters are colorful and quirky, like the whole Weasel family, Luna Lovegood and Professor Snape.
Unlike many other books in the 
a while ago. It was a free Kindle deal once and I took advantage of that. I’d never heard of Maureen Johnston, who is a reasonably well-known young adult author by the way and the book didn’t leave much of an impression on me.
The Hunger Games are hot right now with the second movie releasing its first previews, but that’s now why I am reviewing this series of three books. I’ve decided to 
by now or have at least heard of it, but let’s give a short recap of the main story without giving away too many spoilers. The US is a different place and has become a nation called Panem, divided into twelve districts. The Capitol rules the nation with iron hand. In some districts, life is good, but that is not the case for District 12 where 16-year old Katniss Everdeen lives. She has to hunt and trade on the black market to help her mother and sister survive.
“A hundred years from now, what will you have left behind? What will your legacy be?”
, subtitled ‘The crash course in mastering your life right now’. It’s aptly titled, for a crash course it is. In 18 short chapters the author, Robert D. Smith (often referred to as ‘TheRobertD’) offers insights, wisdom and advice on how to make each day count. The book was much shorter than I expected, I finished it in less than an hour.
by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale:
Usually I’m not a big fan of books that start with fictional stories. Andy Stanley’s 
for instance. The reason is that I love stories, I love fiction, but it’s not meant to get a lot of information across. In writer’s terms that’s known as infodumping and it pulls the reader out of the story.
starts with about junior high pastor Logan and his struggles to get his vision across in his church was helpful. I think a lot of youth ministry pastors will recognize elements of his story and journey. Still, it was the second part of the book in which author and youth pastor Joel Mayward explained the concepts of Leading Up that was the most useful for me.
[This book is part of our 
(number 24 on the NPR’s Top 100 of Teen Fiction) is the story of Hannah Baker and why she committed suicide. It’s told through the eyes of the shy Clay Jensen who had a crush on her and who is sent a box full of tapes from Hannah after her death. It turns out, she wants these tapes forwarded to every person who has contributed to her death, thirteen in total.
I love books that are written from in-the-trenches experience in youth ministry and 
is exactly such a book. Jeanne Mayo is one of those youth workers where calling her a veteran is putting it mildly and in this book she shares her wisdom on how to create a friendship culture in your youth group. Because that’s the secret behind a thriving youth group: a friendship culture.
is a very serious minded book. Anthony Delgado, a youth pastor from southern California, has written a concise how-to-book on hermeneutics (which is a fancy word for interpreting a Bible passage to distill God’s intended meaning) aimed at youth workers and other ministry workers.
Speak
is a controversial book, it’s been banned from several libraries and high school curricula for its supposedly ‘pornographic nature’. I have read a lot of young adult fiction lately and Speak is actually one of the novels with the least sexual content, so I don’t get this. Aside from that, I’m really not a fan of censorship and that’s putting it mildly…
Until we moved to Germany in the summer of 2010, I had no experience with rural youth ministry. I’d lived in cities all my life and the last few years in Holland, we’d lived in the most densely populated area known as the ‘Randstad’.
. This guy knows what he’s talking about as he has a lot of experience in doing youth ministry in rural areas. A lot of what he wrote was familiar to me, as I’ve made the same discoveries.
