River is a practised liar. Not for him a mere dog-ate-my-homework excuse. No, his schoolwork would first have to be taken up in a helicopter and then used to staunch the bleeding of a Doberman bite. The Liar's Handbook by Keren David (Barrington Stoke Teen, 6.99) is River's record of his investigations into other, more serious lies. He believes his mothers boyfriend is a con man and mystery surrounds his real father's disappearance. River's cheeky, feisty voice is appealing and approachable and the book is designed to be super-readable by teens who find books challenging. Intriguingly shaped like a passport (central to the plot), The Liar's Handbook packs more twists, thrills and topical discussion points into its 125 pages than many full-length novels.
It is a good year for YA thrillers. On the spring must-read list are Elizabeth Wein’s Agatha Christie-like The Pearl Thief and Penny Joelson’s I Have No Secrets, in which a teenager with severe cerebral palsy becomes involved with a murder case. Out now is HEAR, by Robin Epstein (Soho Press, £8.95), in which rich kid Kass joins a summer study group at Henley University, and discovers her class are ESP guinea pigs — and one of them is doomed. Good edge-of-seat stuff, bizarrely based on a real project at Princeton.
Gruesome food, freezing rooms and sadistic staff are part of life for twins Kitty and Kay at a 1950s Jewish children’s home. Joe Rosenthal’s Growing up in Babylon (Hawkwood, £6.99) also offers glimpses of happier times at Shabbat and yomtov. Age nine to 14.
Kristine Keese survived childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto but when she arrived in New York in 1946 at the age of 12, her new classmates did not believe what she had suffered. Seventy years later, with astounding detail and clarity, she tells her story in Shadows of Survival, a Child’s Memoir of the Warsaw Ghetto (Academic Studies Press, £20.50). Some of her experiences are those of any child — being so engrossed in her library books that she allows the dinner to burn, for instance. Others are drastically different — such as walking home from a bread-buying expedition and having the loaf, still in her mother’s hand, bitten by a starving child. For older teenagers and adults.
