The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Death has touched Liesel Meminger. Our first image of her is when the nine-year-old girl stands in the snow next to her dead brother. And so the narrator comes calling, because the narrator is death himself.

Liesel steals her first book that night, the "Gravediggers Handbook" belonging to the worker who will bury her brother. Then she's shipped off to a foster family, and her foster father teaches her to read with this book.

As she bears witness to the ravages of war on her country, her town, and her street, Liesel gets to know an unusual cast of characters -- from her friend who paints himself black and runs around the track pretending to be Jesse Owens to her own foster mother, an outwardly brutish character who cusses like a truck-driver.

Friends, colleagues, and family had begged me to read this book. As soon as I read death describing the way he sees colors, I knew that this was a masterpiece of innovative storytelling.

Bibliotherapeutic value: Many of the scenes are brutal, depressing, and harsh -- this is raw-boned life in the middle of a war. However, any teen will benefit from seeing war through the eyes of an "enemy" citizen. Also a strong reminder that first impressions can be deceiving. About how people cope with extreme grief over death and abandonment.

Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2006.

ISBN: 0375831003. $17.99.

Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

Probably the best book about war written specifically for teens, Walter Dean Myers' Fallen Angels follows Perry, a Harlem kid who enlists and is promptly sent into the thick of battle in Vietnam. Crestfallen because his dream of going to college wasn't realized, he fled New York, but -- as he's flown into the middle of a blistering, confusing war zone -- he quickly realizes that he had no idea what he was getting into.

In Vietnam, Perry (who spent the flight over innocently flirting with a nurse) realizes that the war is not petering out like he believed. His first night in camp is a horrifying wake up call. What follows is traumatic and eloquent, a war story that throws all of the problems of American culture -- homophobia, machismo, racism, poverty, class warfare -- into high relief.

One of the saddest, most brilliant, most real YA books that I've ever read.

Bibliotherapeutic value: In order to make this book feel so real, Myers had to include profanity and violence. The book, through its depiction of a unit filled with disparate and sundry characters, underscores the value of every human life. A sympathetic portrait of many different types of people and a clear-eyed look at how status quo American culture dehumanizes its "enemies" as much as war does.

Myers, Walter Dean. Fallen Angels. New York: Scholastic Books, 1988. (First published in 1984.)

ISBN: 0545055768. $6.99.