Skip to footer

3 thoughtful summer reads for teens

When fat novels with beachy covers rule bookstore shelves, you know it's summer. But must we sacrifice strong plots for frothier characters and sunnier settings just because we're sitting poolside? Books meant to be read under a shady tree can be page turners, too. Here are three for teens that fit the bill. 

1. 'The Moon and More,' by Sarah Dessen

  • By Augusta Scattergood Contributor

No matter the season, a new teen novel from Sarah Dessen is cause for fan jubilation. In The Moon and More, the author returns to the southern beach town of Colby to tell the story from a native's point of view. When narrator Emaline, whose family owns a beach rental business, breaks up with the boy she's known and liked/loved forever, what does she do? She jumps right into a relationship with a summer visitor who seems nice enough – interesting, even. Turns out, he's neither. Teens will totally get Emaline's dilemma: "It seemed like things either stayed just the same or changed irrevocably. And like most times I found myself with hard choices, I just wished there was something clear and easy, right in between."

As usual, Dessen's characters are delightful. I was especially drawn to Morris, Emaline's best friend's boyfriend. What an interesting personality, hidden beneath a the facade of a slow starter. Kind of a bumbling ne'er-do-well at first, his transformation was perfect. He's the kind of character to give a fun summer read just the right amount of food for thought.

So for those three female teen readers on the planet who don't already love Sarah Dessen's books: grab this one. It's a perfectly relaxing book set in a sleepy Southern beach town. Delightful, skillfully told with minimal sex, violence, language – all age-appropriate. I give "The Moon and More" a very large thumbs up.

1 of 3
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.