11 short stories by 11 inspiring young adult authors make up this great collection. Each story features a teen and his/her ability to cope with and overcome a unique life challenge. Questionable boyfriends, telling your family you are gay, catching your mother in an affair and dealing with the death of a sibling are a few of the topics covered in this collection.

Comments:
This book is a fantastic introduction to several well known and celebrated young adult authors. The authors are primarily British, which gives the reader a bit of a cultural lesson through vocabulary and British euphemisms. Each piece is only a few pages long, so it is easy to read 2-3 stories in a sitting, and then come back to an entirely new setting, characters, and life-trial. What is unique to the collection is the positive outcome of each character’s issue. Despite losing her sight as a teenager, the main character in Malorie Blackman’s story demonstrates that a disability can be a blessing. Rosie Rushton’s “Skin Deep” is about a girl who is the victim of a bomb explosion. It takes her some time, but she comes to realize that her boyfriend continues to pursue her not because of her looks, but because of who she is as a person. It was a truly enlightening collection to read.

School Media Extensions
Because of the variety of struggles and challenges that the teens encounter in the stories, there are a number of ways this book could be used in the school media experience. Fitting in, divorce, coming out to your parents, physical deformity, death of a sibling – these are just a few of the topics that can help teens see how strong they can be in the face of adversity. Teens are tough and this collection of stories portrays some of the toughest situations that teens encounter and introduces them to characters that have overcome the same obstacles.

In addition, I think this collection would be good to used to introduce teens to some terrific British and American young adult authors, without having to commit to a full-length book. They can experience the writing style of an individual author and then decide whether or not they want to read more. ( )