Taking Aim Power and Pain, Teens and Guns (Harper Collins)
DARK HOBBY
​"Off he goes.  He’ll make a good soldier, Gramps used to say.  Good at following directions. Fastest in his class, I’ll bet.  Took him what, two minutes to get it put together and loaded right? He searches the baby’s room for the old grain sacks but can’t find what she wants.  He pulls away the bale of hay with his big hand then tugs on the cord that lifts up the secret door.   He swoons for a moment. Sees them all lined up like sardines in the cans he and Gramps eat from. Bullets.  One by one he’s filled up this space.  Little by little.  Stolen from behind the cedar chest. From the box under the old magazines in the cellar. They seem to fall from the sky and Swayzee holds out his hands in supplication as he collects them all and hides them away in this hole.  He closes the trapdoor, shoves the bale back over and returns to her."

Sixteen celebrated authors bring us raw, insightful stories that explore the impact of guns on teens. These evocative voices each have a different story to tell, a different perspective to give.This collection of fiction tackles the tough questions of gun culture, the psychology of gun owners, the motivation of shooters, and gun violence—both the purpose and the danger, the hurt and the healing, victims and perpetrators—trying to get to the heart of the matter.From a boy whose low self-esteem is impacted when a gun comes into his possession to a student recalling a senseless tragedy that befell a favorite teacher, from a realistic look at hunting to a provocative look at a family that defies stereotypes, each emotional story stirs the debate to new levels.With a dazzling array of beloved YA authors, these honest stories will draw fans of Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock and Give a Boy a Gun.
Acclaimed contributors include Marc Aronson, Edward Averett, Francesca Lia Block, Chris Crutcher, Alex Flinn, Gregory Galloway, Jenny Hubbard, Peter Johnson, Ron Koertge, Chris Lynch, Walter Dean Myers, Joyce Carol Oates, Eric Shanower, Will Weaver, Elizabeth Wein, and Tim Wynne-Jones.

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The Rhyming Season (Clarion Books) 

"It was a big night in Hemlock. But you can have all the fun and laughter and hope and promise in one second, and in the next second all those things can take wing and fly to someone else's town."

Seventeen-year-old Brenda Jacobsen comes from a family of tall people. In the small logging town of Hemlock, Washington, being tall makes you better at trimming the high spots on trees or at playing basketball. Brenda's life has always revolved around basketball, particularly the career of her older brother, Benny, the town's rising star. But Benny died in a car accident last year, leaving Brenda and her parents without the star of their family and without a way to fill the huge hole in their lives.

Though Hemlock's dreams of basketball glory died along with her brother, Brenda is looking forward to playing on the less important girls' team. This year the girls planned to get the recognition they deserve, but that was before their coach left to take a better job. Now they're faced with a new coach, whose offbeat philosophy has the girls reciting lines from poems as they play. It brings them recognition, but not the kind they were hoping for. Still, when the sawmill closes down and Brenda's parents seem to be on the verge of breaking up, she and the rest of the team find inspiration in the last place they'd ever have expected--poetry. 

Awards:  2006 NYPL Books for the Teen Age List; 2006 Kansas State Reading Circle Recommendation

Reviews

What can I say? Great characters, great setting, great writing, great book! One of the best YA novels of the year.
-- Terry Trueman, Printz Honor Author of Stuck in Neutral

The sprinkling of recognizable poems (by Vachel Lindsay, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others) throughout the book will titillate teenage poetry buffs, and the approachable, emotive aspects of the text will please readers eager for a heartstring tug. The excitement of the girls' basketball team's poetic triumph all the way to the state tournament will only add to the book's appeal.
-- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books.

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Every Man for Himself (Dial Books for Young Readers)

"Grandma made me carry a pig around because she caught me with my nose in Jennifer Preston's ear."
Among other well-known YA authors, Edward Averett's story, "Pig Lessons," appears in Every Man for Himself: Ten Short Stories on Being a Guy.

Reviews

"Pig Lessons" is at once a funny and yet serious story of a 13-year-old boy's forced transformation from city to country life, as he strives to understand and accept life's realities.

Selected for the 2006 Best Books for Young Adults award.

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Rush Hour: Bad Boys (Delacorte Press)

"But kids passed around like this have an extra sense. It is somewhere between touch and sight. It is a shortcut sense. They don't have to talk or listen or feel. They just have to know."

Edward Averett's recent work also appears in Rush Hour, a literary journal for Young Adults from Delacorte Press. Bold, innovative, and eclectic, Rush Hour, is a cutting-edge literary journal of contemporary voices. Bad Boys is the knockout theme of Volume Two. And they're all the outsiders you might expect, along with some popular guys you wouldn't. Drifters, pranksters, jocks, rebels, monsters, and heroes, bad boys sometimes play by the rules, often misbehave, but always grab our attention.

Reviews
Most haunting of all is Edward Averett's "Joaquin Years," featuring a disturbed teenaged boy who mistakenly falls in league with a deadly role model. -- Kirkus Reviews

"Joaquin Years"...shines...will be sought by readers.
-- School Library Journal

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Three-Star Private Nuisance (iUniverse)

Seventeen year-old Ticker Naft can't read or write; his sister won't get out of bed; and his father has a worrisome health problem. Then there's that big mystery Grandma keeps hinting at about Grandpa and the long-ago house fire next door. 

When Grandpa dies abruptly after a smelt-eating contest, Ticker is thrown into an adult world that is at once captivating and cruel. Far from the safe haven of his special classes at school, he enters an apprenticeship on the local railroad, where he changes rails, pounds spikes, throws switches, and tries to figure out the often confusing intentions of his co-workers. 

But Ticker's true test comes when he is accused of a shameful crime he didn't commit. While he negotiates this tricky course on Grandpa's three-wheeled bicycle, events seem determined to bring him down. Ticker has no choice but to muster all his strength to keep his head above water while he tries to honor Grandpa's secret to life: Got to find a way.

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Homing (Teal Press, 1986)  

Three generations of women struggle through life, love, loss, and secrets.

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