These Young Adult Book Reviews Will Challenge The Intellect, Horrify The Imagination And Inspire The Cultivated Mind

As you may expect with books written by our family-favorite historian, Warren Carroll, The Guillotine and the Cross is a very vivid portrayal of the hardships brought on the people of France during the French Revolution. 

It gives the reader the well known as well as the little known facts about this era. And all is told in a way that, far from feeling combersomely instructive, is interesting and makes you want to finish the book in one sitting. 

This novel's retelling of the War of the Vendee is very inspiring! This novel makes the young adult book reviews list because it is also a little disturbing as the level of depravity exercised by the Architects of the Revolution are retold in vivid descriptions. This fact makes this novel a good young adult read.

To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee has such a powerful and true message that two years after its first publishing in 1960, there was a movie lifted from this book made.

The story takes place in Depression Era South Alabama and follows the lives of two young children, Jem and "Scout" Finch. Their father, Atticus, is a lawyer who gets embroiled in a case concerning a black man who has been accused of taking advantage of a white girl.

The children learn that many times innocent people can appear to be in the wrong and suffer for it.

Their neighbor tells them that mockingbirds do nothing to harm anything or anyone, they just sing to provide beautiful music for the world. It is a sin to kill such an innocent and harmless creature. This bird becomes an image of the many innocent and falsely accused people they see around themselves.

To Kill a Mockingbird is primarily a story that warns against common prejudices. Everyone who has ever lived in a small town will feel the similarities presented in this story and the true-to-life scenarios. It also follows a mystery about the "lunatic" who lives next to the children who "comes out" and turns out to be the children's best friend.

The distinct lesson of the story is telling of how strong societal pressure can be. A black man is falsely accused and is punished for it because no one on the jury is brave enough to say that they believe his word over the two white people who lie to shift the blame from themselves. 

The story is told from the perspective of Jean Louis "Scout" Finch. Scout is a six-year-old tomboy who is excited by the world of charms around her. She looks up to her brother who is four years older, Jem. Jem is more serious than his younger sister, at the age when boys start to grow up and Scout feels him growing ever farther from herself. Their father, Atticus, is a purposeful man, a lawyer. When the story begins, he is given a case that changes his image forever in his neighbors' eyes. 

The case is one black man against two white people. The black man, Tom Robinson, gives one version of a story, and a more likely one when cross-examined, and the white people tell another and wilder tale.

Atticus is hired to defend Tom Robinson. He does, and thoroughly, too, but Tom is still convicted. Although Atticus is able to convince everyone in the town that Tom Robinson is guiltless, the jury fail to do what is right but instead do what is expected of them.

Ashamed and vindictive, the real criminal does what he can to get back at all he sees as offending him. Atticus is one of them. 

The children learn about real-life and real challenges at early ages as they see their father through this great trial, suffering some of its consequences themselves. They see real violence wrought by one of their townsfolk, and they feel the loving neighbor whom they never expected kindness from.

To Kill a Mockingbird will amaze you with its raw truthfulness. Vivid descriptions bring the characters to life.

You hear the voice of Cal, the black maid who is all the mother Scout has ever known. You feel the comfort of Atticus' explanations when Scout gets into mischief and needs a talking to. You see the seasonal neighbor with his hair which is "snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff" and whose "head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies."

And you wonder and wait with the children to get a glimpse at "Boo" Radley, the lunatic who is mysteriously shut up in the house next door.

A lesson about life and the world that this book shows is that men as a whole may generally do what is right, but there are times when peer pressure will be strong enough to stifle almost every voice that will try to speak the truth.