First published in 1971, Go Ask Alice was the YA phenomenon of its day, and features prominently on America’s Most Banned Books List. It’s the cautionary tale of a vulnerable teenager, lured into the heady world of the 1960’s counter culture. Even the squarest parents know what that means. Drugs, sex and general depravity must surely follow. Originally purporting to be the most sensational of real-life diaries, these days Go Ask Alice is viewed as a fictional and somewhat hysterical piece of anti-drugs propaganda.

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Here in the UK, the month of May brings Mental Health Awareness Week, a brilliant opportunity for Bookstoker to explore the literary side of the subject. Mind Your Head by Juno Dawson is a book we feel no teenager should be without. Packed with information and strategies on how to cope with a range of issues, this practical guide will become a personal counsellor residing on your bookshelf.

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‘In order for the higher orders of species to thrive…the lower orders must be curbed.’ A line to chill the spine of the most seasoned thriller fan. Shortlisted for the YA Book Prize 2018, the deliciously dark S.T.A.G.S is the perfect lazy weekend read.

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‘If you was my wife, I’d take a stick to you.’ When 17-year-old Evelyn witnesses a suffragette being jeered at and pelted with missiles, it sparks a pledge of solidarity with the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Her contemporaries, Nell and May, have different stories to tell but all three girls are raging at the confines of their metaphorical cages. Set in Edwardian London, where women’s lives revolved around home and hearth, Things a Bright Girl Can Do follows their personal quests to live by the motto Deeds not Words.

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‘The monster is the real hero of the novel. Discuss.’ One of the many thorny essay questions set to this perennial school syllabus favourite. Written at the dawn of science fiction, crackling with horror, and strikingly ‘fettered to grief,’ 2018 marks 200 years since Frankenstein’s publication, an ideal moment to review this illuminating young students edition. Read full Review

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers.

Or so said Socrates. If the great philosophers were moaning about teenagers 2500 years ago, this surely indicates some curious features that are timeless and universal in the adolescent brain. Nicola Morgan takes a humorous and non-patronising approach to revealing the science behind the subject. Ambitiously aimed at both teens and their parents, it may be just what you’ve been waiting for.

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Is it true? Do they really die at the end? Well, the Grim Reaper certainly stalks through this book, but it’s also very much concerned with big, bold, shining life. Teenagers Mateo and Rufus inhabit an alternative New York City, one in which an agency known as Death-Cast informs citizens when their demise is near. Death will occur within 24 hours, exact means and time unknown. When this dark fate befalls Mateo and Rufus, they embark on one last grand adventure, to live a lifetime in a single day.

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Calling every teenager that thinks poetry is boring! Shelve your prejudices and open your mind to Kate Tempest, who honed her craft ‘rapping at strangers’ on night buses and all-night raves. In Brand New Ancients, she has created a poem in the tradition of the epic myths, and fused it with a tale of urban angst in south east London.

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