Book recommendations for teens

World Book Day is round the corner, next Sunday!

And I would like to recommend you all two books written by one of my favourite authors, China Miéville. He grew up in London and since he was a little child, he has been fascinated by fantasy fiction, science-fiction -spaceships, aliens- and drawing monsters. By Yurena Sar.

Un Lun Dun

The first book I would highly recommend is “Un Lun Dun”. It tells the adventures of a group of girls who are very good friends among themselves. The “Leaders” of this group of girls are two girls called Zanna and Deeba and one day, when they are chatting in the playground at school, they notice something strange… there is a fox starting at them and it does not seem to be scared of humans!

After this experience, they start realising many more strange things happen to them and soon they decide to investigate. Shortly afterwards, they discover a door which takes them to Un Lun Dun, a city which looks like London but is inhabited by wonderful and weird creatures like Hemi the halfghost.

But Un Lun Dun is not all about making new friends… they also find an enemy! A huge cloud of smoke called The Smog which wants to destroy humanity so both Zanna and Deeba, with a little help from their friends, will have to find a way to save the world. Will it be possible?

This book is a lot of fun and can be read in just one afternoon. The illustrations are amazing too.

King Rat

If you are a teenager and you would like to read something with a more complex plot and/or you are interested in mystery novels, the book to read is “King Rat”. Don’t get scared by looking at the cover book though! It is not all that frightening and the novel covers other topics such as music and animals.

The main character is Saul who shares a flat with his father in central London. One evening he gets back home feeling very tired so he heads straight to bed in order to catch up on sleep. In the morning he is shocked when he discovers his father has been murdered and worse! He is the main suspect in this murder case and wanted by the police. He is taking to a prison cell and there he gets a most unexpected visit… a “creature” which calls himself King Rat.

Saul finds out he is half rat and half human and it changes his life completely as he begins to explore other parts of London with his new buddy King Rat and other rat allies, all while he continues investigating the circumstances of his father’s killing.

The action in this book is non-stop and it will make you think a lot about issues like friendship, the “skills” one needs to survive in a big city, and animal welfare.