Tundra Telegram: Books You’ll Wish Tripped and Fell Into Your Bed

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we step forward into a few subjects that are always talked about, and filter out some great books that are really good 4 u.

This past Friday, young singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo released her highly anticipated second album, GUTS, a couple months after the release of lead single “Vampire” and just one month after the release of “Bad Idea Right?” (A song title which the editors within us feel really should have a comma.) The album is a new collection of pop-punk anthems and over-the-top ballads about some of her (and our) favorite things: awful boys, awkwardness, self-loathing, and parties you want to leave.

We’ve listened (and re-listened) to GUTS to figure out what books for young readers are the most logical fit for the twelve (non-hidden) tracks of the album. Without further ado, we present book accompaniments to Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS, from picture books to YA – something we think is a good idea. Right?

PICTURE BOOKS

Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”: A song all about social anxiety, awkwardness, and the fear that everything you do is inherently embarrassing? That reminds us of Are You Mad At Me? by Tyler Feder and Cody Feder, a picture book about an extremely nervous ostrich who constantly worries she’s doing the wrong thing and that someone is mad at her. This results in a neck movement that Opal the ostrich calls “The Noodles.” (Note to Olivia Rodrigo: “Noodle Ballad” also has a nice ring to it.)

The Grudge”: While the song is mostly about a friendship of sorts marked by betrayal and manipulation, we’d like to focus on the difficulty the narrator has in forgiving and forgetting the damage done. Hence, we recommend Petal the Angry Cow by Maureen Fergus and Olga Demidova, a book about a cow who flies into a rage no matter the grievance, whether the horse steps on her foot or the dog steals her favorite chapeau. Petal seeks advice on how to let go of grudges, and it turns out the farm’s goose is not the best animal to turn to. (Though if online detectives are to be believed regarding the song’s inspiration, we could also recommend Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography by Wendy Loggia and Elisa Chavarri, but we try not to buy into internet rumors.)

Logical”: Rodrigo’s ballad about self-delusion (and now you got me thinkin’ / two plus two equals five) and a manipulative boyfriend may seem a far cry from Minh Lê and Raissa Figuero’s picture book about an imaginary friend, Real To Me, but the parallels are there! (Others tried to tell me that she wasn’t real, that she was just imaginary.) Both are portraits of the lies we tell ourselves (even if, as in the case of the book, they are happy ones) and how to move past them.

Making the Bed”: You might think it’s difficult to find a picture book that matches the emotions of ennui and dissatisfaction with fame heard in “Making the Bed,” but that’s where you’re wrong. Arthur Who Wrote Sherlock by Linda Bailey and Isabelle Follath is not just a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the world’s greatest detective, but an account of the author’s struggles with the success of Sherlock and how he felt trapped by his own creation’s popularity.

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

Vampire”: So, the song isn’t about a literal vampire (though the subject apparently only comes out at night), but we couldn’t waste an opportunity to mention a wonderful middle-grade book about the real thing: Don’t Want To Be Your Monster by Deke Moulton. Neither of the vampire brothers in the humorous horror-mystery are as sociopathic as the guy in “Vampire,” but they do remain bloodsuckers.

Pretty Isn’t Pretty”: This is a song about impossible beauty standards for women and girls, and the devastating self-image problems that usually result. Unfortunately, there are a lot of stories with those elements, but Barely Floating by Lilliam Rivera is perhaps the most uplifting. Natalia De La Cruz Rivera y Santiago is part of a synchronized swimming team, the LA Mermaids, but is often underestimated in a sport where girls are expected to be thin and white. Barely Floating explores what it means to be at home in your own skin (even when you’re underwater).

Get Him Back!”: Who doesn’t love a song with an exclamation mark?(!) And this pop-punk track about trying to win a boy back who’s probably bad for you certainly deserves the punctuation. While the titular Penny in Penny Draws a Best Friend by Sara Shepard isn’t trying to win back a boy, she is trying to figure out why her former best friend Violet is avoiding her and hanging out with all the meanest girls in school. It’s a book about letting go of friends who aren’t right for you and making room for others who are.

Teenage Dream”: Not to be confused with the Katy Perry hit, this song was written by an actual teenager. The subject is birthdays and the conflicting emotions of feeling simultaneously too young and too old. Those are resolutely not the conflicting emotions at play in Megabat and the Not-Happy Birthday by Anna Humphrey and Kass Reich, but the book is all about mixed birthday emotions. In the book, those feelings are about hating your new glasses and getting into a big fight with your mostly-verbal bat friend (two specific feelings the singer-songwriter doesn’t touch on).

YOUNG ADULT

All-American B—h”: Finally, we enter the world of YA, a perfect age category for the oeuvre of Olivia Rodrigo. The opening song, which speaks to the unachievable double standards facing women and girls, has a title inspired by the writing of Joan Didion. Tragically, Didion never wrote children’s books or YA, but we think a good pairing for this track is On the Subject of Unmentionable Things by Julia Walton, in which rule-following goody-two-shoes Phoebe Townsend lives a secret life as a sex education blogger who raises the ire of a local mayoral candidate who is all-too-keen to enforce some double standards.

Bad Idea Right?”: This banger is all about the time-honored tradition of reuniting with ex against your better judgment. That immediately made us think of Amanda Woody’s novel They Hate Each Other, in which Jonah and Dylan, who dislike each other immensely but everyone thinks should be together, hook up one wild homecoming night. Mutually horrified, they decide to fake-date, so they can end their relationship with a big, staged fight to prove their incompatibility to everyone else. One can only imagine what kind of idea that is.

Love is Embarrassing”: A song that explores the mortifying experiences of young love and how that affects your feelings of self-worth and mental state can find few better matches than Something More by Jackie Khalilieh. Diagnosed as autistic before the school year begins, fifteen-year-old Palestinian Canadian Jessie finds herself romantically entangled with two very different boys that – especially given her difficulties with certain social cues – often leaves her reeling and confused.

Lacy”: “Lacy” is a lyrically intriguing song that looks at a relationship between two female friends that blurs the line between love and hate, envy and total worship. In many ways the song reminds us of the fraught friendship between Beth and the beautiful, magnetic, but perhaps untrustworthy Edie in the 1983 New York coming-of-age tale Friends Like These by Meg Rosoff.

Feel-Good Holiday Reads

‘Tis the season to wrap yourself in a blanket and read an adorable romance! Here are the ones we’re planning on reading (or, in some cases, re-reading!) over the holidays.

All I Want for Christmas
By Wendy Loggia
240 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780593179833 | Underlined
Bailey Briggs is counting down the days to Christmas: she lives for holiday music, baking cookies, going on snowy sleigh rides, and wearing her light-up reindeer ears to work at Winslow’s bookstore. But all she really wants this year is the one thing she doesn’t have: someone special to kiss under the mistletoe. And she’s 100 percent certain that that someone isn’t Jacob Marley – athlete, player, and of questionable taste in girlfriends – and that Charlie, the mysterious stranger with the British accent, is the romantic lead of her dreams. Is she right? This will be a December to remember, filled with real-life Christmas magic . . . and, if she stays on Santa’s nice list, a wish that just might come true.

New Year’s Kiss
By Lee Matthews
256 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780593179857 | Underlined
Tess and her opinionated older sister Lauren are spending the week after Christmas at the snowy Evergreen Lodge in Vermont and they aren’t happy about it. Their stern grandmother, who owns the holiday resort, is not known for her warmth and good humor. But when shy, straight-laced Tess meets Christopher in the lobby, things are suddenly looking up. And when she decides to get out of her comfort zone and create a bucket list of things to accomplish before the New Year-like singing in public and skiing a black-diamond slope – Christopher is happy to help, even as he keeps a secret that could turn everything upside down. When the ball drops, will Tess and Christopher share a magical kiss-or will Tess start the new year off alone?

So, This Is Christmas
By Tracy Andreen
368 Pages | Ages 14+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9780593353127 | Viking BFYR
When Finley Brown returned to her hometown of Christmas, Oklahoma, from boarding school, she expected to find it just as she left it. Christmas hasn’t changed much in her sixteen years. But instead she returns to find that her best friend is dating her ex-boyfriend, her parents have separated, and her archnemesis got a job working at her grandmother’s inn. And she certainly didn’t expect to find the boy she may or may not have tricked into believing that Christmas was an idyllic holiday paradise on her grandmother’s doorstep. It’s up to Finley to make sure he gets the Christmas he was promised. This is Finley’s Christmas. It’s about home and family and friends and finding her place, and along the way she also finds the best Christmas present of all: love.

The Holiday Switch
By Tif Marcelo
272 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780593379554 | Underlined
Lila Santos is ready for her last winter break of high school. The snow in her small town of Holly, New York, is plentiful, the mood is as cozy as a fuzzy Christmas sweater, and she’s earning extra cash working at the local inn – AKA the setting of the greatest film of all time, Holiday by the Lake – while moonlighting as an anonymous book blogger. But her perfect holiday plans crash to a halt when her boss’s frustratingly cute nephew, Teddy Rivera, becomes her coworker.  Lila is type A; Teddy is type “Anything but Lila’s Way,” and the two of them can’t stop butting heads over tangled icicle lights and messy gift shop merch. But when they accidentally switch phones one afternoon, they realize they’ve both been hiding things from each other. Will their secrets – and an unexpected snowstorm – bring these rivals together?

Cozy Up with These Holiday Romances

‘Tis the season to cuddle up with a mug of hot chocolate and a cute holiday read. You’ll have to make the drink yourself (sorry), but luckily, we have the book recommendations! Check them out below and make sure to pick them up from your favourite local bookstore!

All I Want for Christmas
By Wendy Loggia
240 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780593179833 | Underlined
Bailey Briggs is counting down the days to Christmas: she lives for holiday music, baking cookies, going on snowy sleigh rides,and wearing her light-up reindeer ears to work at Winslow’s bookstore. But all she really wants this year is the one thing she doesn’t have: someone special to kiss under the mistletoe. And she’s 100 percent certain that that someone isn’t Jacob Marley — athlete, player, and of questionable taste in girlfriends — and that Charlie, the mysterious stranger with the British accent, is the romantic lead of her dreams. Is she right? This will be a December to remember, filled with real-life Christmas magic . . . and, if she stays on Santa’s nice list, a wish that just might come true.

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares
By Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
288 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780593309605 | Knopf BFYR
16-year-old Lily has left a red notebook full of challenges on her favorite bookstore shelf, waiting for just the right guy to come along and accept its dares. Dash, in a bad mood during the holidays, happens to be the first guy to pick up the notebook and rise to its challenges. What follows is a whirlwind romance as Dash and Lily trade dares, dreams, and desires in the notebook they pass back and forth at locations all across New York City. But can their in-person selves possibly connect as well as their notebook versions, or will their scavenger hunt end in a comic mismatch of disastrous proportions?

It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories
Edited by Katherine Locke and Laura Silverman
Foreword by Mayim Bialik
320 Pages | Ages 12+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9780525646167 | Knopf BFYR
A Jewish boy falls in love with a fellow counselor at summer camp. A group of Jewish friends take the trip of a lifetime. A girl meets her new boyfriend’s family over Shabbat dinner. Two best friends put their friendship to the test over the course of a Friday night. A Jewish girl feels pressure to date the only Jewish boy in her grade. Hilarious pranks and disaster ensue at a crush’s Hanukkah party. From stories of confronting their relationships with Judaism to rom-coms with a side of bagels and lox, It’s a Whole Spiel features one story after another that says yes, we are Jewish, but we are also queer, and disabled, and creative, and political, and adventurous, and anything we want to be. You will fall in love with this insightful, funny, and romantic Jewish anthology from a collection of diverse Jewish authors.

Let It Snow
By John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
368 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9781101998618 | Speak
An ill-timed storm on Christmas Eve buries the residents of Gracetown under multiple feet of snow and causes quite a bit of chaos. One brave soul ventures out into the storm from her stranded train, setting off a chain of events that will change quite a few lives. Over the next three days one girl takes a risky shortcut with an adorable stranger, three friends set out to win a race to the Waffle House (and the hash brown spoils), and the fate of a teacup pig falls into the hands of a lovesick barista.

New Year’s Kiss
By Lee Matthews
256 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780593179857 | Underlined
Tess and her opinionated older sister Lauren are spending the week after Christmas at the snowy Evergreen Lodge in Vermont and they aren’t happy about it. Their stern grandmother, who owns the holiday resort, is not known for her warmth and good humor. But when shy, straight-laced Tess meets Christopher in the lobby, things are suddenly looking up. And when she decides to get out of her comfort zone and create a bucket list of things to accomplish before the New Year-like singing in public and skiing a black-diamond slope-Christopher is happy to help, even as he keeps a secret that could turn everything upside down. When the ball drops, will Tess and Christopher share a magical kiss-or will Tess start the new year off alone?

What Light
By Jay Asher
272 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780448493640 | Razorbill
Sierra’s family runs a Christmas tree farm in Oregon — it’s a bucolic setting for a girl to grow up in, except that every year, they pack up and move to California to set up their Christmas tree lot for the season. So Sierra lives two lives: her life in Oregon and her life at Christmas. And leaving one always means missing the other. Until this particular Christmas, when Sierra meets Caleb, and one life eclipses the other. By reputation, Caleb is not your perfect guy: years ago, he made an enormous mistake and has been paying for it ever since. But Sierra sees beyond Caleb’s past and becomes determined to help him find forgiveness and, maybe, redemption. As disapproval, misconceptions, and suspicions swirl around them, Caleb and Sierra discover the one thing that transcends all else: true love.