What better way to escape a long winter at home than with books?! Get cozy on your couch and Travel the World from Home by reading some YA books that will fuel your wanderlust. Don’t forget to track your reading through February 27 to win prizes through our Winter Reading Program! Learn more at fondulaclibrary.org/2020/12/30/2021-adult-winter-reading-program/. 

A Manga Lover’s Tokyo Travel Guide: My Favorite Things to See and Do in Japan! by Evangeline Neo

In this captivating Tokyo travel guide, manga artist and author Evangeline Neo travels to the Japanese capital with her mascots (Kopi & Matcha) in tow, bringing you to all the otaku sights this city has to offer! She shows you where to shop for manga memorabilia in Akihabara and Nakano, takes you on a tour of famous anime and manga museums like Studio Ghibli and Sanrio Puroland, and shares her experiences at a cosplay studio, a maid and butler café, and a manga drawing class. Eva brings readers to all the must-see Tokyo sites as well — from Asakusa’s Sensoji Temple to Tokyo Tower and the Meiji Shrine — and introduces travelers to sushi train restaurants, hot spring baths, kimono makeover sessions, and day trips to Mt. Fuji! Along the way, she shows you all her favorite places to shop and eat, and gives advice on what to pack, what to buy, how to get around, and even how to speak a few words of survival Japanese.

Love From A to Z by S.K. Ali

Zayneb, a Muslim American high school senior, leaves for spring break in Doha, Qatar, a week early when she is suspended for a note she wrote in class aout her Islamophobic history teacher. Adam, a Muslim Canadian college freshman, is returning to Doha to see his father and sister, with some unfortunate news about his health that he’s reluctant to disclose. Zayneb’s passion for justice fills her with righteous anger that she finds difficult to direct. Adam is a calm peace-seeker who wishes he didn’t feel quite so alone. What they have in common: each has been keeping a “Marvels and Oddities” journal (“recording the wonders and thorns in the garden of life”), based on an ancient book they’d both discovered. Sparks fly – but will their differences threaten to drive them apart?

A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

Henry “Monty” Montague doesn’t care that his roguish passions are far from suitable for the gentleman he was born to be. But as Monty embarks on his grand tour of Europe, his quests for pleasure and vice are in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy.

So Monty vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

Atlas Obscura by Joshua Foer

More a cabinet of curiosities than traditional guidebook, Atlas Obscura revels in the unexpected, the overlooked, the bizarre, and the mysterious. Every page gets to the very core of why humans want to travel in the first place: to be delighted and disoriented, uprooted from the familiar and amazed by the new. With its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, and new city guides, it is a book you can open anywhere and be transported.

In a Perfect World by Trish Doller

Caroline Kelly is excited to be spending her summer vacation working at the local amusement park with her best friend, exploring weird Ohio with her boyfriend, and attending soccer camp with the hope she’ll be her team’s captain in the fall. But when Caroline’s mother is hired to open an eye clinic in Cairo, Egypt, Caroline’s plans are upended. Caroline is now expected to spend her summer and her senior year in a foreign country, away from her friends, her home, and everything she’s ever known. With this move, Caroline predicts she’ll spend her time navigating crowded streets, eating unfamiliar food, and having terrible bouts of homesickness. But what she finds instead is a culture that surprises her, a city that astounds her, and a charming, unpredictable boy who challenges everything she thought she knew about life, love, and privilege.

– Katie Smith, Reference Specialist

The weather is getting colder – so it’s the perfect time to snuggle up and explore YA Fantasy audiobooks in winter-themed settings!

These audiobook titles are available for instant download on Hoopla. Click on any title below to log onto your Hoopla account (using your library card number and PIN/password) and start listening today!

A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos

Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia cares little about appearances. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima, and, what’s more, she possesses the ability to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan. She must leave all she knows behind and follow her fiancé to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, in the presence of her inscrutable future husband, she slowly realizes that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf—her wolf—is a chilling presence she can’t seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human… until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It’s her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human—or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett 

At 9, Tiffany Aching defeated the cruel Queen of Fairyland. At 11, she banished an ancient body-stealing evil. At 13, Tiffany faces a new challenge: a boy. And boys can be a bit of a problem when you’re thirteen . . . . But the Wintersmith isn’t exactly a boy. He is Winter itself-snow, gales, icicles-all of it. When he has a crush on Tiffany, he may make her roses of ice, but his nature is blizzards and avalanches. And he wants Tiffany to stay in his gleaming, frozen world. Forever. Tiffany will need all her cunning to make it to Spring. She’ll also need her friends, from junior witches to the legend…

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

Frozen meets The Bloody Chamber in this feminist fantasy reimagining of the Snow White fairytale.

Sixteen-year-old Mina is motherless, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone—has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do-and who to be-to win back the only mother she’s ever known…or else defeat her once and for all.

Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones

Deep in his terrifying realm underground, the cold and forbidding Goblin King casts a dark shadow over nineteen-year-old Liesl. Her grandmother had always warned her to follow the old laws, for every year on the longest night of winter the Goblin King will emerge into the waking world in search of his eternal bride. Sensible and plain, Liesl knows it’s her duty to keep her beautiful sister safe from harm, but she wishes only to indulge in her wild, captivating music, composed and played in secret in the Goblin King’s honor. When her beautiful sister Käthe is stolen by the Goblin King, Liesl knows she must set aside her childish fantasies to journey to the Underground and save her. Drawn despite herself to the strange, beautiful world she finds–and the mysterious man who rules it–she finds herself facing an impossible choice. With time and the old laws working against her, Liesl must discover who she truly is before her fate is sealed.

Hunted by Meagan Spooner

Beauty knows the Beast’s forest in her bones — and in her blood. After all, her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering its secrets. So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters out of their comfortable home among the aristocracy and back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas — or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman — but when Yeva’s father goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance. The Beast. Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange creature back into his own territory-a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of magical creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin, or salvation. Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?

-Katie Smith, Reference Specialist