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NOVELS BY PAUL GRIFFIN
THE ORANGE HOUSES (2009) - Nominee, YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 2009
Meet Tamika Sykes—Mik to her friends (if she had any). She’s hearing impaired and way too smart for her West Bronx high school. She copes by reading lips and selling homework answers, and looks forward to the time each day when she can be alone in her room drawing. She’s a tough girl who never gets close to anyone, until she meets Fatima, a teenage refugee who sells newspapers on Mik’s block. Both Mik and Fatima unite in their efforts to befriend Jimmi, a homeless vet who is shunned by the rest of the community.
The events that follow when these three outcasts converge will break open their close-knit community and change the lives of those living in the Orange Houses in explosive and unexpected ways.
TEN MILE RIVER (2008) - Nominee, YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 2008, YALSA Quick Picks 2008
Best friends Ray and Jose are not your teenagers. They’ve escaped foster care and juvenile detention centers to live on their own together in an abandoned building located near Manhattan Park called Ten Mile River. With no use for school or families, street-smart Jose and bookish, introspective Ray have everything they need in each other. They are closer than brothers until they meet Trini. She’s smart, beautiful, and confident, and they both fall for her immediately. As tension creeps into their relationship, Ray must struggle to find an identity separate from Jose and try to envision a future for himself beyond Jose and Ten Mile River.