My Book of Life by Angel
- Finalist, Los Angeles Time Book Prize
- Winner of the CLA Young Adult Book Award 2013
- Selected for the Horn Book Fanfare 2012
- Selected for the CCBC Choices 2013
- Booklist Best Book of the Year
- Selected for the The Bankstreet College of Education's Best Books of the Year 2013
- Short-listed for the OLA White Pine Award 2014
- Kirkus Best Teen Books of the Year
- IRA Notable Books for a Global Society
- CCBC Choice (Univ. of WI)
- Tri-State Reviews Committee Books of Note
- Finalist, Maine Cream of the Crop Master List
- Amelia Bloomer Project/Feminist Task Force
- Georgia Peach Book Award Master List
- Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year
- ME Cream of the Crop Master List
Reviews for My Book of Life by Angel
Publishers Weekly
"... the triumph of this story is in Angel's painfully real voice. Her matter-of-fact descriptions of her time with the johns are searing, and the casual brutality of her life will haunt readers. Exquisite."
Kirkus
"An astonishing, wrenching achievement."
Booklist
"In this novel in verse, Leavitt has created in Angel's voice a perfect mix of innocence and experience. Angel's story is uniquely her own, and Leavitt has done a brilliant job of imagining and recording it. This is a powerful book that will leave readers wishing they could hear more of Angel's gripping story."
School Library Journal
"Leavitt deftly tackles a difficult subject without a hint of melodrama or voyeurism. Angel's story could belong to any teen on the streets, though her voice is wonderfully unique."
Quill & Quire
"Leavitt probes an exceptionally difficult, raw topic without resorting to cliché or melodrama. The nuance, economy, and delicacy with which she renders both the uniqueness and universality of Angel's story is such that it's easy not to notice that the novel contains no graphic sex or even swearing. In trying to illustrate how good this book is, it's tempting to simply quote every line. Best just to read it and experience for yourself Leavitt's remarkably powerful achievement."
Horn Book Magazine
"Angel's story is a stunning, haunting portrait of exploitation and redemption."
BCCB
"Powerful moments of brutality exist alongside equally powerful moments of insight in this exceptionally moving portrayal of life on the street."
Toronto Star
"Mature, complex and relentlessly 'real' in its subject matter, Leavitt's verse novel honours and quietly memorializes the women murdered by Robert Pickton."
