Back Home

Back Home by Julia Keller is the first novel that I've read that deals with the adjustments families have to make when their loved one comes home injured from fighting overseas.  I thought the book was excellent. The story deals with the changes in Rachel’s family, school, and friendships. The feelings expressed by Rachel were totally believable. The book moved me and informed me at the same time. As a reader, I learned about the technical/medical aspects of Rachel’s situation as Rachel learned so many of the new words that became a part of her family’s life after her father’s return.

Savvy

I can see why so many people talk about Savvy by Ingrid Law.  It's a different type of book.  Mibs Beaumont comes from an unusual family.  When family members become a teenager, they get a superpower.  But not the common type of superpower.  No one can leap tall buildings or fly, but some of them can control water or electricity.  Mibs is worried about what power she will gain.  Her plans for a family birthday come to a halt when her dad is involved in a car accident.  Rather than turn thirteen in the relative safety of her family, Mibs winds up gaining her savvy on a wild adventure when she tries to reach her father in the hospital.

after the moment

after the moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr is a unique story told from a male point of view.  Maia and Leigh meet through the efforts of Leigh's little sister, Millie.  Leigh is attracted to Maia, in spite of the fact that he has a girlfriend and that Maia is a girl with a lot of problems.  The book begins and ends with Maia and Leigh running into each other at a party 4 years after their romance ended.  It's what happens inbetween that's the real story.  Leigh learns that love doesn't always do the right thing and that not love story has a happy ending.  

wish you were dead

It feels a little strange to be writing about another book with a hate list.  wish you were dead by Todd Strasser is a different type of book.  Blog postings (and comments on the postings) and kidnapper's conversations are all intermingled with the narrator's story.  The narrator is Madison Archer and she tells the story about what happens when her friends start disappearing.  The story is classic mystery updated with today's technical world, blogs, IM's, facebook, Internet, texting, and other web2.o tools.  

Hate List

Hate List by Jennifer Brown is an amazing book. I cried while I was reading it eight days ago and I cried again tonight when I reread most of it. Valerie Leftman tells her story by alternating between the present, the past, and newspaper articles. The newspaper articles are about the school shootings that Valerie’s boyfriend, Nick, committed and for which Valerie may or may not have been responsible.

Valerie is wounded during the shootings, but the story is about her emotional healing. Valerie struggles with coming to grips with what happened and her part in it. Her family, her friends, and her school all have to deal with some of the same issues that Valerie is working through. The story is emotionally gripping in several places and once the story grabs you, you can’t put the book down.

I wholeheartedly recommend the book to all young adult librarians and I would like to thank Lisa Von Drasek from EarlyWord Kids and Victoria Stapleton from Little, Brown Young Readers for the wonderful opportunity to read this story. Hate List will be available in September 2009 from Little, Brown Young Readers. Please add it to your collections.

VSBA

Looking for a good book to read.  Look at the current Volunteer State Book Award titles.  These are all available in the library. 

 Volunteer State Book Award-Young Adult Level 

1.  Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  Little, Brown, 2007.

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

2.  Bingham, Kelly.  Shark Girl.  Little Brown, 2007.

After a shark attack causes the amputation of her right arm, fifteen-year-old Jane, an aspiring artist, struggles to come to terms with her loss and her plans for the future.

3.  Bowers, Laura.  Beauty Shop for Rent… Fully Equipped, Apply Within.  Harcourt, 2007.

Raised by a great-grandmother and a bunch of beauty shop buddies, fourteen-year-old Abbey resolves to overcome her unhappy childhood and disillusionment with the mother who deserted her.

4.  Carey, Janet Lee.  Dragon’s Keep.  Harcourt, 2007.

In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny.

5.  Crutcher, Chris.  Deadline.  Greenwillow, 2007.

Given the medical diagnosis of one year to live, high school senior Ben Wolf decides to fulfill his greatest fantasies, ponders his life's purpose and his legacy.

6.  Fogelin, Adrian.  The Real Question.   Peachtree, 2006. 

Fisher Brown, a sixteen-year-old over-achiever, is on the verge of academic burnout when he impulsively decides to stop cramming for the SATs for one weekend and accompany his ne'er-do-well neighbor to an out-of-town job repairing a roof.

7.  Giles, Gail.  Right Behind You.  Little Brown, 2007.

After spending over four years in a mental institution for murdering a friend in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Kip begins a completely new life in Indiana with his father and stepmother.

8.  Godbersen, Anna.  The Luxe.  Harper Teen, 2007.

In Manhattan in 1899, five teens of different social classes lead dangerously scandalous lives, despite the strict rules of society and the best-laid plans of parents and others.

9.  Haddix, Margaret Peterson.  Uprising.  Simon & Schuster, 2007. 

Mrs. Livingston reluctantly recalls her experiences at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, including miserable working conditions that led to a strike, then the fire that took the lives of her two best friends.

10.  Hale, Marian.  Dark Water Rising.  Henry Holt, 2006.

While salvaging and rebuilding in the aftermath of the Galveston flood of 1900, sixteen-year-old Seth proves himself in a way that his previous efforts never could.

11.  Hale, Shannon.  Book of a Thousand Days.  Bloomsbury, 2007.

Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love.  

12.  Houston, Julian.  New Boy.  Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

As a new sophomore at an exclusive boarding school, a young black man is witness to the persecution of a Jewish student.

13.  Johnston, Tony.  Bone by Bone by Bone.  Roaring Brook, 2007.

In 1950s Tennessee, ten-year-old David's racist father refuses to let him associate with his best friend Malcolm, an African American boy.

14.  Key, Watt.  Alabama Moon.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

After the death of his father, Moon is sent from their forest shelter home to an Alabama institution where he soon escapes. 

15.  Koja, Kathe.  Kissing the Bee.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

While working on a bee project for her advanced biology class, quiet high school senior Dana reflects on her relationship with her best friend Avra and Avra's boyfriend Emil.

16.  Pfeffer, Susan Beth.  Life As We Knew It.  Harcourt, 2006.

Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family's struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

17.  Salisbury, Graham.  Night of the Howling Dogs.  Random House/Wendy Lamb, 2007.

In 1975, eleven Boy Scouts, their leaders, and some new friends camping at Halape, Hawaii, find their survival skills put to the test when a massive earthquake strikes, followed by a tsunami.

18.  Schmidt, Gary D.  The Wednesday Wars.  Clarion, 2007.

During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare.

19.  Smith, Roland.  Peak.  Harcourt, 2007.

A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.

20.  Sonnenblick, Jordan.  Notes From the Midnight Driver.  Scholastic, 2006.

After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.

21.  Tharp, Tim.  Knights of the Hill Country.  Knopf, 2006.

In his senior year, high school star linebacker Hampton Greene finally begins to think for himself and discovers that he might be interested in more than just football.

22.  Wittlinger, Ellen.  Parrotfish.  Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2007.

Grady, a transgendered high school student, yearns for acceptance by his classmates and his family.

23.  Wolf, Joan M.  Someone Named Eva.  Clarion, 2007.

In 1942, eleven-year-old Milada is taken to a school in Poland to be trained to be "proper" for adoption by German families.

24.  Zarr, Sara.  Story of a Girl: A Novel.  Little, Brown, 2006.

In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna's life at home and school has been a nightmare.

25.  Zevin, Gabrielle.  Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac.  Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007.

After a nasty fall, Naomi realizes that she has no memory of the last four years and finds herself reassessing every aspect of her life.

the chosen one

the chosen one by Carol Lynch Williams is a look into a lifestyle most of us will never experience.  Kyra is a member of a polygamist society when older men marry the youngest women.  When Kyra is told who she must marry, she has to decide to accept the decision and stay with the familiar or stand on her own and lose everything she knows.

I loved the fact that a bookmobile plays such an instrumental role in Kyra's life and letting her see beyond the tightly guarded community she lives in.  The only part of the book that I didn't like was that Kyra is only 13 years old.  I felt it would have been better to make her just a little older.  But once you start reading the story, you forget her exact age and just keep reading to find out what happens to her.

the chosen one is a compelling read that maintains the suspense until the very end.  

the chose one by Carol Lynch Williams.  Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin.  Publication Date: May 2009.