Mia (now a junior) finds an old journal from February of her freshman year and takes a second look at her first Valentine’s day with Michael. This volume is short (86 pages) and doesn’t have quite as much exciting as some of the series.
Ever wondered what the deal is with guys and girls? Why girls always seem to be boy crazy and why guys always seem to want to run away? And how no matter what happened, they always end up seeing a situation differently from each other? In Flipped, you’ll meet Bryce and Juli.
It’s a tale similar to that of Romeo and Juliet. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Circumstances prohibit boy and girl from being together. One cannot live without the other.
Lord of the Flies is by far one of my favorite books (and when those are things like Jane Eyre, The Master and Margarita, Les Miserables, and The Turn of the Screw, you can tell a lot about my tastes-so if you're not interested in the classics, you can probably stop reading now!)
A book that is truly unique in its delivery of a first person style novel. Charlie, a young man, is writing letters filled with some of the most shocking and relateable excerpts from his own life. He is writing simply to a "friend" and just needs to send these letters. While writing about himself and his past, he reveals the people in his life, leaving the reader to piece together bits to see the character in these people he writes about.
Colin is a child prodigy and anagramming genius, who wants to be famous. Hassan [not a terrorist] is his lazy best friend who prefers to be a couch potato and has been delaying his entry into college. On graduation day, Colin is dumped by his girlfriend, Katherine the 19th, and Hassan decides it is high time the guys take a road trip. You see, Colin has a thing for girls named Katherine and K-19 was the 19th time he’s been dumped by one. So on this road trip, Colin has decided to use his heartbreaks to design the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, a mathematical equation that will predict the future of any relationship. Colin and Hassan soon find themselves in the middle of nowhere, Gutshot, Tennessee, where they meet Lindsey Lee Wells. She’s not a Katherine but does have a boyfriend named Colin. Colin and Hassan soon realize that the middle of nowhere might be part of the equation for predicting their future.
I freely admit to being a sucker for poetry books. It's true talent to be able to write a narrative in such a form and not have it be boring beyond reason. So naturally this book fell into my grasp. Not a fiction book but a memoir, Crazy is the confidings of a young woman: normal, heading off to college the same as most people her age. However, Samantha also suffered panic attacks (imagine if you will being terrified about nothing-your breathing's shallow, the world goes fuzzy-and unable to stop it or even know why). The book is the trials and tribulations of such a burden through college, a few semesters overseas and finally the sad truth: even if the little pills make it better, some things never really go away. Crazy is written in verse and a fast read, though a few chapter poems seem to be out of place in the narrative. The book reads like fiction, maybe because to think of it in terms of real occurences. Such is life. It's not always pretty.
Do you remember the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the rat catcher, who would promise to rid towns of rats in exchange for a great sum of money? He would play his flute, attracting all the rats and micein town, then lead them to the river and drown them. It wasn’t until all the rats were gone that the townsfolk realized that what they had seen were not rats at all, but rather their own children!
Listen up Fish. Gonna give it up about a road dog named Harry Sue. I ain’t being a snitch or a cheese eater. I’m under direct order. So relax and cool your heels while I give you a little back story on Harry Sue. As you might have figured out from the joint jive, Harry Sue knows a little about prison. That’s because her con dad and conette mom have been doing time since she was five and Harry Sue is determined to follow in her family tradition and become a conette herself. There’s something you’ve gotta realize Fish. “Not all prisons have four concrete walls and a steel bunk. I say prison is a lot like home. It all depends on where your heart is (page vi).”
Old Shep, My Pal by Zack Paris is the most boring book I’ve ever read in my entire life. I did not have a favorite character. I hated everybody equally. The most interesting part came on the last page where it said “The End”. This book couldn’t be any lousier if it came with a letter bomb. I would not recommend it to my worst enemy. (page 4)
William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies in 1954 and won many prestigious awards. I, however, am not one to give it any type of award. The book follows a group of young boys stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash. The story is simply a way for the author to get his negative views out about the war. The story is somewhat graphic and shows all the evils that people can, and most of the time, do possess! The book is difficult to get into and the ending is awful!
Rating: 2Q-needs more work, 1P-Yech! Forced to read it.
In this classic novel taking place in some future time, the entire world has changed from what it once was. Every job has been assigned before the people who fill them are even born. People are even manufactured! Every part of the world lives in some "cultivated society". Or does it? One high class society man tries to see if he can find any glimpse of "un-sophisticated" culture still around in the world.
Are you a fan of fantasy as well as a lover of the classics? Sorcery and Cecelia combines the best of both worlds. It's an epistolary novel, meaing the two main characters--Cecy and Kate--trade letters. This pair lives in an alternate Regency (the early 1800s) England, with magic. Both are endearing but Kate, I believe, is a character readers can identify with more; the book is entertaining and even mysterious, if a bit too fluffy in points. Also recommended are the two sequels: The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician.
Imagine a life gripped with fear, fear of a monster that at any time could destroy your world? A life where your only concern is survival and protecting those you love? For Matt (13), Callie (11), and Emmy (5), that monster is their mother and their life is a constant nightmare. They never know when Nikki, their unpredictable vicious mother, will go on a rampage or leave for days. They are always looking over their shoulder and can never breathe easy. Nikki meets Murdoch and life seems to finally be normal, almost peaceful. But really it is just the calm before the storm. Murdoch soon sees the real Nikki and hits the road. But Nikki doesn’t take no for an answer, from anyone. Matt realizes it is his duty to find a way out, for himself and his sisters, before it is too late. 
Published in Britain as The Saga of Darren Shan (perhaps a more apt if less horror-oriented title, as at least half the series is spent in other locales) this series has achieved a good amount of fame in the US of A as the bestselling Cirque du Freak series. The hype is more or less deserved: the first novel has the horrendously slow pacing required of all first books in the series: it is required to inform of the 12 year old hero Darren and his best friend Steve, who manage to obtain tickets to the titular traveling show (their parents forbid it, of course making the show all the more appealing). There Darren in enraptured by one performance in particular--Mr. Crepsley and his performing spider, Madam Octa. So enraptured that he steals the rare and very dangerous arachnid. Of course he’s stolen it from a vampire, a fact of little importance until Madame Octa bites Steve, leaving Darren with a choice. He can become a half vampire and Mr. Crepsley’s assistant, or he can let Steve die. Of course Darren makes the choice befitting a hero in making, but is rewarded with something less than gratitude. Steve vows revenge, believing Darren to have stolen his rightful position as a vampire-to-be (Steve, being heavily read in such things, had long since know the truth concerning Larten Crepsley). And so the friends part on less than amiable terms, opening the gateway to the other books of the series.
Rachel Brown describes her turbulent life in a Hindi ashram in her autobiography All the Fishes Come Home to Roost. The story begins when she is an 11-year-old forced to move to a Baba-worshipping ashram. The book continues with hilarious, heart-felt, and sometimes a little graphic stories of her adolescence in India. It is especially appealing to teens because it deals with Rachel's struggle with her parents and her faith. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it. **This book is not currently owned by NCPL but can be obtained through interlibrary loan.**
Nature vs. nurture. How much of who we are comes from our parents and the environment we grew up in and how much are we responsible for? For example, if you grew up in a house where everyone communicates and loves one another, will you have positive relationships? What if you grew up in a house where violence and anger were king and beating someone up was the answer? Will you end up hitting your significant other and kids, thinking that it is acceptable behavior? Whose fault will it be when you hit that person: yours, theirs, or the generation before you?
For every grain of sand on the beach, there are at least six books written about the gifted misunderstood outcast who saves the day. Yes, you're in for it again. Sort of. Thankfully for the sanity of the reader our heroine is rather more compelling than the average cookie-cutter child so popular in teen lit. Jane is less interested in herself and bemoaning or rejoicing her lack of friends/popularity and more in helping her best friend, who sold her soul for the sake of popularity to the demon Lanalee. Less than a frightening name, but they say that actions speak louder than words. Help and enlightenment come in the form of some monks from Jane's Catholic school, and a young man who died some time around the early 1900s (love interest, naturally!). 
“POPULAR: adj. Widely liked or appreciated; liked by acquaintances; sought after for company.
Imagine a world totally based on looks, a society where people are divided into categories based on their appearance, where the ultimate goal is extreme beauty, where anyone normal is ugly. “Everyone gets to be gorgeous. What could be wrong with that?” Uglies are teens age 12 to 15, who are sent away to boarding school and live in dorms, awaiting their 16th birthday, when they are given the surgery to make them one of the Pretties. Pretties have perfect eyes, perfect symmetrical faces, perfect skin, perfect height, perfect weight; they are just perfect and Pretty. Once you are Pretty, life is a big party and you can have whatever you want. Waiting for the surgery is the worst part. Waiting to see your friends again, friends whom you haven’t seen since they were turned Pretty. 
Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote once of the horrors his father had seen during World War II (MAUS, MAUS II). Now he turns his art to his own experiance, and the horror he witnessed, while living in New York City, on September 11, 2001.The book begins as a simple telling of another day in the life of Art Spiegelman, but then turns for the worse with the attack on the towers, and the rest of his morning dreading for his family. He continues by speaking his concerns for his art and his responsibility to the American Public. Eventually he finds a peacful resignation to his dread of our current society, politics, marketing, and media.As he tells it in his forward, "i still believe the world is ending, but i concede that it seems to be ending more slowly than i once thought."Though the political agenda behind this graphic novel may be banal, or uninteresting for some teens, others, the ones with their fingers on the pulse of our current state of anxiety, will find this book as an insightful and sometimes jarring friend.
Abandon all knowledge of Andrew Lloyd Webber, ye who enter here. This is a completely differen ballpark. While it's true that Sir Andy (as known 'affectionately' by this reviewer) did indeed use a few points from the novel--there is indeed an Erik (though his name must have been too much to remember), a Christine, and a Raoul (our poor hero much unloved by the Fandom), as well as a form of the tragic love story of the Opera Ghost-- therein lies the entire plot of the play. The oft ignored book is far richer in complexity, though admittedly not without faults.
Are you looking for something that's out of the ordinary? Possibly something that mixes humor with science? Why not try Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers this Halloween season? 
In Terry Pratchett's ongoing series of a fantastic place called Disc World, the book Equal Rites depicts the magical world through the eyes of one of Disc World's most powerful witches. She is baffled later when a strange wizard shows up at her doorstep telling her that she will have a wizard in the family. The only problem is that that wizard is born a GIRL! Follow along on this mystifying tale as writer Terry Pratchett uses vivid metaphors and incredibly visual descriptions to let your minds eye see this astounding world. His dialect and choice of words might require a little bit of rereading through the "hard to follow" parts but it is definitely a worthwhile read for any who enjoy fantasy novels.
Brian K. Vaughan's graphic novel (Pride of Baghdad, illustrated by Niko Henrichon) is the story of a pride of lions that escapes from the Baghdad Zoo during the American bombing of the city. Zill, Safa, Noor and Ali roam the deserted city, meeting more than a few other animals and even a few humans--such as in the painfully sad conclusion. Despite the seemingly childlike premise--talking animals--the book is surprising graphic. There is cursing, violence, and even a sexual situation; none of it, however, is to excess.
According to the authors of Too Good to Be True, "Urban Legends are true stories that are too good to be true. These popular fables describe presumably real (although odd) events that happened to the friend of a friend. And they are ususally told by credible persons narrating them in a believable style because they do believe them. The settings and actions are realistic and familiar...and the human characters are quite ordinary people. However, the bizarre, comic, or horrifying incidents that occur to these people go one step too far to be believeable (p.19)."
Definition: cryp•to•zo•ol•o•gy (CRIP-tuh-zoh-AW-luh-jee) noun
Let's begin with a few basic facts.
Have you ever really hated someone? Hated someone enough to give him a really big scare, to teach him a lesson he'll never forget? Or maybe even kill him?
Have you ever noticed that the moments in our life seem to occur in a chain reaction, and JUST LIKE THAT our world is never the same. Hanna is a senior in Minneapolis. Her boyfriend is away at college and when she goes to the airport with his family to pick him up, she realizes JUST LIKE THAT that she doesn’t have feelings for him. Her friends and family expect her to be heartbroken by the breakup. But here’s the thing: She’s NOT. On that cold winter night, she makes the choice to take a long late night walk around the lakes and her whole world changes, JUST LIKE THAT.
That’s what Nine thought. Nine, short for Carolina, is 18 and she’s starting her last semester as a senior in high school. She loves science but has decided to shake up her semester by taking a poetry class. Little does she know how much change this decision will bring to her boring life! Mr. Mann is the new teacher assigned to teach the poetry class. He’s different from most teachers. He’s young, handsome, fun, and really wants to make his students understand and get personally involved in the class. Nine, however, doesn’t realize how personal this class, this semester, will become. She develops a typical high school crush on Mr. Mann and like most of us, although we’d never admit it, she becomes obsessed, driving by his house and calling his answering machine. However, unlike most innocent crushes, Mr. Mann begins to reciprocate Nine’s feelings and flirtations by showing up at her fast food job and eating dinner there every night that she works. This crush escalates to a new level when one night, Mr. Mann is waiting by Nine’s car after closing. They talk and Nine ends up following him to a dark parking lot. Nine’s nervous because if she leaves the safety of her car and goes to his car, things will never be the same. There is no telling what could happen. Will Nine and Mr. Mann cross the line? If they do, how will it affect their professional relationship and what lessons will they TEACH each other?
Have you ever been in love? How about lust? Maybe just those giddy feelings and butterflies in your stomach? I’m sure we all have. But more often than not, young love doesn’t last, no matter how hard you try. How do you view the relationship once it has ended? Would you be influenced by who broke it off? What if you found out the guy you thought was wonderful turned out to be a player? Would you share your story with others and warn the girl destined to be next? Josie did and created an uprising.
What a concept! Losers in letter jackets! I could show those small town jocks, those crown princes of athletics, just how much those jackets really meant! 
Does it ever seem to you like you might see yourself and the world differently than it sees you? Have you ever uttered the phrase “the way it looks is not the way it is”? That’s what’s happening to Keir. Keir is a jock, part of the football team and an honorary soccer teammate. He wasn’t noticed much by his classmates until that fateful football game his senior year. Keir is the kicker; he’s not a part of the defense or the offense. But for some reason, that game he was playing cornerback. And what happened wasn’t his fault. That’s the way it was decided. He was just playing the game exactly the way he’d been taught. The play he made was textbook. It wasn’t his fault that the guy he tackled never got up and is crippled. That event resulted in his moniker “Killer” or more appropriate “Killier”. Since then Keir has become invincible. He and the other senior football players have gotten away with behavior that by most would seem INEXCUSABLE. But where do you draw the line? When do you become responsible for your actions? When do drugs and alcohol blur your perceptions of who you are and who others see you to be? What is the truth and what is a lie?
My name is Shawn McDaniel and I’m 14. I’d like to share my story with you, but first, you have to know that I have some good news and some bad news. I’ll share the good news first, because that’s how it always works. I have a secret, wonderful, weird ability. I can remember everything I’ve ever heard, “perfectly, with total recall”. Anything anyone says, TV commercials, elevator Muzak, everything. I’ve been able to do this since I was four. “I hope I’m not coming off as conceited here. I’m sure I am. I mean, I do think that my hearing memory is kind of amazing, but it’s not like it’s made me rich or famous. I just happen to have this one talent that I know makes me gifted and special-yuck! I hate that word “special” when it’s applied to people.” So that’s the good news. On to the bad, and there happens to be a lot of that. “My being born changed everything for all of us, in every way. My dad didn’t divorce my mom, or my sister, Cindy, or my brother, Paul—he divorced me. He couldn’t handle my condition, so he had to leave. My condition? Well, that brings us to the guts of my bad news.” Bad news is to the world I’m a total retard. That’s what everyone thinks, but that’s not the truth. The truth is I have cerebral palsy. “When I was born I got brain damaged. A tiny blood vessel burst inside my head, and as luck would have it, this blood vessel was in exactly 100 percent the wrong spot. I don’t know enough about the brain to be able to say where in my brain this injury happened but wherever it was, it wiped out my muscle control. I can’t control any of my muscles. If you asked me to blink if I understand, I can’t make myself do it, even though I do understand. So you see, people think I’m a vegetable. They think I can’t hear, I can’t understand, and that I don’t know what’s going on. It’s so frustrating. It’s like I’m STUCK IN NEUTRAL. But that’s not the worst news of all. Maybe I shouldn’t even tell you. I think my dad is going to kill me…
“It’s all about shoes.” That Ingrid knows for sure. “Sherlock Holmes believed you could find out just about all you needed to know about people from the little things.” Ingrid loves Sherlock Holmes and is herself a bit of a super sleuth detective. At thirteen, her life should be easy. School, soccer, family, and practice for the big production of Alice in Wonderland. It seems, however, that Ingrid can’t keep herself from being in the wrong place at the right time or would it be the right place at the wrong time. Rather than waiting for a ride and being late for soccer practice, Ingrid decides to walk and before she realizes it, she’s in a strange neighborhood and the rain is pouring. Cracked-up-Katie offers to call her a cab and invites her in. Ingrid takes this opportunity to change into her soccrer gear, when the cabbie honks. Ingrid runs out and never sees Katie again. That’s because Katie is found that night… murdered, strangled to death in her own house. Rather than admit she was the last to see Katie alive, Ingrid decides to stay quiet. But wait, why can’t she find her cleats? After ransacking her house, Ingrid remembers where she was the last time she had them. Katie’s. And in order to get them back, she’s going to have to break into Katie’s house, cross the police tape, all alone and in the dark of night. But it won’t be as easy as Ingrid hopes. Because you see, whoever killed Katie doesn’t want the police to stumble upon clues that were left behind. And the killer has decided to break in the same night, same time as Ingrid. All she sees from her hiding spot are a pair of Adidas shoes with green paint splotches. See… It’s all about the shoes…
Fourteen year old Cosmo is a no sponsor living in Satellite City. Life for a no sponsor is no picnic. Cosmo is a resident of on orphanage that uses the children as guinea pigs for food and drug testing. The life expectancy of a no sponsor is 15 years and Cosmo knows his time is just about up. But a malfunction in the satellite feed that runs just about everything in the city allows Cosmo a chance to escape. Unfortunately, the escape leaves him seriously injured. As he lies dying, a small blue creature lands on his chest and begins to feed. Desperately fighting the creature, Cosmo knows he is a goner. But then he meets one of the supernaturalists -- a ragtag group of young people who have dedicated themselves to destroying the Parasites that suck energy from injured people. When Cosmo joins the group, he learns about the mysteriouscreatures that only a few can even see. Are the creatures what they seem to be? And why is the Myishi Corp so interested in them?
Looking for a great snack or a new recipe to spice up your turn to cooking dinner? Sam's got great recipes for after school snacks, meals, and desserts that will have you Cooking Up a Storm. Sick of soup from a can? Try the recipe for Top Tomato Soup (p. 33). Whip up your own fresh Two Fruit Smoothies (p. 15) or homemade Guacamole and Salsa (p. 66). Try your hand at Brilliant Burgers and Fat Fries (p. 80-81). If fun food is what you want, this cookbook is a great place to turn.
“First drink, first prank, first friend, first girl, last words.” Miles Halter is fascinated by the last words of famous people. His favorite last words have become his words to live by: “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” Miles is tired of his boring old life in Florida with no friends, so he has decided to spend his last two years of high school at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama looking for his Great Perhaps. His roommate and first friend Chip Martin, AKA The Colonel, makes sure that Miles’ year is full of fun and new experiences including a new name “Pudge”. Even better than a friendship with The Colonel is Alaska Young, the wild, moody, exhilarating, beautiful girl who loves poetry, pranks, wine, and cigarettes. The girl who will change his world into Before and After. And it isn’t long before Pudge realizes that rather than seeking the Great Perhaps, he will spend his time LOOKING FOR ALASKA.
Premonitions. Dreams. Visions. Oujia Boards. Psychics. Secrets. Revelations. Two teenage boys. One the son of a senator. The other the son of a single father. One popular. The other a geek. One paralyzed by panic attacks he can’t control. The other inundated with nightmares. Both picturing their own deaths. Two separate lives on separate courses. The one thing Harlan and Manny have in common is the intersection of Grand and Humble, the intersection of their lives, the intersection that will make you question your understanding of fate and destiny.
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and Nothing But the Truth? If you’ve watched enough courtroom dramas, you’ve heard that oath being taken. Telling the truth should be simple, right? Well, I’m here to tell you that the truth can be a little more complicated than you’d think. The thing I find more difficult than the truth would be rules. Rules, rules, rules. They are everywhere and it seems like people are always making up rules to make life harder. But the place they bother me the most is in school. The rules say you have to go everyday for 8 hours from age 5 to 18. You have to listen to some know-it-all teacher drone on and on about stuff that is boring and out of date. Then there are rules that if you aren’t passing every subject you can’t go out for sports. Whatever! My stupid English teacher hates me and that’s why I’m failing her class and why I can’t run track. Now that stupid teacher is trying to tell me there is a rule against humming the national anthem. Excuse me? I can’t believe that something as harmless as humming could cause such a raucous, make news across the country, and affect so many people’s lives. But it has…So there you have it. Nothing But the Truth.
What do you think of when you hear a church bell ring? Maybe it reminds you of a wedding, a celebration? Maybe you think of it as marking a time of day, such as morning, noon, and night? Possibly as signaling time for worship and prayer? What if the joyful sound of the church bells weren’t so joyous? What if they began to signal death and what if they never stopped ringing? How would you feel? Would it worry or scare you or drive you crazy? For Mattie Cook and the city of Philadelphia in the late hot summer of 1793, the tolling of the church bells signified that a mysterious illness, yellow fever, had claimed another victim. At first the bells tolled once or twice per day but within weeks the bells rang constantly. Fear and panic set in as the death count climbed and cemeteries began filling up. “Bring out your dead, bring out your dead!” was the call from the streets. The rich people fled the city in an attempt to escape the outbreak and those who couldn’t leave were at the mercy of doctors who were willing to try useless and dangerous methods to rid the patient of the disease. Worried that Mattie will fall ill with the fever, her mother sends her away to the country to wait with friends. But due to quarantines in nearby towns, she never makes it and she too falls ill with the fever. Will Mattie be strong enough to make it back to Philadelphia and survive this deadly disease? Fever 1793 is based on the actual tragedy that befell the nation’s capital city.
