The book Orphaned by Eliot Schrefer is an enjoyable book told from the perspective of a young female gorilla Snub, set in the Paleolithic Era. She lives a normal gorilla life with her mother, brother, and others until her family is torn apart from a volcanic eruption that separates them. She is left as the protector of her baby brother, Breath.  As Snub is searching for her family she finds a “not gorilla” that walks on two legs and was exiled by her family. Together, Snub, Breath and Orphan, the “not gorilla”, create a bond that is amazing without spoken communication. The vivid and descriptive details in this text help you to feel a connection with the characters. There are times that it is difficult to understand what is being described due to it not coming from the human perspective but during Snub’s perspective, there is excitement to turn the page each time to see what would happen next. Be prepared for some laughing and crying during this book. Recommend for anyone seventh grade and up, readers who like animals would definitely love this book but it would also push students to see “a world” far different than their own.

With the prophecy of the end-of-the world in three months and the expected Departure of the New World Society followers, a tender story of sibling love and individual persistence is woven in Come November, Katrin Van Dam’s first young adult novel.  Rooney’s mother is an avid follower of Everett, leader of the New World Society, which believes that humans have destroyed the overpopulated Earth through climate change and overconsumption. Extraterrestrials beings will come on November 18th to take believers to a new planet to start a more pure society.

Rooney’s senior year angst of college and a boyfriend is minor to her anxiety about money for food or her embarrassment about her “crazy” mother.  Real life issues are a heavy responsibility for a young woman who just wants to dream of a better life in the normal world. The sense of love and duty to her brother and the hope of a different life are the sustaining themes of this book.  It is an entertaining, valuable read for a young adult navigating the challenges of daily life with the possibility of creating their future through perseverance and education. Rooney’s mother’s situation is unusual but Rooney’s role of responsibility and struggle is very relatable for teenagers today.

What happens to a person when the negative side of their personality does everything in its power to overtake the side that barely keeps the person sane? Ella Black suffers from dissociative identity disorder. Bella, her evil twin, comes to life when Ella gets stressed. Bella has progressively made Ella do more violent things, which scare Ella each time. When her parents whisk her away from school mid-day to temporarily move to Rio, she assumes it is because they have figured out she has this disorder which she has been hiding from everyone. But more lies and truths will unfold in this fast-paced, unpredictable novel, totally ingratiating the reader until the last comments at the end. Ella is a believable character, which makes the story all the more twisted. Speaking of twisted, the last few dramatic scenes hit hard, literally. This reader thoroughly enjoyed Emily Barr’s writing and will look to pick up a few more of her works.

It’s the start of a new school year and Kate Bailey is hesitant to be in her podcasting class that she signed up for just because her best friend Alana wanted her to. Sure enough, super shy Kate is picked by the teacher to be one of the co-hosts for the podcast which will focus on giving advice to people who email or call in anonymously. While she discovers that she’s pretty good at giving advice, she also discovers that she likes the guy her best friend is crushing on even though Kate is trying hard to get them together. While readers will see this developing way before the characters themselves, Kasie West also throws in a few other twists to keep readers wondering. Will the text message from Kate’s ex-boyfriend make a difference? Will the sudden interest from Kate’s nemesis change the course of Kate’s feelings? Slightly oh-my, this flirty girl novel will definitely find fans in the 7th – 10th grade level.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Grand Escape:  The Greatest Breakout of the 20th Century by Neal Bascomb.  This book details the life of prisoners of war kept by Germany in World War 1 and their attempts to escape prison camps.  What makes this book entertaining is the range of characters with their shenanigans who tended to treat these escapes like a game.  One was even disappointed when he was returned to his own country before the war was over because he wanted to see if his escape plan devised with two other prisoners would work.   It is noted that many of the prisoners were very intelligent and adventuresome, as it tends to describe officers, including pilots who were shot down and then surrounded by Germans.   So given their sudden confinement, these prisoners tended to act like mischievous children with plans that included using molasses that resulted in solitary confinement, and stealing tools to help them in their endeavors.  They also found productive ways to spend their time such as learning new languages which aided in escaping. To make escaping Germany even more difficult, the German people were encouraged to turn in suspected escaping prisoners.  Other tactics by the Germans was to send captured escaping prisoners to different camps and to use strict military officers to oversee them. The illustrations contain actual war souvenirs such as telegrams, photographs, and propaganda.  If I could change one thing about this book, I would have put the map of Germany and surrounding areas at the front of the book rather than on page 217. The book ends with what happened to the British prisoners when the war ended, including reunions and teaching younger military recruits how to cope in case of capture.  Overall, this book made it easy to understand the actual lives of military men kept as prisoners during wartime on a very personal level. I highly recommend this book for all types of students.

Set in Seattle, Washington, Rachel Lynn Solomon’s young adult novel Our Year of Maybe tracks the lives of two teenagers whose lives have always been entwined as best friends, and maybe, Sophie thinks, eventually something more. She cannot imagine life without Peter, and so, when she turns out to be the one match for the kidney he needs, she does not hesitate…she donates one of hers.

This selfless act generates in Sophie a picture of the future in which Peter and she are in love and together forever. For Peter, however, while deeply grateful to Sophie for saving his life, it’s not a cut and dried determination that they will be lovers. With his new lease on life, Peter sees his future as one in which he is now free. Then he finds himself attracted to Chase as more than a friend, a development that surprises him, and certainly one that Sophie cannot even imagine.

As they work through these awakenings, their stories explore themes of first loves, expectations, indebtedness, outdated old beliefs and the changes that come with confronting things honestly. Like dandelion fluff, nobody knows where these understandings will be blown, but hopefully, well-rooted friendships will mature and survive.

Recommended.

A turbulent ride into the future with traces of the “Rusties” past littering the Victoria landscape is in store for readers of Scott Westerfeld’s Imposters. Put on something comfortable from your “hole in the wall”, grab your “crash bracelets” and step onto your hoverboard with your fully charged “pulse knife” and “cyrano”. Maybe secure a couple of plasma guns just in case for this plot line. Westerfeld quotes Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, on the title page of Part 1: “Regard your soldiers as your children and they will follow you into the deepest of valleys.” This may not be pretty.

Sir Walter Scott said “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” Frey, posing as her twin sister Rafi, encounters Col, the heir apparent to the city of Victoria. Here the twists and turns begin. Is the danger from without or within? Are the twin sisters like-minded though one raised a dignitary for the city of Shreve and the other was raised as her absolute secret body double — and as a trained killer? Throw in the love factor and Frey must decide if Col can be trusted with the truth, allowing her to become her own person. This is a page turner as Westerfeld weaves an intriguing tale pitting good against evil, love versus power, conservation over greed in the opposing neighboring cities of Shreve and Victoria. Recommended, as with all other Westerfeld titles.

Ascent is the 3rd in a series of books focusing on Peak Marcello, a teen whose life revolves around mountain climbing. His summit of Everest with his father in the 1st story was not on Peak’s terms. In book two, both extreme action and characters are brought into Peak’s life as he attempted to climb in Afghanistan. For his 3rd major climb, he just wants to return to the natural art of climbing, to have a “clean” climb. But in extreme sports, it is rare anything is easy. This reviewer read Ascent as a stand-alone 1st and it can hold its own as that, though knowing more of the background story with his father Josh, Zopa the wise spirit, and other characters really gives the story depth. Once the climb begins, Smith’s pace in events picks up, though the mystery and twists in the 1st half of the novel keep readers interested too. This is an additional purchase, especially if your library already holds Smiths earlier Peak stories.

How do you deal with death, especially the death of someone you look up to and admire? For Charlie, the death of his father will spin him into a world he never imagined for himself. Sent to his grandparents for the summer in 1988, Charlie learns he has friends, family, comic book heroes, basketball and jazz to help him get back to feeling normal. While Grandaddy impresses upon Charlie the job of being on a team and playing a full game, it’s his cousin Roxie who teaches him the game and moves to be great in the game. Grandmother’s cooking makes all things bearable as she listens and shares in his new adventure. A quick trip to jail might also be life-changing, and friend Skinny goes with him because that’s what friends do. Readers watch a 12 year old Charlie become something special, being the path of maturing into Chuck, father of Jordan and Josh Bell from Alexander’s earlier Newbury Award Winning The Crossover. A prequel to that novel in verse, Rebound will give depth to the story of the Bell family but can be read as a stand alone as well.

The Year of Living Awkwardly runs the reader rapidly through the life of high school sophomore Chloe Snow. The author, Emma Chastain, compels the reader through this emotional year with Chloe and her classmates as she works at the pool concession stand, plans to go to dances, hilariously prepares for and takes the PSAT, terrifyingly attends traffic safety classes, and flubs trying out for the school musical. If that isn’t enough drama, her parents have separated and are proceeding with a divorce. Chloe lives with her attorney dad while her writer mom has moved to Mexico with the boyfriend. Can Chloe forgive her mom for leaving? or her dad for dating Chloe’s English teacher? Can Chloe even figure out who her real friends are amongst the teen drama at school? Chastain presents a sophomore girl who is unfiltered, sexually aware and floundering to find love in most of the wrong ways. Some readers will be put off by this girl’s choices, though no doubt there are girls who have lived parallel lives to Chloe’s by the age of 16. The teenage angst is dripping from this novel as Chloe is battling how to be true to herself as she trusts and loves others. This is an additional purchase for upper high school students.

Maya is in an experimental phase in her life, quite literally. Going into the summer after graduating high school and losing her mother to cancer, Maya’s world is in a state of emulsion — droplets that aren’t mixing together in the right way. Whit, her boyfriend of over a year, dumps her for another girl. Her dad is more concerned with carabiners than college preparations. Her best friend, another boy, is leaving for college at the end of the summer. Maya’s summer plan consisted of transcribing notes from a college professor at MIT, where her mother had previously worked as a chemist and where Maya would be attending in the fall. But shortly after the implosion of her love life, Maya discovered a notebook of her mother’s with field notes on an secret experiment with a serum containing pheromones to spice up the mother’s relationship with her dad. With the help of a PhD candidate in the lab at MIT who had also worked on this secret project, Maya devises a way to continue the experiment, the goal of which is to get her boyfriend back. A true love story without many surprises, Meredith Goldstein gives readers a character that has a little fun while figuring out with which guy she really has the right chemistry. Recommended for hopeless romantics who like clean finishes.

The Unwanted is a vivid description of life experiences that result in the people of Syria leaving their homes to find a new place in the world.  In this graphic novel it is easy to relate to the plight of the refugees and understand why they undergo risky and harsh conditions to flee the life threatening war in their homeland.  It is highly understandable as the refugees speak simple sentences about their viewpoints. This book describes the obstacles to finding a new home plus why other countries may not welcome them.  It talks about historical events and the underlying political forces. The stories do tend to be sad. Anyone who wants to build a wall to keep out immigrants should read this book. It is interesting and informative for all levels of readers and I highly recommend it.

With apologies to 12th century romantics Abelard and Helouise, Laura Creedle’s The Love Letters of Abelard and Lilly is a romantic story that skims the surface of complicated issues such as ADHD, Autism, divorce and possibly depression.  Unrealistically, Abelard and Lilly end up in the principal’s office after breaking into a classroom at their school.  After a passionate kiss while awaiting their detention sentence, the two students who have known each other since elementary school obviously are following their loins.  Eye-rolling high school aged drama slowly carries the story until Lily has to decide to have a surgery or run away from home with Abelard.  The mother’s decisions at the end are even more far-fetched and leave this reader wondering how an editor led the author down this path.  This story will be pulled because of its title but I’m don’t think teens will really enjoy it’s trite writing.

In her memoir, March Forward, Girl, Arkansas public school’s integration pioneer Melba Pattillo Beals offers an important perspective on racial oppression in the 1940’s and 50’s American south.  Seen through a child’s eyes, the picture she presents is at both shocking and inspiring as she describes her life leading up to the moment she enrolled in the 1957 all white Little Rock Central High School as one of the “Little Rock Nine”.

Simple prose, detailed events, child’s point-of-view as honest and frank are highlights of this appalling oppression and mistreatment.  Written for readers from 7th grade and up, this is an adult looking back at her childhood that shaped her immensely.  Witnessing a lynching at the age of five, an abduction by the KKK at the age of eleven and escaping an attempted rape are terrible highlights of her narrative.  The subject matter is jarring, which should sadden readers with the reality of our nation’s past.  Lower level ore reluctant readers will be drawn in by the subject matter and accessibility of the writing while more advanced readers will find plenty to ponder.

A charming collection of stories of chance meetings, star-crossed lovers and random coincidences: serendipitous encounters that are remembered forever. Can entwining hands with a handsome stranger give a glimpse to your romantic future?  Can a chance meeting at the airport alter your choice of college? Can hiding out in the bathroom to escape being busted by the cops reveal a secret crush? The brief vignettes in this short story anthology are delightful and thought provoking, representing some of the best twenty-first century YA writers.  Easy to read one or two stories quickly or the whole book, Meet Cute is worth browsing.

A taxidermist, a percussionist, and a fanfic writer walk into a… convention center, not a bar since this is a YA novel. And this begins this humorous, kitchy story from three different authors — Alison Cherry, Lindsay Ribar and Michelle Schusterman.  Callie Buchannon, a taxidermist assistant to the recently separated father, wanted her week to be the chance to reconnect with him. Pheobe Byrd, traveling with her school’s underfunded percussion team, hoped to just make it through the week without too much embarrassment, on the stage and off, now that her two former best friends on the team are dating each other, causing Phoebe emotional strife.  Laden romantic interest in another team member further spins Phoebe’s mind.  Vanessa Montoya-O’Callaghan’s week looks better in person now that she’s met her online college-aged non-monogamous girlfriend, with whom she’s sharing not only the weekend but a room.  Each character’s issues arise in good times and bad in their 1st person voice as the chapters proceed.  Vanessa is coming to realize that the girl who she thought the world of is not all that.  Well-placed inner monologue and discussions with minor characters about gender pronouns help to make this coming-of-age week realistic in today’s world.   And any reader who is into fandoms will love chapters involving Vanessa.  Phoebe’s sudden feelings for her once rival bandmate and Callie’s frustration with her father’s lack of being a father fall into more traditional teen angst topics.  Early in the story Callie states, “Openly talking about taxidermy with someone I liked and respected was such a weird experience.”  For this reader, it is also a weird experience to read it.  Opening the book with Callie’s voice was a risk as young adult readers might not be willing to break through the taxidermy talk before they meet the other characters, but if they can pull through, it is well worth it because once all three worlds start colliding around page 100, this story takes off.  The dust jacket’s premise doesn’t do this book justice.  The interlacing of the stories by these three authors is seamless and the ending transcript and final pages are a basketweave of wedding cake icing — FANtastic.  A clever, episodic (in the best way) read high school students will look forward to when they find it.

Part of Abdo’s Hip-Hop Artists series, Alicia Klepeis biography of Kanye West is both smooth and dynamic, much like the focal artist himself.  Many unique qualities and factoids are brought up by Klepeis.  Readers will get to learn that Kanye was mainly self-taught and pursued other artists, begging them to teach one or two skills at a time.  He first made a name for himself as a producer and as he tried to get a recording contract, industry leaders didn’t think his own rap would sell because he didn’t come from the wrong side of the tracks.  His upper-middle-class household was supported by a single mother though; she was a university professor mother who provided a comfortable, supportive environment.  But Kanye worked for his own money from an early age as well to support his high-class fashion-forward tastes.  Focusing on his multi-faceted talents, Klepeis goes on to chronical Kanye’s albums, awards, and milestone moments in 96 pages of text and photos.  This is a highly accessible biography for middle and high school students, one that probably should be in most high school libraries.

A Few Red Drops by Claire Hartfield tells the story of the Chicago Race Riots of 1919 in a thoughtful, compelling manner.  It presents this event, which was one of many during that sweltering summer of 1919, arising from a build up of social and economic tensions between immigrant European and blacks.  This telling examines not only the event but performs an in-depth analysis of the antecedent conditions that led to this element of a nationwide explosion.  The book begins with an excerpt from a poem by Carl Sandburg, who witnessed the riot, titled “I am the People, the Mob”.  The gist of the poem is that people collectively create history, then collectively forget its lessons so that nothing is learned.  This work is the author’s effort to correct this collective inability to remember so that people may learn about and correct this collective inability to remember so that people can correct past injustices.  The effort is facilitated by the use of photographs, political cartoons, period pamphlets and flyers that effectively support the text, making it come alive and providing the reader with a feeling for what life was like during this period.  A Few Red Drops is a poignant presentation of a, particularly bleak period in the sincere hope that we may, by reliving it, be able to remember and actually begin the work necessary to make a real change in the nature of society.  The work is appropriate for more advanced readers and is highly recommended.

100 Days of Cake, by Shari Goldhagen, is a book about an American high school girl named Molly Bryne whose mother makes a new cake every day in an effort to make life better.  Molly has mental health issues and faces challenges including with her employment where they are so bored they watch TV and a younger sister who seems so perfect. She goes above and beyond when her job seems to be ending and then the unthinkable happens.  Will Molly crumble? The easy readability of this book with highly relatable characters will appeal to young adults. Set in the summer when life slows down,  what happened to Molly is shocking and brings readers back to the harsh realities of life. While the background of Molly’s family life is sad, they now live a more “normal” life. Will that normalcy help Molly in her time of questioning, crisis and grief?   Will cake help?  Highly unlikely.  Recommended as an additional purchase for high school and public libraries.  

No Good Deed, Goldy Moldavsky’s latest Y.A. offering, certainly lives up to what the famous phrase declares: “No good deed goes unpunished”. It is true for the lively cast of characters who head to tech genius Robert Drill’s summer camp for youthful activists, Camp Save the World, run haphazardly by his new stepson, Jimmy.

Ablaze with zeal and commitment to Feed the Children of the world, Gregor Maravilla signs up for what he expects to be a summer of learning how to achieve his lofty goal while meeting others with their own burning issues, such as Men’s Rights, Diabetes Awareness, Down with Styrofoam, Boycott Camp and Stop Clubbing Baby Seals. Unfortunately, once a prize is introduced to the mix, underhanded competition and dirty tricks prevail as things get dangerous.

When teen movie star Ashley Woodstone (Eat Dirt) shows great interest in Gregor, he feels annoyed. Ultimately, however, their unlikely friendship helps Gregor realize that saving the world happens first in the heart, and then in the many little worlds where change can be truly made.

Engrossing, funny, tender and totally on-point, this book explores what happens ‘when doing right goes wrong’ while being a delicious satire on activism and activists going quite a bit too far. Highly recommended.  

Reviewed by Holly Graham for Kristi Bonds

With surname like hers, the young heroine in Lianne Oelke’s debut novel, Nice Try, Jane Sinner, certainly has good reason to have, when it hits, a crisis of identity regarding her faith in light of her family’s strong religious beliefs. Feeling like a fraud, Jane makes a failed but public attempt at ending it all, only to find herself still alive and politely asked to leave her high school so she won’t provide a bad example to her fellow students.

Determined to somehow make a new start and find her true self, Jane reluctantly enrolls in the ersatz Elbow River Community College and auditions for a reality show in which, to her surprise, she is cast. Called “House of Orange” in homage to the vintage orange shag carpeting in the house, the online competition features other quirky characters vying to win money and a car by outlasting each other: the last resident wins. Under the constant scrutiny of the HOO camera crew and the student producer, Jane keeps a journal of her progress and her tactics to survive, sparing herself nothing in the way of truth. Her journey is engrossing and humorous, taking the reader along for the bumpy ride of finding love, her voice, her backbone, her hope and herself.

Set in Canada, this book is satisfying, worthwhile and highly recommended for Young Adult readers ages 14 and up.

Eye of the Storm is a well researched and skillfully written description of a NASA’s critically important project to study the dynamics of Hurricane Intensification. The text is oriented toward intermediate readers. Scientific jargon is either replaced with concise plain language or clearly defined so as not to be off-putting. The book begins with a human interest story relating to the experience of a Staten Island family that chose to ride out Hurricane Sandy at home. Due to reports designation Sandy as a Category 1 storm, the lowest level of sustained wind, this choice seemed sound. Unexpectedly, Sandy suddenly intensified and completely devastated the area where the Dresch family lived. The mother lived, but the father and daughter perished. The NASA project, the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) drone was implemented to study the way hurricanes form and build strength. In this way, forecasts can be much more useful in determining emergency response needs and accurate evacuation requirements. The book is a well-balanced combination of the science of cyclonic storms, the technology NASA is using to study them, and the people performing the work. This is supported by excellent photography and detailed graphics. The politics surrounding these devastating storms is also examined. Eye of the Storm is a compelling treatment of this valuable NASA project and is recommended.

Seventeen years later,  questions still abound about how 9/11 could have happened.   Were those horrible events a well organized plan of radical Muslims or a coordinated, clandestine conspiracy of a few powerful people or even possibly, a plot orchestrated by the US government to undermine the status quo?

A Truther is a person who intensely believes that the tragedies of 9/11 were an organized cover-up by the United States Government.  In fact, there are numerous conspiracy theories about different events of the 20th century, like the Kennedy assassination.  The book, Truthers, reveals the different theories in interesting ways and makes compelling arguments for the possibility of conspiracy by either rich corporations or the actual US Government.  In searching for a release for her father from a mental institution, Katie discovers that some of his drug/alcohol ramblings may be true. Her father may know what really happened on 9/11, who was responsible for it and that she may be the only survivor of the horrible event.  The story is intriguing as a moment in time that deeply changed America well as a human interest story of a young girl trying to defend her father.  This is a good read about 9/11 and all the conspiracy theories that still surround it.

The ritualistic “sharing” begins with the affirmation: “He is the floor beneath our feet and the roof above our heads.  He is the walls around us.  He is the window through which we see into ourselves and the door that leads to a better understanding.  He is always watching…”  Thus beginneth the opportunity for four captured children to confess to an error and one of the four to take a torturous consequence on behalf of the group as part of His plan.  The four children are part of His networked cult and are brainwashed into acting and looking like 4 siblings from a distant time known as The Special Ones.  The Special Ones talk to followers online each night to give advice on how to live a pious life.  The Special Ones live in a compound without electricity or running water, with basic supplies arriving miraculously at night from Him, but with the expectation that they can farm and forage from themselves to survive.  When a Special One receives their “renewal” notice from Him, they don’t know if they will be let go from the kidnapping, kept captive elsewhere or killed.  And when one person leaves on renewal, a new person is “collected” and brought in to take their place.  Told from two points of view, that of a kidnapped sibling “Esther” and the “Him”, Bailey has a knack for eerie, suspense-laden story-telling.  The story moves quickly once the premise is realized and though it is not very realistic, it will keep readers wanting to see it through to the end.  Highly recommended for middle and high school libraries for fans of mystery and suspense.