Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer July 25, 2008

This book is the third in a series of three, soon to be four. It is an amazing love story. It is a continuation of the adventures that Isabella (Bella) Swan has with her vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen. This book is about what happens after Edward comes back and how he deals with Jacob the werewolf and the trouble that he and Bella face. The passion that Stephenie Meyer portrays through the events that happen is amazing. The love that she talks about is complicated for uncountable reasons and it is fun to see how the characters deal with these complications. These books pull you out of your world and take you to Bella and Edward’s. If you need to get away from life just pick up one of these books and start reading. Everyone should read these books, but make sure you start with the first one, Twilight. You won’t want to put it down!

Reviewed by Talia Behrend-Wilcox, Grade 9

Witch Dreams by Vivian Vande Velde July 25, 2008

Nyssa’s parents were killed 6 years ago. Who killed them? No one knows. Except Nyssa might. Well, she has a good idea of who did it. Or does she? She might know if Elsdon would come back after 6 years of being away. If she gets at least one thing -a lock of hair, an article of clothing, something he’s touched or owned- she could look into his dreams, for she is a witch and can look into peoples dreams. Will he be the murderer? Read to find out!

Reviewed by Kellie A., Grade 6

Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson July 25, 2008

This book is about a young girl named Franny who lives on one side of the highway with a variety of different types of interesting people. One day, a boy named Jesus moved from the other side of the highway, and is teased by some of the other neighborhood boys. Jesus was adopted and his parents are both African American. All of the children think this is very strange. Franny’s friend Samantha is very religious, and her father is a preacher. Franny on the other hand avoids church as much as she can. Samantha and Franny start believing that this boy Jesus just might be the real thing. Franny’s brother is deaf, and gets teased a lot by the kids. If you want to find out what happens to Franny and Jesus, and all of their friends, then read this book by Jacqueline Woodson called Feathers. (This book has 118 pages)

Reviewed by Samantha A., Grade 6

Unwind April 29, 2008

The novel (for older teens) Unwind, by Neal Shusterman, addresses a plethora of issues surrounding identity, autonomy, and sanctity. If you read this novel it will challenge your own ideals, even if you believe them to be well founded. The narrative of the novel weaves political and religious issues into philosophical ones and when finished with the novel, you will most likely wrestle with the foundations of your own personal ideals. Immediately upon opening the book, you are faced with the Bill of Life, a document that consciously mirrors another Americans hold dear to their concept of patriotism and personal realization. It sets the tone and ideological foundations for the novel and is the reason why Connor Lassiter, age 16, is forced to reassess his sense of self when he discovers his parents have signed the order for him to be unwound.

At first the premise of the novel sounds far fetched and unrealistic: our characters live in a near-future United States, after the Second World War in which Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies fought and killed to maintain their ideals (I encourage you to read about these subjects to discover what you think about the issues). The result is a preposterous compromise in which a pregnancy can be retroactively “aborted” after the age of 13 and until the age of 18. Teens everywhere become possible commodities because their bodies, if retroactively “aborted,” are unwound. This process systematically dismantles, but does not technically kill the host teen and disseminates his or her organs and tissues to recipients in need. As adult and teenaged characters are introduced, it becomes apparent that this “Great Compromise” does not necessarily produce the guilt-free results it purports to do. One of the unspoken results of unwinding is a split of the donor’s consciousness and muscle memory through the population of organ recipients. Instead of our present day reality of black market organ selling, in Connor’s world this is common trade. Another result of unwinding is the growing guilt of the adult population, evident in the actions of a few conscientious individuals.

To our sensibilities, Connor is just another troubled teen—he gets into fights, he tries to maintain a tough exterior, he doesn’t get along with his parents. But when his parents decide to have him unwound, his fight or flight urge kicks in and he does both. Along the way he picks up Risa, a state ward who is being unwound because of budget cuts and rescues Lev, a tithe whose religious family chose to have him to unwound and donated to humanity in the name of God. Each of these three main characters is developed in separate chapters of the novel and through their struggles they each come to understand their own ideals and their misgivings about the society in which they live.

The plot itself is exciting and a page turner, with underground networks of Unwinds trying to reach freedom, terrorists using the exiled Unwinds for their own schemes, and jaded authority figures in between. At first I thought this novel would be another “wham bam thank you ma’am” experience, with little thought to character development. I was completely wrong. While the characters generally act as you would expect them to, it is in ways that develop them into adults and it reflects on the choices all teenagers must make as they accept responsibility and work to become adults. There just happens to be a lot of action and a lot of “bigger picture” issues acknowledged along the way in this novel.

Shusterman doesn’t necessarily tell his readers what to think about the issues of abortion, religion, consciousness, the soul, organ donors and organ harvesting, parenting, or politics. He merely weaves these questions into his narrative and lets the reader muse over them. In this respect, the novel allows for a dialog between readers and people interested in these issues. It is also a compelling read and each character complexly explores his and her own personal issues. Ultimately each character works through their own questions about how to be a thoughtful and successful citizen in their community. Connor struggles to control his temper and make wise decisions, Risa reflects on her complacency while living in the State Home and her growing resistance to the wrong types of authority, Lev battles with his loss of the faith he thought he knew and trusted and learns to be an individual.

While this novel touches on several important and very controversial issues, it doesn’t necessarily make assumptions about its readership and what we believe, for we all believe something a little bit different. By weaving these contemporary issues into a dystopic future, it reminds its readers that we all must address these issues on some level even if we’re not technically faced with the ramifications of Unwinding.

Book review (by Mahira10): Into The Wild April 19, 2008

This is a really good book by Erin Hunter about wild cats that live in groups called clans. The four clans are Thunderclan, Riverclan, Windclan, and Shadowclan. Each clan raises their kits to become warriors who fight and hunt for the clan. A kittypet named Rusty tries to hunt in Thunderclan territory. Then one Warrior apprentice named Graypaw finds Rusty and explains about the clans. Rusty joins Thunderclan and his name is changed to Firepaw. He waits for when he is done with his warrior training and can become a full warrior. All the clans struggle with the wrath of the Shadowclan leader, Brokenstar. Brokenstar trains Shadowclan kits into apprentices when they are too young to do so, he drives Windclan out of their territory. This book is very good and is the first book of the Warrior series which has a few series connected to it. For more info on book 1, visit:

www.warriorcats.com.

Book review (by Summer): Snakehead April 17, 2008

I wanted to let y’all know about this book I read a few days ago. The name of the book was Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz. It is the latest book in the Alex Rider series. If you have never read an Alex Rider book before I suggest that you start with the first book in the series. One of the things I liked about this book was that the author put a page in the front that catches the reader up on what happened in the last book. When we last left Alex he was falling to the earth in a capsule. Boy that line right there caught my attention. I wasn’t for sure if the author could pull off another great story. I was also afraid the story was going to get slow but I don’t think it did. It is a great story for younger and older boys both. As for the girls I think they would enjoy it just as much as the boys. After all, who doesn’t like to read about a teenager who is a British spy and kicks the bad guys butt. I found that the more pages I read the more I got into the story. I think you’ll find that you are right there with Alex no matter if he is in the jungle or in outerspace. (You will have to read the book to find out what I mean.) When I was finished the book I wanted to see what happens next with Alex. I hope that you read the book and enjoy it as much as I did.

Young Avengers January 24, 2008

Well, I’ve been sending out e-mails to library staff trying to drum up support for our winter reading club blog, and I realized the only decent thing to do if I want to put my money where my mouth is, would be to lend some support to the library’s other blog: Wanderer on the Web. So here we go.

Look, it’s true—I’ll be thirty years old in 2008, but I never outgrew comic books. In fact, in all truth, I actually appreciate them more as an adult, though I’m a good deal more discriminating than I was when I was a kid. You can only read so many stories about superpowered people in spandex before you start to feel like, “Show me something different, already.”

Fortunately, as I’ve grown up, Western comic books, themselves, have grown up right along with me—almost to the point where they’re not meant for kids at all anymore (but that’s a topic for another day). Still, straight-forward superheroics don’t in general ring my bell the way they used to.

That being said, I try to keep up with the general goings-on within the major superhero universes, and the library’s graphic novel collection has been a great resource for me in that respect. Case in point, a few weeks ago I was downstairs in the technical processing room and saw Young Avengers: Sidekicks and Young Avengers: Family Matters just waiting to enter circulation, so I placed my holds and later checked them out.

This is a strange series in some ways. It’s the brain child of a television writer lured in by Marvel Comics owing to his day job on the writing staff of “The O.C.”. The characters are all originals—though patterned off of existing characters. Sort of teenage versions of the Marvel flagship characters, Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, and Thor. Something like this would fit right in at DC Comics where teen sidekicks have been the norm ever since the debut of Robin, Boy Wonder, back in 1940, but Marvel have typically eschewed that route.

To be sure, none of these characters is actually a bona fide sidekick, and to be doubly sure, an aspect of the series hook is that the big name heroes from which the protagonists draw their inspiration actually don’t seem to want them.

Alan Heinberg’s dialogue is very snarky and youth friendly—though the initial issues sort of straddled the fine line of cliché in that respect—and the narrative embraces tried-and-true themes of isolation, rebellion, being different and misunderstood…so it’s pretty much what you would expect from a concept intended for a teenage audience.

Heinberg’s writing style proved to be a good fit to this Young Avengers property, and yet, it is difficult to unequivocally commend this to the younger audience owing to inextricable tie-ins to pre-existing continuity, some of which reach back well into the 1980s. Actually, make that the 1960s, since modern readers are unlikely to know very much about Captain Marvel, the specter of whom lingers over at least part of the second volume, Family Matters.

If I’m not mistaken, these two trade paperbacks contain together the entirety of the Young Avengers series, and I’m not sure if it was discontinued because it wasn’t catching on, or if Heinberg’s other commitments simply made it impossible for him to keep to a regular schedule. I think this series probably deserved a wider readership, but at the moment, Young Avengers stands as something of a minor blip upon the Marvel Universe. An interesting experiment at expanding the brand, but ultimately, it left behind little of consequence.

Still, worth a look.

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat January 17, 2008

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat by Lynne Jonell

I admit it; I originally picked up this book for its cleverly drawn falling rat sidelined in the margins of the story. The writing, however, is catchy and fun and this book turned out to be a page turner without the help of its witty illustrations. It’s about Emmy, a recently rich student at Grayson Lake Elementary. She tries to be a good girl, always answering questions and doing what she is told. Only, there’s a slight problem: she can hear the class pet (a rat) talking to her. This ability, and some increasingly sinister confrontations with her nanny Miss Barmy, sets Emmy (and the Rat) on an adventure through the rodent kingdom and beyond.

Emmy’s parents use their newfound affluence to constantly travel the world, often leaving Emmy in the care of Miss Barmy, a nanny seemingly preoccupied with the young girl’s physical and mental health. Miss Barmy is constantly interrupting Emmy’s life to administer “treatments for her own good.” Only something isn’t quite right in Emmy’s life (aside from the talking rat!) because no one ever seems to notice her.

The day she discovers she can talk to a rat (and that rat wants out of his cage immediately) the desperately lonely Emmy catches the attention of classmate and soccer star Joe and then their adventure really begins,because Joe gets bitten by the Rat and suddenly finds himself eye to eye with the rodent. Emmy, Joe, and the Rat must find a way to unshrink the now pint-sized soccer player. To do this, they travel to the Antique Rat and find aid from a slew of magical rodentia from around the world. They also make a few enemies, and one of them is Miss Barmy, who uses the rodents’ powers for her own nefarious purposes.

Join Emmy, Joe, and the Rat on their adventures through the worlds of rodents and magic. Along the way, Emmy, Joe, and the Rat make new friends and discover their strengths, all through Jonell’s laugh aloud prose. Their travels through size and emotion explore a range of relationships between loved ones, friends, and enemies as well as lessons about what it means to stand up for oneself. The story is uplifting and even the bad guys get their just rewards and are satisfied with the results.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart January 14, 2008

This fun, witty book will keep you guessing. If you enjoy mystery paired with a little comedy you will enjoy this pick. Follow four orphans as they try and dismantle the evil Mr. Curtain’s plan to control the world. The four characters were chosen to thwart Mr. Curtain’s plan because of their uniquely different special talents. They will attend a special school run by Mr. Curtain where they will work together to learn Mr. Curtain’s evil plan for using children to take over the world. Don’t miss how this adventure will end. Check it out. Really!

Chasing Vermeer July 16, 2007

Dear Reader:

We’re writing this letter to let you know that it is of the utmost importance that you read Blue Balliett’s book, Chasing Vermeer, as soon as possible! We’ve discovered some clues on our own as to why this is such a good book, but we need you to read it, too, so you can figure out if our calculations are correct!
 

What I like best about the book is:

Anna says, “A lot of great different clues and suspense!”

Haley says, “It’s a mystery! I love mysteries. I used to want to be a detective when I grow up. This mystery is lots of different mysteries put in one! It is such a wonderful book!”

My most favorite character is:

Anna says, “Petra, because she wanted to figure out the mystery, but she was also scared like me!”

Haley says, “Petra. She has a very similar personality as me – smart and friendly!”
 

Sincerely,
Anna
Haley
FPL Detectives!