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The embodiment of athletic purpose, graceful and resolute, Elijah Thomas is 6’4” and carved out of steel, according to his best friend, Dylan Buchanan.  With his rhythmic dribbling skills, Dylan is no slouch on the court either.  The two juniors, teammates on Maryland Public Secondary School’s basketball team who have been playing together since boyhood, help their high school team win the state championship.  Now, they’re ready to play in the adult tournament, Hoops, on the Battlegrounds, an asphalt court in the neighborhood where practice and pickup games take place.  Despite their talent, can the boys “compete in the adult division, against college guys, hard-core streetRead More →

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Living on the Northern Tier of Montana called the Hi-Line, I’ve seen the aurora borealis break dance with a rhythm similar to that described by Rodman Philbrick in his book The Big Dark: “Imagine a lightning bolt hitting a box of crayons and turning it into a colored steam.  Like that.  Electric colors rippling and pulsing as if they were alive” (3). In The Big Dark, Philbrick, an award-winning author of the classic Freak the Mighty and numerous other books for young adults, not only writes in richly descriptive prose but posits a possible answer to the question: How would human kind respond to a massive solarRead More →

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Set in 1939-1943 in occupied Poland, Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit tells the difficult story of growing up during the Second World War, a time rife with barking dogs, tank invasions, bullying soldiers, fiery sacrifices, and other acts of hate and genocide.  In 1939, Germans occupied Kraków with the sole purpose of purging the city of its intellectuals and its academics.  As Germany pushed in from the west, the Soviets closed in on the east.  The occupation of Poland has been called one of the darkest chapters in the history of World War II since it marked the beginning of the Jewish Holocaust when almostRead More →

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The somewhat clichéd stereotypes and the questionable caricatures in Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein are offset by creative riddles, rebus puzzles, word scrambles, challenging vocabulary (think Lemony Snicket), and rich allusions to everything from famous aviators and legendary librarians to the Beatles and NASCAR.  The book also ignites the imagination and invites critical thinking about the issue of banned and challenged books and about the purpose of libraries. Because this book is a sequel to Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, it features some of the same characters, including Kyle Keeley, an ordinary twelve-year-old with a passion for video games, the longest to-be-read list,Read More →

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Given that her father is the famous Hollywood producer, Bill Hollis, Peyton Hollis is afraid she’ll be paparazzi fodder for the rest of her life, living behind a glam façade—all “dazzle and dysfunction, spritzed with expensive perfume” (1).  No longer wishing to associate with her family, whose money can buy secrecy, shroud scandal, and make them untouchable, Peyton has chosen life’s default setting, WEIRD.  When she discovers unsavory family secrets, she moves out of Hollis Mansion, hoping to escape the unrelenting, high pressure lifestyle of the rich and famous.  Getting more than she’s wishing for, Peyton ends up hospitalized, the victim of a violent assault.Read More →

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Book Two in the Mark of the Thief series by Jennifer A. Nielsen, Rise of the Wolf carries forward the story of Nicolas Calva who continues to feel like a pawn.  In this sequel, Nic continues to crave freedom, but he finds adversaries at every turn.  His grandfather General Radulf wants the gods to bow to him, even if that means he has to neutralize his grandson.  Atroxia, a vestalis who continues in her allegiance to the goddess Diana, will torture him unless he relinquishes the Malice of Mars and creates a Jupiter Stone. Decimas Brutus will go to any length to rob Nic ofRead More →

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Nervy but not nuts, Buck Anderson craves adventure.  Most comfortable surrounded by rock and roots and earth, Buck’s passion is caving.  And living in southwest Virginia in the Appalachian foothills, this stubborn, risk-taker has many opportunities for discovering, exploring, and hoping to make history.  When his best friend David Weinstein moves away, thirteen-year-old Buck loses his cautious cave-exploring partner, and “the first rule of caving is never—not ever—do it alone” (2). Although Buck disobeys this rule more than once, his fascination with caves and their potential danger is only one strand of the plot in Going Where It’s Dark by Newbery Award-winning author Phyllis ReynoldsRead More →

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For Maisie Winters, the protagonist in Alyssa Sheinmel’s novel Faceless, three syllables burdened with meaning are those in ac·ci·dent. While Maisie is out running one rainy morning in late April, lighting strikes a tree, setting off a chain of events that end in hospitalization for this junior at Highlands High in San Francisco.  Because “electrical fires burn hotter and faster than regular fires” (24), Maisie is now a girl without a face, but she doesn’t feel like the lucky miracle everyone keeps referring to her as.  Even though she knows the question represents “a shallow and immature concern” (50), Maisie wonders whether she’ll ever beRead More →

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The Diseray, a nearly apocalyptic war between Othersiders and humans, has completely altered life on Earth in Mercedes Lackey’s new novel, Hunter.  After the Diseray, the world was rebuilt, laid out to protect the elite from monsters that began to cross over from the Otherside, invading Earth with frequency and with impunity.  Mythical beasts like Harpies, Furies, and Kraken, and multiple other manifestations of terror—like Knockers, Gazers, Jackals, Drakken, Ketzels, and Redcaps—have made Hunters necessary protection. In this new world, where most meat is vat-grown and eggs and dairy are synthesized from vegetable oils, economic disparity is glaringly obvious.  Real meat, eggs, and dairy areRead More →