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High above the dense Central American rain forests, Mad and her younger sister Roo fly in a tiny plane towards a massive volcano.  Roo is barely able to contain her excitement while Mad’s hanging on for dear life as the little plane shifts this way and that.  They’re on the way, with their mom and Ken/Neth (an annoying “friend of the family”) to meet Mad’s dad, “The Bird Guy” – a world renowned ornithologist – who’s been holed up at an exclusive resort at the base of the volcano for more than 7 months.   Mad’s dad would go anywhere to study rare birds, and when heRead More →

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Delightfully blending mystery, fantasy, and adventure, Mark Steensland’s Behind the Bookcase is chock full of everything there is to love about scary stories.  From a creepy “haunted” house, to hidden passages that lead to a sinister shadow world populated by creatures straight from nightmares, to a race against time to save our world from being overrun by evil, once you go behind the bookcase, you won’t want to venture out. Soon-to-be twelve year old Sarah does not want to spend her summer living in and fixing up her recently deceased grandmother’s run-down, spooky old house far away from her home and friends in Southern California.Read More →

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Lexi is a sixteen year old girl with a…yes, you guessed it, great personality! Yet, it doesn’t stop there. Lexi is determined to prove to her family and friends that she is more than a great personality. She is an average teenager who is trying to conquer independence, high school, and family drama. Lexi is known as the “girl with the great personality” in her high school. She doesn’t go out on dates, wear makeup, or dress particularly fashionable. Why waste time participating in the beauty pageant known as high school? When her friend Benny dares her to wear makeup and dress up at school,Read More →

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12 year old Lenny “the boy with the golden voice” loves hanging out on the couch with his best friends and announcing the play-by-play for the games of his beloved hometown team, The Philadelphia Phillies. When he wins the chance to do it for real, as the “Armchair Announcer,” for one inning of an upcoming game, Lenny knows this is the future for him.   Surely it will be the chance he’s been waiting for: to be noticed and recognized for his skills, both by major league pros and by his own, self-obsessed, work-aholic parents. But the game goes wrong before Lenny’s chance to announce:Read More →

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I like the surprise of not reading the jacket flap before I read a book – cover, title, and maybe a familiar author – are all I know going in.  It’s a little game I like to play to let the story, whatever it may be, unfold and take me wherever it wants to go. So when I started Ned Vizzini’s The Other Normals, I expected a realistic fiction story about a possibly disaffected, alienated teen guy who liked to play role playing games.  Pretty safe bet and I was proved right – at first.  15 year old Perry Eckert is what his mother painfullyRead More →

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Christina Diaz Gonzalez‘s second novel, A Thunderous Whisper, brings us to Guernica, Spain.  Here we meet 12 year old Ani, a quiet, insignificant whisper of a girl who lives on the periphery of society, daughter of a sardine seller.  Ani’s father has gone to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War to fight against General Franco’s forces, hoping to protect the Basque homeland from impending seizure.  Left with her cold-hearted, harsh mother, Ani’s life has never felt more bleak and lonely. Then she meets a boy, Mathias, who is spirited, sure of himself, and interested in being her friend.  Mathias is new to Guernica and heRead More →

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Jeffrey Salane has created an action-packed book for tweens with his new novel, Lawless. Although the book has multiple settings, the story largely occurs in the southern hemisphere atLawlessSchool, a private and exclusive school for the children of master criminals.  The story’s protagonist is twelve-year-old M Freeman, whose doting dad gave her the moon but is now dead and has remained a beautiful mystery for six years.  M’s mother, an impeccably stylish artist mogul and unstoppable workhorse has little time for M.  Home-schooled and living in a house the size of a small castle, M feels neither like a princess nor a prisoner.  Instead, sheRead More →

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Duncan Meade is a senior at Irving School, a prestigious, private high school that allows students to live on campus during their rigorous course studies. Not only is Duncan worried about the upcoming “Tragedy Paper” that his senior English teacher, Mr. Simon, has assigned, Duncan has to deal with the tragedy that happened at school last year. When Duncan is assigned the same room that the infamous Tim Macbeth had last year, Duncan knows that his school year will be anything but ordinary. Tim has followed the “tradition” of leaving Duncan a gift in his room. Most students receive “survival kits”, books, or even alcohol. Tim hasRead More →

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Sometimes when I like a book a lot, I have a hard time writing a succinct review of it. I just want to tell you everything about it, gush profusely about the use of language, the richness of both the characters and the setting, give a huge shout out for the deftly executed plot, and overwhelm you with so much detail that you don’t even need to read the book itself.  So the book sits on my desk, waiting for my feeble attempts to due it justice.  Blue Balliett‘s latest, Hold Fast, is one of those books.  From the the very first page, I wasRead More →