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This post comes from Brian Griggs: The Tallest Librarian in the World; check out his blog briangriggs.com. Wow. No, seriously. Wow. To call Steelheart epic would be a horrible pun and I will resist the temptation to call it that, but it’s an accurate description. I am an avid fan of sci-fi action stories and yet I have hesitated in picking up the latest spec fic greatness because I’ve been burned out by the genre – more specifically, the overpopulating of the market with Hunger Games/Divergent/Uglies clones. The farther you go down the line of clones, the more the DNA of a good story starts to degrade. That may not be theRead More →

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The natural age progression occurs in everyone, in other words, we all get old. Usually, it just happens, it is a part of life, but imagine being forced to grow up, take care of multiple children, and fight a war you never prepared for, all the while you are worried about just surviving until morning. This is exactly what Dean and Alex Grieder experience in Emmy Laybourne’s Monument 14: Sky on Fire. The teenage brothers live in Monument, Colorado, one of many states that have recently been attacked by an air born virus that affects anyone with a blood type. The brothers and 12 othersRead More →

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Science has proven that cloning is possible with animals such as mice and sheep.  These types of experiments are done to help researchers find cures to diseases and learn more about extinct animals. However, is there an ethical line that should not be crossed between cloning and humans? Cat Patrick explores this 21st century dilemma in her new novel, The Originals. Lizzie, Ella, and Betsey Best have grown up as triplets. This suddenly changes when they discover the truth behind their identities and the secret their mom has hidden from them. The girls are not triplets, they are clones from “the original” girl who hasRead More →

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In 2071, everything on Earth will change. On one fateful day, the lives of billions of people will end, suddenly, without warning and without explanation.  Certain cities will be spared, but they will be ruled by the terrifying fear that their fate will be the same as the “Silent Cities”: an instantaneous electrical pulse that will wipe out every living, mechanical, and fabricated object in its periphery.  The pulse comes from an Icon, embedded in the center of each “surviving” city by The Lords, an unseen race of alien life that is colonizing Earth and using what remains of the human race for slave laborRead More →

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Any reader fascinated by math or science or curious about the universe will likely find Pi in the Sky by Wendy Mass intriguing.  Mass tells the story of thirteen-year-old Joss, the seventh son of the Supreme Overlord of the Universe. Each chapter of her book begins with a quote from an astronomer, physicist, mathematician, cosmologist, chemist, engineer, naturalist, or writer captivated by the universe.  These quotes form the underlying themes of the book. Joss, virtually an immortal life form, lives in The Realms, which are located inside dark matter, so parts of it reach out into all the galaxies.  In The Realms, many of theRead More →

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Imagine everything you’d do over if you had the chance.  Ten-year-old Odessa  Green-Light in Odessa Again by Dana Reinhardt  does more than imagine do-overs.  In her attic, jumping gives her the power to make today yesterday all over again.  In the early stages, Odessa’s magic helps her to erase humiliation, misunderstanding, and poorly orchestrated choices, and readers will discover whether Odessa can change the things that matter most in the bewildering life of a tween.  Can she make her life resemble the online game Dreamonica, where she gets to make every decision—“how many puppies, how big a mansion, even what color hair and eyes she had” (107),Read More →

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“Well, that’s the thing about knots, isn’t it?. . . If you don’t know the trick, it’s a muddled predicament.  But in fact each loop of every knot is carefully placed, one end twisting right into the other in a way you might not have expected. I find them rather beautiful, really.” (5) So says the Man in the Gray Suit, who appears and reappears unexpectedly, but at just the right moments, throughout Lisa Graff’s charming tale, A Tangle of Knots.  And while the man is talking about knots on the literal level, as we see in this finely crafted, intricately interlaced story of belovedRead More →

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“Forgetting who you are is so much more complicated that simply forgetting your name. It’s also forgetting your dreams. Your aspirations. What makes you happy. What you pray you’ll never have to live without. It’s meeting yourself for the first time, and not being sure of your first impressions.” (8)  There’s only one thing you can count on in a world without memories, and that’s your heart.  The feelings that flood you, the warmth or the chill that envelopes you, that’s the only barometer you have when nothing else makes sense. Learning that you must let it guide you to those you can trust andRead More →

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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 →