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“Have you ever heard of suicide by river? You just wade out deeper and deeper, and before long the current carries you away. And by then there is nothing you can do about it.” (7)  When Kiandra was 7, her mother did just that. With no warning, no goodbye, nothing  – just walked into the river beside their home and let herself be swept away.  Now, 10 years later, Ki is still drowning in grief.  She won’t let her anger and confusion about her mother’s suicide go, hiding it deep inside, nursing it like a cancer.   Although her grieving father moved them far awayRead 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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Fred Hiatt‘s Nine Days is so much more than an action-packed thrill ride.  Don’t get me wrong, it is an action-packed thrill ride: a story that zips along at a breakneck speed, fueled by a cliff hanger at the end of every short chapter, rife with danger, and near death scrapes. But at the same time, Nine Days is also a story that explores freedom, social justice, human rights, and complex, real world problems.   I found it completely engaging and unexpectedly thought-provoking, enjoying the successfully executed thriller inspired by Ti-Anna Wang, the real daughter of a jailed Chinese dissident. 16 year old Ethan has beenRead More →

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How cool would it be if your parents were part of a secret organization, charged with protecting the world’s cultural artifacts?  Wouldn’t it be awesome to fly around the globe at a moment’s notice to hunt down a shady criminal who’s stolen an ancient treasure?  And can you imagine being privy to all kinds of top-secret information about international events, intrigue, and the criminal underworld?  Some kids have all the luck.  Kids like Jose, Anna, and Henry, whose parents are part of the secret Silver Jaguar Society, would seem to be the kids you’d be jealous of.  But even though the 3 friends have alreadyRead More →

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How would you feel if you had to constantly move, change your name, appearance, and high school? Sadly, this is a feeling that Anna Boyd and her family know all too well. Anna’s parents and little sister are in Witness Protection and have had six identities in less than one year. Moving around is hard enough, but Anna has no idea why she and her family are in Witness Protection to begin with. Not only does Anna have to pick a new name and memorize her “childhood memories”, she is constantly being placed and taken out of various high schools during her senior year. HerRead 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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Georgie Burkhardt is a feisty, smart, and headstrong girl.  She speaks her mind plainly, will not abide nonsense and foolishness, and has the truest aim with her rifle that anyone has ever seen.  Georgie is certain about most things in her life: the fact that she and her older sister Agatha will one day run their grandfather’s general store in their small prairie-edge town of Placid, Wisconsin; that gold has more value than paper; and that “living with uncertainty is like having a rock in your shoe.  If you can’t remove the rock, you have to figure out how to walk despite it.  There isRead 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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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 →