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In her recent release, High and Dry, Sarah Skilton skillfully and accurately portrays the drama of high school.  Through protagonists Charlie Dixon and Ellie Chen, along with a cast of other characters in Palm Valley, California, Skilton writes a sports story while realistically capturing the conflicts of adolescence.  After a traumatic experience in Little League when he was saved by his friend Ryder, Charlie has grown into a “soccer hottie” who loves the glorious lunacy and unpredictable bliss of the game.  Ryder, on the other hand, failed the drug test required to compete in high school sports, so despite his being “the best hitter, runner,Read More →

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Clay Carmichael’s Brother, Brother shines as an expertly crafted character study and a portrait of a breathtakingly beautiful place, the influence of which shapes the story and the reader.  This is an internal journey of self-discovery, a journey into the meaning of family, and a road trip to a wind swept island where love, power, and jealousy tore a family apart.  Slow moving, thoughtful and though-provoking, and described in vibrant detail, I was lost and then found as I rode along with Brother, his faithful, wise dog Trooper, as they wandered from a place of loss and confusion into a place of forgiveness, hope, andRead More →

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Nell and Layla are sisters with a close bond. Their parents are separated, which requires the girls to rely on one another regarding their friends, school, and personal problems. Layla is the perfect child. She excels in her academics, is involved with extra curriculars at school, and is popular among her peers. Nell looks up to her older sister, especially as she begins her freshman year in high school. She wants to follow Layla’s footsteps and make her proud for accomplishing similar feats and experiences. As the new school year begins, Nell and her best friend Felix, are full of anxious excitement as they begin theirRead More →

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Aspiring to be a female version of Walter Cronkite, thirteen-year-old Teresa (Tree) Taylor wants the freshman reporter position on the newspaper staff at Hamilton High School, despite her nemesis Wanda vying  for that same role with the “Blue and Gold.”  Her second goal for the summer is to kiss a boy, preferably Ray “with the eyes like two pieces of sky” (3), to collect a kiss worth writing about. Besides those two ambitions to move the plot forward, The Secrets of Tree Taylor by Dandi Daley Mackal, set in Hamilton, Missouri, in 1963, features a collection of quotations from famous writers and alludes to HarperRead More →

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Callie did not have an average childhood. She never had a home, never attended school, and has very little memories of her father. Not knowing her life was different than the typical child, Callie enjoyed traveling state to state with her mother, Veronica. Veronica held odd jobs (not all of them legal), allowing her and Callie to stay in hotel rooms and eat many of their dinners from the lobby vending machine. During the middle of the night, Veronica wakes Callie to tell her they are leaving and her suitcase needs to be packed within minutes. While Callie is used to her her mom pickingRead More →

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In Katherine Kirkpatrick‘s Between Two Worlds, travelers on a race to the top of the world interrupted life during the 1900’s in Greenland.  The Greenland Inuits were amazed at the expansive wooden ships that rammed upon their shores bringing white men, women in impractical dresses, and canned food. Billy Bah was not exempt from the amazement. She followed the captain of the ship – Captain Peary – and spent time with his wife, especially after the birth of their daughter in the barren tundra of Greenland.  When the Peary’s sail home to America they ask to take Billy Bah with them – the first “Eskimo” toRead More →

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Sixteen-year-old Calliope Knowles is a self-described bitch, but that word hardly describes her true self, a traumatized young woman who is a ward of the state of Illinois and a clinically diagnosed graphomaniac.   Graphomania is a compulsion to write; Callie writes “for the same reason most of us breathe” (3).  Although she feels like a carnival side show and hates being a slave to the words in her head, the words motivate her to remember. Ever since her father disappeared, Callie has been compelled to write.  Although the authorities don’t believe she killed her father, they do think she knows something about his disappearance andRead More →

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15 year old Laila’s father is dead.  Numb with grief, shocked by the unexpected loss, and drowning in pain, her life is unrecognizable.  But that’s only the start: she finds herself exiled, with her mother and younger brother, in a non-descript apartment outside Washington, D.C., having fled her country after her father’s assassination.  Not only has she lost her beloved father, Laila has also lost the only life she ever knew: that of the daughter of a king. Her country has fallen into a civil war, as a long-standing resistance now openly challenges her uncle, who has taken over her father’s place as leader.  TheRead More →

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Sometime in the future, when nearly everyone uses a “comm” to watch shows, read books, and communicate, Danny Wright drives a badass truck he has named the Beast.  The torque of the 340 horsepower 350 V8 shakes his body, and she growls “like a chained animal waiting to be released, with the power to claw through anything” (7).  Danny, who plays football and dates the darling JoBell, seems to live an idyllic life as a senior in Freedom Lake, Idaho, but his life is anything but typical. At seventeen, he joins the Army National Guard, mostly because the Guard will pay for all the autoRead More →