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For readers who remember the adventures of Shade, a silverwing bat in the Silverwing Trilogy, Kenneth Oppel  delivers with equal measure, the action-packed and compelling story of Will Everett’s life in his most recent novel, The Boundless.  Set in in the late 1800s, at the time the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was being built, Will, who taught himself to draw when he was ill and bedridden for weeks, is looking for adventure.  The only adventures he has had have been in his head or drawn in his sketchbook or lived out vicariously through his father’s letters from various rail construction sites. When he arrives inRead More →

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I guess it’s a universal truth: human beings are fascinated by imagining our own destruction.  Who hasn’t seen movie after movie, tv show upon tv show of the end of the world as we know it: life during and after the apocalypse, the alien invasion, the viral plague, or the crushed citizenry living under a ruthless, post-Armageddon regime?  Not to mention the avalanche of distopian fiction, populated by heroic characters whose grit and determination helps them rise up against the horrors that have pulverized the rest of humanity into pitiful shadows of their former selves.  And I’m not saying that the best of all ofRead 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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The fourteen true stories of survival in Hidden Like Anne Frank are emotionally charged and moving.  Editors Marcel Prins and Peter Henk Steenhuis have collected incredible accounts of what it means to live in hiding, when a ticking clock can remind a survivor of the darkest days of his life. Storytellers not only reveal what it means to be Jewish, but what it means to be a survivor.  They tell of the “years of tears” and the difficulty of loss—the loss of possessions, loved ones, family bonds of affection, and one’s very identity.  At a time when people were persecuted for even looking Jewish, manyRead More →

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“Everybody lies.  We all do it. Sometimes we lie because it makes us feel better and sometimes we lie because it makes others feel better.” (1)  And so begins a grown man’s retelling of the story of the most pivotal moment in his youth when he dreamt up a lie, intended to bring a sense of peace to his dying father, that instead brought him a lifetime of regret and pain. In the summer of 1947, Bilal lived in a market town on the dusty plains of Northern India.  He loved reading his father’s precious books, running wild through the streets of the village withRead More →

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Ok, I am so glad to be a vegetarian.  All those terrible things that I could imagine happening at massive feedlots, huge industrial slaughterhouses, and behind the guise of corporate “farming”, happen in Paolo Bacigalupi’s nightmarish comedy Zombie Baseball Beatdown.  Milrow Meat Solutions processes enough beef to feed people in seven states, which means acres and acres of cows packed into feedlots in filth and excrement up to their bellies, a plant the size of a small city that employs vast quantities of undocumented workers who, for 24 hours a day, race to process thousands upon thousands of cuts of beef, and a research andRead More →

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Being the outsider looking in is painful.  From run-of-the-mill social awkwardness, to being the new kid in school, to being from a culture/background that is misunderstood and feared, the outsider is the lonely one among us.  Funny thing is, at any given point in time, everyone is the outsider yearning for acceptance, friendship, and understanding. Seventh grader Lewis Blake has had it with being an outsider.  But his quest to fit in to his mostly white middle school is an uphill battle:  being an Indian, he will have to do more than just cut off his braid and cut back on his sarcasm to breakRead More →

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The story of Sasquatch in the Paint, written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld, is one that the majority of us can relate to. We were all once that awkward kid in junior high trying to find a place to fit in, whether it was a position in the status quo or not, we all just wanted to have friends to sit with at lunch. In the seventh grade Theo had thought that he would forever be one of the nerds on campus, he and his best friend Brian had recently joined the Brain Train and could not be happier. The Brain Train was aRead More →

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Set in the summer and fall of 1972, in the small town of Stony Gap, Virginia, Kathryn Erskine‘s latest, Seeing Red, is full to the brim with the little details of everyday life, woven together so expertly as to create a richly detailed portrait of a young man, his family, his town, and his world, that is an emotional powerhouse for readers, young and old alike.  12 year old Red Porter’s daddy, his hero, has recently died of a heart attack and Red’s entire world is reeling.  Left with doubt, debt, and nothing to keep them in Stony Gap, Red’s mama is preparing to sellRead More →