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Isis Ann Murray, known by her friends as Ice or Icie, loves language, Starbucks, smart-ass T-shirts, horror films, her iPhone, and Tristan.  With her best friend Lola, Icie engages in linguistic creativity, creating Ripples—words that lose their individual identities when they swirl into new forms, adding flavor to conversation.  Freaking idiot, for example, becomes fridiot, and terrifically boring becomes borrific.  Icie’s life is flowing as smoothly as life can for a seventeen-year-old whose dad is a nuclear physicist and whose mom works for the federal government, but she learns that, regardless of life’s banality or beauty, Psycho-style surprises can erupt. When Tristan—two weeks before prom—dumpsRead 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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In: On the Edge, Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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The bond between brothers is at the heart of Michael Harmon‘s latest, Under the Bridge.  Tate’s younger brother, Indy, is probably the best skateboarder in Spokane.  The guys in the crew, Indy, Tate, Pipe and Sid, are tight like brothers and they live to ride.  Their neighborhood is on the fringe of the seedy underbelly of the city where drugs and crime are rampant and murder happens almost every day, and just last year they lost one of their own to an overdose.  Tate’s the crew’s unofficial leader and he feels an obligation to protect his brothers as much as he can.  And its notRead More →

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Identity theft has been the top consumer complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the past twelve years in a row.  According to the FTC, identity theft, which happens when someone steals your personal information and uses it without your permission, is a serious crime that can wreak havoc with your finances, credit history, and reputation — and can take time, money, and patience to resolve. This is the topic of Anna Davies’ new book, Identity Theft, the second installment in the Point Horror series.  Davies’ novel features senior Hayley Westin, who has more awards than friends.  As a freshman, she took down 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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Readers of alien invasions, apocalyptic fiction, or exhilarating action-thrillers will not be disappointed with Rick Yancey’s latest novel, The Fifth Wave.  Reminiscent of Steven King’s The Stand , of P.D. James’ futuristic political-fable novel Children of Men, or of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, Yancey’s book is super- intense and rich with nearly nonstop action.  In grand genre-blurring fashion, Yancey writes a book that is equal parts science-fiction and thriller, the first in a trilogy that promises to rival the popular  Hunger Games series. When aliens invade earth, their presence is felt in waves: Lights Out, Surf’s Up, Pestilence, Silencer, and the Fifth Wave.  After losing the powerRead More →

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Have you ever wished the rich gave a small amount of their money to the poor? Or even to the less unfortunate…?  Ash and Benjamin do just that in the story, Money Run, by Jack Heath. When Ash’s mother leaves with most of the money, Ash and her father are struggling to make ends meet. Her father begins working multiple jobs, but the income is not enough. Trying to pay the bills each month was hard enough but when their house is burglarized  everything changes. Ash comes home from school to find that the television, couch, computer, phone, her bed, and other furniture pieces have beenRead More →

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In: General Book Reviews, Ideas You Can Use, Random Thoughts and Musings, This is interesting, What We're Reading, What's Happening at PBC
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Have you ever read a book that you just couldn’t wait to recommend to a friend? We’d love to hear about it! Tell us in the comments about your favorite book or (if you can’t pick a favorite) the last great book that you read. Make sure you include the title and author, add the genre and age range, then tell us why you loved it!Read More →