Lex is angry and out of control so she gets shipped to the country to live with her uncle Mort where she can put her skills to use, as a Grim Reaper.
Book Talk:
Lex Bartleby used to be a good girl but all that has changed. Sarcastic, volatile, prone to smashing people in the face, Lex is on her last straw with school authorities when her parents send her off to visit her weird uncle Mort in the country to see if she can sort out her "anger issues." Instead of chanting Kumbaya and churning butter, Lex quickly learns that Croak, the tiny town where Mort lives, is the home of reapers who haunt the dead and Lex is there to learn the family business. Now that Lex has an explanation for her sudden fascination with death and endless anger, what will happen when she is turned loose with the power to take lives without seeming consequence? Is Lex even a little too hardcore for the residents of Croak?
Wolitzer, Meg. Belzhar. New York, New York: Dutton Juvenile, 2014. Print. ISBN 978-0-525-42305-8; Hardcover; $17.99. Annotation: Jam's boyfriend is dead and she can't bear living until a special English class at a boarding school for "emotionally fragile" intellectuals opens her eyes to a possible future. Book Talk: Jam Gallahue falls madly in love with the tall, romantic and gorgeous English exchange student Reeve and they spend 41 perfect days together until the unthinkable happens. He dies. Jam, unable to bear the loss, buries herself in the blankets on her bed and can barely function. After a year of serious depression her parents ship her off to a boarding school in Vermont called The Wooden Barn. There she meets others like her: drifters, misfits, sensitive souls with traumatic pasts they can't bear in the present. Jam is sure nothing will ever feel good again until she is enrolled in a mysterious class called Special Topics in English where the entire curriculum is based on the work of Sylvia Plath. This is where they learn about Belzhar. When Jam and her classmates discover how to go back to the way things were before their lives fell apart they each have to decide whether they want to live in an unchanging and comfortable past or an uncertain future. Find out what Jam discovers in Belzhar and see if she chooses love over life. Available in paperback, hardcover, eBook, and audio CD. Teen quote: "It's not as dark as it sounds, ending on a hopeful note about transformation." ~Amy, 18.
King, A S. Everybody Sees the Ants. New York: Little, Brown, 2012. Print. ISBN 978-0-316-12927-5; Paperback; $9.99. Annotation: Lucky Linderman escapes from Nader, the Squid and the Turtle by visiting his grandfather in his dreams and imagining ants seek revenge on his behalf. Book Talk: Lucky Linderman doesn't feel so lucky. He has no real friends and no girlfriend. He has been bullied by Nader McMillan for as long as he can remember, and it is getting worse. But no one seems to care. His granddad never came home from the Vietnam War and no one in his family has recovered. His mother hides from her problems at the local public pool and his dad works too much. After Nader's last attack leaves him disfigured, depressed and vengeful, Lucky begins hallucinating tiny ants to enact his revenge. In order to escape oppressive reality Lucky travels into his dreams where he tries to rescue his grandfather from the jungle and rescue himself from Nader McMillan. Read A.S. King's engaging and haunting novel to discover how Lucky, and everyone else who is suffering, sees the ants. Available in paperback, hardcover, eBook and audio CD. Awards:2011 Cybils Award finalist 2011 Andre Norton Award finalist Teen quote: "I really like this book because it talked about how your (sic) the one who builds your own prisons so your (sic) the only one who can tear them down. I also liked that whenever he woke up from a dream he had an object from the dream. That was COOL." ~Jill, 15.
Alexie, Sherman, and Ellen Forney. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2009. Print. ISBN 978-0-316-01368-0; Hardcover; $20.00. Annotation: Junior leaves the reservation to attend the all-white high school 20 miles down the road. Will he survive tragedy and illness to get the girl and graduate? Book Talk: Junior is a nerdy, sickly, reading and drawing obsessed Spokane Native who leaves his friends and family behind on the reservation to attend a racist all-white high school in the next town. Despite meeting the girl of his dreams, Penelope, and making new friends, like Gordy, tragedy strikes and one horrible thing after another happens, until Junior isn't sure if he can go on. Does being Native destine him to a life of drunken poverty, unhappiness and early death? He says, "I used to think the world was broken down by tribes...By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not." Read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian to discover if Junior is willing to change everything in order to change his life. When given the choice, which tribe will he choose? Available in paperback, hardcover, eBook and audio CD. Awards: 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature 2008Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Fiction and Poetry 2009Odyssey Awardas the year's "bestaudiobookfor children or young adults" 2010California Young Reader Medal, Young Adult Book
Zusak, Markus. The
Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print. 978-0-375-84220-7; paperback; $12.99. Annotation: Liesel has just lost everything: her father, her mother, her little brother, and she's about to lose a whole lot more. Book Review:
It’s the early days of World War II and just outside of
Munich, Germany Liesel Meminger wakes up on a train to find her brother
dead. Her sickly, communist mother
leaves her in the care of Hans and Rosa Hubermann, in a foster home on Himmel
Street, and never sees her again. Death,
The Book Thief’s omniscient narrator,
is watching. This wise-cracking,
smooth-talking Death appears outwardly unflappable but is beginning to inwardly
fall apart. His work is overwhelming;
there are so many souls that need transporting and so many desperate survivors
he has to stare in the face. He can’t
take a vacation: Death’s one of a kind.
But there is something special about Liesel, our illiterate, earnest
protagonist that catches Death’s attention, when she steals a book from her
brother’s grave site and sets about to learning how to read it. Along the way she makes friends with a
fist-fighting Jew, a scrappy athlete named Rudy, a haunted mayor’s wife, and
her beloved foster father, Hans. Amid
abject poverty, starvation, bombings, Hitler Youth meetings, school and bullying
Liesel continues to comfort herself with stolen words, and begins to write a
few of her own. Her obsession with
literature becomes her saving grace from the sorrow and confusion of war. And in the end, it touches upon the lives of
her neighbors, loved ones, and enemies.
Even her biggest enemy of all, Death himself.
Weighing in at over 550 pages
with a drab brown cover, The Book Thief
is not going to appeal to the reluctant reader, though you may enjoy the movie directed by Brian Percival or
The Complete Maus
by Art Spiegelman instead. Unlike John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Zusak’s Book Thief never feels patronizing or didactic. The
book’s true magnificence is in its ability to capture so many points of view
without making obvious judgments about any of them. The storyline runs wide enough to encompass
repentant Germans, guilt-ridden Jews, diabolical Nazis, abusive but loving
parents and impulsive children. And, of
course, Death, who is far more human than we may find comfortable. Recommended for ages 13 and up due to mature subject matter. Available in paperback, hardcover, large print, e-book, braille book, audio CD. They also made it into a movie:
Awards won in 2006:
Commonwealth Writers' Prizefor Best Book (South East Asia & South Pacific), School Library JournalBest Book of the Year, Daniel Elliott Peace Award, Publishers WeeklyBest Children's Book of the Year; Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book.
Awards won in 2007:
Michael L. Printz Award, Book Sense Book of the Year, Notable Book for a Global Society, Sydney Taylor Award, Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People.
