Bounce By:Natasha Friend

                Whenever Evyn makes a wish it has always been the exact same thing: for a mom. She gets just that when her dad decides to remarry. The problem is, Evyn hates her new mom. All she has left of her old life is her dog, Clam. Everything else has changed, her brother, her dad,… her life. It just keeps getting worse after Evyn’s step-mom announces she is pregnant. After the big news, in a state of rage, Evyn goes outside to hug the last piece of her old life, her dog.  She discovers even that is gone.                                                                                                                                 Clam is dead.

P.S.- Watch out, Natasha Friend is a powerful writer! (I was bawling when Clam died!)

Acceleration

A boy finds a lost diary of a killer on the lose. He can’t turn it in to police. He decides to take care of it himself. With the help of friends, Damon can solve the mystery as to who the killer is. He knows that the killer has been taking his time, starting with harming animals to setting fires. Damon calls the man Roach. As Damon continues to read on in the diary, he finds something he didn’t like. Roach had been spying on three girls, all of which he gave his own nicknames:Cherry, Bones, and Clown. Damon comes to find that he’s discovered who Roach really is!!! It becomes a battle to the death. Who survives? Damon or Roach?

Burn My Heart

In this novel, the author Beverley Naidoo gives the reader a glimpse at prejudice, fear, and the things that happen to both bring people together and tear them apart. Naidoo grew up in South Africa as a white person. For a long time only white people had power in South Africa – everything depended on your skin color. According to the author, “As a child I never questioned why I could live with my parents in a comfortable home, go to school, play in the park and do all sorts of things black children were not free to do. My upbringing led me to believe that white people were superior and it was natural for them to have the best of everything. But when I realised how false this was, I became very angry at all the injustice around me – and how I was part of it.”

This book is an engaging story that takes place in Kenya in the early 1950s. The story tells us about two boys, 11 and 13. The younger boy’s, Matthew Grayson, grandfather came to Africa just before World War I because the British government promised cheap land and labor. The older boy’s, Mugo, grandfather had owned this land, but had gone to Nairobi to help the British with the war effort. When he returned, his land had been settled by Grayson. Now Mugo’s family is part of the cheap labor for the Graysons.

Matthew and Mugo have been friends. Mugo has taught Matthew much and they have become friends. At least as much friends as colonialism allowed – whites were always superior to the native Africans. The author lets the reader see the story from the points of view of each of the boys. The Mau Mau, a secret society and a guerilla fighting force, began a rebellion to take back what was rightfully theirs. This changed life for these boys and the story tells us how.

This is a great way for you to learn about a time in history that I am sure most of you are completely unaware of. The Kenyans freed themselves from British rule on December 12, 1963.

President Obama’s grandfather was a victim of this era of violence in Kenya.

The Magicians Elephant

Kate DiCamillo has written another book that appeals to the youngster in all of us. She is the author of some of our favorites –  Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane to name a few. This new book is more like a fable about trusting the unexpected and making the extraordinary become real. Like a number of recently published books, this one has some wonderful black & white illustrations. I think that they are great because they add to the pictures that I create in my mind as I read. Those of you who know me know that I really usually like the “movies” I create in my own imagination better than those created in Hollywood.

The setting of this book is “the century before last.” In this fantasy, an orphan boy, Peter Augustus Duchene, lives with an old soldier Vilna Lutz in the city of Baltese and is in training to be a soldier. Lutz has sent him with a single coin to buy food, but Peter sees a fortuneteller’s tent. He learns that possibly what he has always been told about his baby sister is not true – he has hope that it is not. About the same time, a magician has a trick go oh-so wrong and an elephant drops from the ceiling of the opera house crushing a noblewoman’s legs.

A boy and an elephant long to have a home and a family. . . This is a magical story of love and hope; a fairy tale and a mystery that has so many themes that it could be easily read many times. It would be a great read-aloud story.

There is a wonderful website where you can read an excerpt, meet the illustrator, and register for a live webcast on October 25, 2009.

Pip: the Story of Olive

Olive is an only child who lives with her high-powered lawyer mother, Mog, in a ramshackle house. The author, Kim Kane, is Australian and she has given this novel an odd plot, some strange characters, and a different voice (the manner in which the story is told). Don’t be put off by the Australian terms – they are kind of fun! (Rubbers are erasers.)

“Olive Garnaut looked ever so slightly like an extraterrestrial: a very pale extraterrestrial. She had long thin hari, which hung and swung, and a long thin face to match it. … It went without saying that Olive was the most peculiar-looking girl in Year 7.”

Mathilda was one of Olive’s only friends, but she dumps Olive for Amelia Forster. “That was the thing about being dumped: it was contagious. Schoolgirls hunted in packs. Olive was so contagious she could almost see her own disease.” Then when life seems at its worst Pip enters Olive’s life – they were extraordinarily identical – two peas in a pod. There is a difference; Pip is much more outgoing and daring. Pip gives Olive the courage to stand up for herself and is the person that we all want to be a times in our lives.

Sometimes we meet some very mean girls as we grow up. Do you know an Amelia? Or a “spineless pig” Mathilda?
I loved the titles of the chapters! – Chicken Loaf and Chaos, Origami Massacre to name a couple.

Call Me Hope

There is always one book or movie that you have seen or read whose story you know you will never forget. Of the many books I have read this one will always stick out.

                As I walked in the library I wasn’t looking for any particular book. I quickly scanned the “New Books Shelf.” I grabbed a couple books that I randomly picked out.  I started out the door and was thinking about my math assignment. It never occurred to me that I was holding a book that would become so special to me. After the first page I was immersed in the story.

                Hope had always thought that everyone’s mother criticized their children. As she went on with her schooling she had realized that this behavior in her mother was not normal at all. Calling your child stupid, dumb shit, retarded was definitely not typical motherly behavior. And Hope even had a pet name-Hopeless.

                Every time Hope’s mom said these things, it was like someone stabbed her. The word that brought the most pain to Hope was stupid. As far as she was concerned that word should never have been invented.

                To vent her anger on her mother she created a point system. She kept a special notebook for the point system. Every time her mother called her names she put a certain amount of points in her notebook. This helps her deal with her mom’s abusive activity.

                 Call me Hope was by far the best book I have ever read. Verbal abuse isn’t always recognized when it first happens. Sometimes it can hurt a person so much more that physical abuse.  When you read this book you will realize how verbally abused children feel. Call Me Hope is a powerful story you will never forget.

Google Books

Want to try something different? Read a book online. Go to Google Books

I was looking at a book in the library that I really like, Foster’s War by Carolyn Reeder. I found it on Google Books. You can’t read all of the book, but you can get a significant portion of it – so if you forgot the book at school, you can access most of it for free on the computer.

This book takes place in San Diego during World War II. Foster doesn’t know if he fears war more or his father. “Shh! Do you want to wake Father?” …Foster wonders how many kids were more afraid of their fathers than of an air raid.” His older brother quit high school and joined the army to escape their dad. He is a gunner on a B-26. Foster’s best friend is put in an internment camp.

Surface Tension

I originally picked this book because I really thought The Burn Journals also by Brent Runyon was thought provoking.

Luke is an only child. His family has a tradition of going to the lake to their cabin for two weeks each year. Runyon does not share with the readers any other times in Luke’s life but for the two weeks each summer that are spent at the cabin; yet we get to know him and watch him grow from 13 through 16. (These are times of great change in everyone’s life.) At 13 he is still interested in swimming, fishing, and all the things he has always done at the lake. With each summer Luke changes and what he finds interesting also changes.

For me, I can remember going to a lake cabin each year for those same years. I can remember changing during those years too. I still remember fondly the years we went to Lake Winnie. Going to northern Minnesota is still a wonderful adventure and always makes me feel good.

You can read an excerpt.

The Juvie Three

I know lots of you are Gordon Korman fans – the On the Run, Dive, Escape, Schooled, Swindle, Son of the Mob.

This is a novel about three boys, Gecko, Terence, and Arjay.
“Gecko Fosse is behind the wheel of a powder blue Infiniti M45 sedan, enjoying the thrum of the idling engine and not thinking. Gecko has elevated not thinking to the level of high art. He’s almost as good at it as he is at driving, and that’s very good.”
Arjay is a big kid. There was a fight. Arjay punched someone. A person died. Arjay shrugs, “I hit him, and he didn’t get up.”
Terrence planned a robbery for a gang he wanted to join; they all ended up in jail.

Douglas Healy was once like these boys, and now he thinks he can help them. Terrence only wants to get away, but Gecko and Arjay know that if he does, they will have to go back to detention centers. They don’t want that. One night there is an argument and Douglas is hurt, bad…

I really enjoyed the suspense in this book.

You can read an excerpt.

November Blues

In this book, November’s boyfriend dies in a tragic accident. Little did he know at the time; his girlfriend was pregnant. November ends up carring for her and Josh’s baby with help from family.