The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2008. Print.

Would you kill someone? Could you kill someone? Could you kill the person sitting next to you? The Hunger Games, twenty-four enter, one leaves. Countryman against countryman; neighbor against neighbor. Some enter for glory, most because they are poor and unlucky. Katness Everdeen enters out of love. What will it take for Katness to leave The Games? The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. May the odds be ever in your favor.


Winner of 2008 Cybils in the Young Adult Category
Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year 2008

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Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Mayberry

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Maberry, Jonathan. Rot & Ruin. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print.

"Benny Imura couldn't hold a job, so he took to killing.  It was the family business."  Life is not what Benny Imura thought it was.  Sure there's zombies (zoms), survivors and bounty hunters, but when he begins apprenticing with his brother Tom he is taken beyond the fence into the Rot & Ruin.  Out there he begins to see the reality he never considered.  Bounty hunting is not what he thought it was, zoms aren't what he thought they were either, and Tom is most certainly not who Benny thought he was.  Can Benny and Tom survive the zombies and worse in the Rot & Ruin?

Winner of 2010 Cybils for Fantasy and Science Fiction Category

Listen to the 1st chapter
of Rot & Ruin.

Don't miss book two in the Bennt Imura series Dust & Decay. 

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

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Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print. 

Hazel Grace Lancaster is dying.  The fact is undeniable, but while not in remission, an experimental drug has halted the progress of her cancer indefinitely.  At a support group for kids with cancer she meets Augustus Waters.  He is hansom, smart, funny and understands what it is to live with cancer.  Hazel Grace and Augustus visit the Netherlands searching for answers from the author of their favorite book.  Along the way they discover the love of their lives. 

Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world.  Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death.  We all want to be remembered. I do, too.  That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.  I want to leave a mark.  But... The marks humans leave are too often scars.  You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are scars.  Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.

The story of Hazel and Augustus is a tale of love, of dying, and of the scars we leave.

Watch author John Green read the entire first chapter of The Fault in Our Stars.

Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy by Bil Wright

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Wright, Bill. Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.

Booktalk:

Carlos Duarte, fashionista and self proclaimed "big" guy, has dreamed of being a makeup artist to the stars for as long as he can remember.  Now he has his first break on the way to fame and fortune; he has landed a job at the Feature Face makeup counter in Macy's.  Carlos feels he is destined to be famous, but for now he is stuck navigating high school, a crush on a guy who keeps giving mixed signals, family issues and friend drama.  Can Carlos realize his dreams?  Read this novel about an unapologetically fabulous guy and see if all of his practice Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy has gotten him where he knows he belongs.

Winner of the Stonewall Award 2012

I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields

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I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee covers Lee's life thus far with a focus on the influences that went into the formation of Lee's novel. The biography is an adaptation of the author Charles J. Shields' adult biography of Lee. This fact is not evident when reading the book. The author extensively quotes from printed sources, along with letters he has received and interviews. Shields includes an exhaustive list of sources by chapter at the end of the book along with superscript reference numbers in the text. The book also contains a comprehensive index.
The text is well written and interesting, Shields uses direct quotations frequently. There are also photographs interspersed throughout the text. The author is balanced in his portrayal of Lee, he included negative statements made by others about Lee. What was missing from the book was contact with the subject. Shields did not correspond or interview Lee for the book. He makes a point to mention her reclusiveness leaving the reader to infer that his attempts were rejected. Overall a very well written biography.


2009 Bank Street- Best Children's Book of the Year

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

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     Ponyboy Curtis lives on the wrong side of town with his two older brothers and their gang of friends. They are greasers and proud of it, they smoke and drink, they are loud and wild, they grow their hair long and they stick together no matter what. Life is not easy for Ponyboy and the gang. Ponyboy shares the events of a week that changes his life forever. He shares his thoughts on life, social status and personality types. He is an astute judge of character and describes all of the players in terms of their inner selves as well as their outer appearance. 
     The Outsiders is a classic not just because it was one of the first teen novels, not because it caused controversy over its portrayal of gangs and teen violence but because it tells a story that transcends time and place. It fills a need for teens, it is an honest story of youth. 


ALA Best Young Adult Books, 1975

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

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"I am running. That's the first thing I remember.", thus begins Milkweed the tale of a homeless boy living on the streets of Poland in 1939. He is smuggler and a thief who lives through occupation, segregation, and deportation in Warsaw. This boy carries the reader along to view the best and worst of humanity through the eyes of a child who is at once too young and too old. The story continues through his emigration to America.

While this novel is an accurate portrayal of history it is not only about history. It is an exploration of the human experience and the search for identity. Milkweed is full of vivid descriptions of the horrors experienced by those living and dying in the ghetto. Readers are allowed to see the after effects of the experience and the scars both physical and mental that the boy carries into adulthood. The power of the story is heightened by Spinelli's deft avoidance of sentimentality. This is a fine piece of work worthy of attention but not suited for those with weak stomachs.