56 books reviewed by Justine Alabama Moon By Watt Key "Would you like to try living on your own? What would you do if you did … to survive and for fun? Can you imagine eating snakes? Killing deer? If you could pick part of Alabama Moon and jump into the story, which part would join?" Be More Chill By Ned Vizzini "Ever wish you could get your hands on a rule book or wise person to guide you through high school and make you cool? I'm guessing you didn't imagine that the voice behind the rules would be just like Keanu Reeves's voice. Or maybe you did." Beach By Elisha Cooper "Have you used watercolors, drawn with pencils, or tried both together? Elisha Cooper did, while thinking about the different things people do at the beach. Looking at his pictures in Beach takes me right to the ocean." The Book of Story Beginnings By Kristin Kladstrup "If you're a huge Harry Potter fan, I bet you'll love the bright blue magic potion, strange movements of time, and great adventures. If you prefer realistic stories, maybe it's Lucy's and Oscar's lives in Iowa and the realistic characters you'll like best. " Catwings By Ursula K. Le Guin "If you like books about animals, you'll probably enjoy Catwings. It's about some very unusual kittens: they're born with wings!" Chasing Vermeer By Blue Balliett "You’ll ... learn a code language, which you’ll have to master (it’s not terribly hard to do that) if you want to find out what’s going on with the three-dimensional person who disappears. There’s also a two-dimensional person who disappears. But to find out more, you’ll have to find the book!" Crash By Jerry Spinelli "John's an unreliable narrator and also sort of a jerk … but he's a lonely, spirited guy who loves football, his grandfather, and his friend Mike." The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night By Mark Haddon "Because Christopher’s a math whiz, interested in astronomy, physics, and logic, people drawn to scientific and mathematical ways of thinking will probably like this book. It’s a detective novel, with a couple of mysterious turns and twists, so folks who enjoy that kind of plot should also dive into this little red book with a dead dog on the cover." Dairy Queen By Catherine Gilbert Murdock "Dear Readers, A shy girl meets the popular quarterback of a rival high school and falls for him. Sounds familiar? If that were all I knew about Dairy Queen, I probably would have left it on the shelf at the bookstore. The cover photo (two teenagers lying head-to-head in the grass, a couple of puffy white clouds decorating the aqua blue sky above them) and title fit with that description and didn't grab me, either. But Jaclyn Moriarty, one of my favorite young adult authors, has a blurb on that cover ('"I absolutely loved it'") and if she loved it, I figured it was worth a good look." Dave At Night By Gail Carson Levine "You'll find out about rent parties and learn a bit of Yiddish when you climb out to a tree branch near Dave's bedroom window, slide down the rope he strings up, and follow him onto the streets of Harlem." Defining Dulcie By Paul Acampora "In Ohio, Dulcie, who does one of those "don't try this at home" kinds of things that make for good stories and drives her dad's pick-up truck across the United States alone, meets up with a tall, funny nun who knows a lot about Italy. In Kansas, she visits some fainting goats." Fast Food Nation By Eric Schlosser "Schlosser visits with slaughterhouse workers, tastes chemically-produced burger (and other) flavors in New Jersey, pays close attention to the spread of e-coli and other diseases apparently inadvertently promoted by the fast food industry, and talks with high school students who work in fast food restaurants." Feeling Sorry for Celia By Jaclyn Moriarty "It makes sense that we’d include this book (a novel told in letters) on RPP, because Elizabeth’s friends and family seem for a long time to be more pen pals than companions." Flygirl By Sherri L. Smith "For Ida Mae, also known as Jonesy, the challenges of being a female pilot at a time when people didn’t expect to see one were just part of the struggle. Sherri Smith’s protagonist also has to choose between loyalty to her family and friends back home in Slidell, Louisiana and her love of flying." Frindle By Andrew Clements Ever tried to drive a teacher completely crazy or secretly giggled while someone else did? Watch Nick not only drive his teacher nuts but get rich doing so. Geography Club By Brent Hartinger "Under social pressure (to reject certain people in order to be more popular; to seem “straight” even if you're not for the same reason and also to keep yourself safe and your school out of trouble with religious and political authorities), how can a teenager behave with integrity?" The Golden Compass By Philip Pullman "Pullman's at least as imaginative, creative, and interesting as J.K. Rowling [who writes the books about Harry Potter]." The Half-A-Moon Inn By Paul Fleischman "Aaron, the main character, meets up with a scary witch-like woman, a forest full of thieves, and a dangerous man who escaped from jail." Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix By J.K. Rowling "Do you ever wish you could take revenge on certain teachers or other adults who make too many rules for you?" Holes By Louis Sachar "I loved the way Sachar kept filling in holes in the plot, one by one, by skipping back and forth between the present and the past, the previous generations and Stanley's camp experience" Iron & Silk By Mark Salzman "If you're interested in martial arts (kung fu, tai chi, etc., all of which are spelled differently in this book!) or what it's like to live in China today, you should check [this work of nonfiction] out." Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell By Susana Clarke An amazing book for fantasy lovers who appreciate sophisticated writing. If you read J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, Diana Wynne Jones, etc. with a passion a few years ago and find yourself wishing Charles Dickens had written about magic, this book's for you. Julia's Kitchen By Brenda A. Ferber "If you hate reading really sad stories, don't read past the first page of Julia's Kitchen. But if you don't mind crying your way through a great book, find Brenda A. Ferber's first novel and read straight through it." Julie of the Wolves By Jean Craighead George "Julie of the Wolves takes you to Alaska, where you'll learn about Eskimo communities and also about the arctic wilderness. You'll meet two girls in one (read the book to help me figure out what that means!): Miyax and Julie." The Known World By Edward P. Jones "What did being owned, being freed, and owning someone else mean for the folks who experienced these different states? Edward P. Jones forces his readers to look hard at human property, seeing just how human that property is even as we discover what can happen to a human being understood to belong to someone else." Last Day in Vietnam By Will Eisner For fans of graphic novels and comics interested in the experiences of American soldiers in Vietnam and Korea. Eisner's comics take you right to the difficulties human beings face while fighting wars. Life is Funny By E.R. Frank "How would you say people who face the kinds of problems Frank’s characters struggle with (the racism Eric encounters at every turn, Grace’s angry mom, Ebony’s dad, the way Drew’s father treats his mother, etc.) manage to survive?" The Magic Goose By Daniel Pinkwater "If you could have any person or animal or imaginary character from a book or movie or t.v. show or machine or anything at all appear magically in your room one evening and invite you on an adventure, would you choose this magic goose that Seymour met?" Maniac Magee By Jerry Spinelli "Spinelli really likes to write about sports, but in unusual ways. What do you think of the scenes in this book that describe people playing and talking about baseball, football, and running?" Marcelo in the Real World By Francisco X. Stork If you're interested in law, autism, love, the differences between life in the city and in the country, animals, or just how to get through the hard parts of life or cope with pushy parents, you've got to read this book. It's amazing. Matilda Bone By Karen Cushman "When Matilda gets sent to live in Blood and Bone Alley, where she's surrounded by medieval healers, she's completely miserable. People there use leeches and other strange methods to cure their patients!" Midnight Is a Place By Joan Aiken "Spooky novels about orphans who get kicked around by nasty people can be great!" "Joan Aiken ... wrote a book that anyone who really digs The Series of Unfortunate Events will love. And those of us who like a spooky Gothic or Dickensian novel but need a bit more grist than [Lemony] Snicket gives us will love it, too!" Mrs. Crump's Cat By Linda Smith "'Found one sneaky finicky troublesome WET yellow cat with FLEAS.' That's the sign Mrs. Crump puts up after a cat shows up on her doorstep. Read Linda Smith's book if you love pets (and maybe if you hate them)." The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie By Jaclyn Moriarty "Not sure whether to read this book? Check it out for Moriarty’s sense of humor. She’s very, very funny." My Love, My Love By Rosa Guy You’ll have to read My Love, My Love to figure out whether the gods of the island called the Jewel of the Antilles are good to an orphan who falls in love with a wealthy young man. He literally crashes into her world and then she travels many, many miles to join him in his." My Side of the Mountain By Jean Craighead George "Sam faces the problem of keeping secret and surviving in the wild. I like everything about the story." Pyongyang By Guy Delisle "Fans of graphic novels and, perhaps even more, those of you who are curious about countries very different from your own, should check out Guy Delisle's Pyongyang. Deslisle, an animator, worked briefly for an animation studio in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang. This book illustrates his time there." The Secret Life of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd "If you have any curiosity about the Civil Rights movement, the American South, racism, bees, honey production, or teenaged girls, read this book!" Shabanu By Suzanne Fisher Staples Can you imagine what it might be like to grow up in a Pakistani desert? Picture yourself traveling by camel, running out of water before the rainy season begins, and marrying at an age most of us would consider very young... Silent to the Bone By E.L. Konigsburg "Konigsburg's not shy about showing us how adolescents really feel about divorce, their parents' second marriages, flirtatious babysitters, and each other." The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death By Daniel Pinkwater "Picture me laughing out loud on the subway while I read. People riding to and from work or to the movies or whatever probably thought I was as crazy as Rat's family." Someday Angeline By Louis Sachar "Have you read Matilda, by Roald Dahl? Or have you ever felt bored in school? Do your parents ever mystify you? Do you ever mystify them? Do you enjoy going to the aquarium? If any of these questions make you think “Yes,” you will probably relate to Angeline." Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson "Have you ever had a friend turn against you? The protagonist of this novel (a high school freshman named Melinda) lost all of her friends." Specials By Scott Westerfeld "Tally's usually deeply confused about who's right about things. It's never clear which side her friend Shay's really on. Which leaders will guide them with wisdom: the beautiful, fun-loving ones? The smartest? The strongest? The most able to live on their own in nature? Or the ones best at protecting the wild?" The Spell Book of Listen Taylor By Jaclyn Moriarty "So if you read Feeling Sorry for Celia or The Murder of Bindy McKenzie and, like me, you would therefore read pretty much anything Moriarty produces, check this novel out. It's slow going at first. I set it aside a few times and dipped into other books. But once I reached a point about a third of the way through I found it difficult to put it down for meals, a party for my son's baseball team, nights of sleep. " Then Again, Maybe I Won't By Judy Blume "Tony Miglione's starting junior high, becoming a seventh grader. Boys tend to go through all sorts of changes around his age and Judy Blume isn't afraid to describe them." There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom By Louis Sachar "It's going to be hard for me to read anyone but Louis Sachar this summer. I love his style!!! I can hardly believe that he's not around Bradley's age: he understands the ways kids think and feel so well." The Things They Carried By Tim O'Brien "We called the enemy ghosts. 'Bad night,' we’d say, 'the ghosts are out.'" Meet the ghosts the war in Vietnam created for author Tim O'Brien and you'll feel like a young soldier yourself." Treasure Island By Robert Louis Stevenson "If suspense, pirates, or a search for buried treasure sound good to you, read this book." True Believer By Virginia Euwer Wolff "Sequels can be terribly disappointing and at first I worried that this one might be....But not only does Jolly stay in touch with LaVaughn in this book, the new characters Wolff introduces turn out to be as interesting and, in their different ways, mysterious." Tuck Everlasting By Natalie Babbit "Winnie Foster … [is] a girl who thinks about running away, but then ends up having an adventure that she doesn’t plan at all." Under the Persimmon Tree By Suzanne Fisher Staples Read this book to learn more about life today in Afghanistan and Pakistan or just to enjoy a good story, one which walks a woman (Nusrat) and a girl (Najmah) through some horrifying experiences without losing its beauty. Vegan Virgin Valentine By Carolyn Mackler "Mackler reminds me of Judy Blume. Both women write intensely fun, absorbing books about girls growing up. Both sweep you up in the romance as well as the ickier, stickier aspects of adolescence." When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit By Judith Kerr "Many kids want to learn about Hitler, the Holocaust, the Nazis, and World War II. This book’s a good way to start. It’s also a good story about ... a family that starts out comfortable, even wealthy, and ends up with less money and without even a place to live." Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush? By Jerry Spinelli "The brother and sister who narrate Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush? really and truly hate each other." The Wright 3 By Blue Balliett "If you enjoyed Chasing Vermeer as much as I did, you may like The Wright 3 even better. Calder and Petra, joined by Calder's old friend Tommy, discover another mystery right in their Chicago neighborhood." home  |  books  |  authors  |  teachers  |  about us

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