Th1rteen R3asons Why Jay Asher RazorBill Penguin More than a few of my students recommended I read Jay Asher’s Th1rteen R3asons Why and this one was a doozy–very difficult to read, but incredibly meaningful. Clay Jensen picks up the package from his porch without much thought–hmmm, cassette tapes?–but his life is forever changed. His co-worker, …
As Chimney Sweepers Come To Dust (DRC) Alan Bradley Delacorte Press Release date: January 6, 2015 If you haven’t caught Flavia fever by now, you’re missing out on something special. Twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is a chemist prodigy-turned-sleuth who has solved any number of thefts, murders, and kidnappings in her six previous adventures. At the …
NetGalley ARC Houghton Mifflin release date: Oct. 2 I read Zac & Mia because The Fault In Our Stars has been such a phenomenon with my kids at school–and the blurb sounded enough like Stars to think this might be another YA favorite. So while I might not want kids to jump into a novel simply because it …
The Book Thief Markus Zusak The Book Thief has been on my Amazon Wishlist for ages; published several years ago and a New York Times bestseller for now a second go-around, it seemed like good summer reading. Okay, so a novel about Nazi Germany might not be everyone’s idea of a beach book, but what …
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock (NetGalley) Mathew Quick First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. The blurbs on this YA novel are pretty impressive: “riveting”, “harrowing”, “beautifully written”. And with a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly and a movie deal in the works, I worried the hype …
15 Days Without a Head (NetGalley)Dave CousinsRelease date: May 2013 Laurence Roach’s mom is single, depressed, alcoholic … and disappears one day without a trace. His six-year-old brother Jay can be hard to manage and sometimes acts like a dog, especially when he doesn’t want to mind. And so it falls to Laurence to hold …
Age of MiraclesKaren Thompson Walker My bookstore friend had a book for me–“imaginative premise”, she said, “I dreamt about it all night.” Then the suggestion that I just might want to consider it as a read-aloud for my classes. And she was right. Even the New Yorker raved about this debut novel in their August 6 issue, saying …
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Ransom Riggs Peculiar traits often skip a generation, or ten. Peculiar children are not always, or even usually, born to peculiar parents, and peculiar parents do do always, or even usually, bear peculiar children. Can you imagine, in a world so afraid of otherness, why this would be a danger to …
The Fault In Our Starsby John Green “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” ~ Julius Caesar Last month I heard author John Green on NPR and immediately …
If I Stayby Gayle Forman Recommended on NPR’s “You Must Read This” feature, If I Stay is a young-adult novel that doesn’t read like one: the writing is evocative, the story isn’t maudlin, the romance almost (!) believable. The novel does have the quick-read characteristic of YA, though–no dense writing here. The premise, however, is …
This is my symphony 