by Jon J Muth
Beauty by Robin McKinnley
Book InfoStolen
by Vivian Vande Velde
Ages 9-12
Vivian Vande Velde has always been a favorite of mine with Dragon's Bait, Companions of the Night, The Conjurer Princess, and Being Dead being in the top four. She does not disapoint in this fast pace mystery. The story starts with a young girl running through the woods and as she runs she realizes she does not know who she is- she does not even know her name. Could she be Isabelle the long lost daughter stolen by a witch? Is the wicked witch really evil? How do greed and jealousy shape our lives? This book answers all these questions and leaves the reader wanting to know more about the characters. I highly recommend this book and with only 158 pages it is a fairly quick read. I especially love that this idea came from looking at pictures of people the author did not know. Authors are inspired by many things and this is one that I really liked... You can find the pictures on her website. I provided a link below.
From her website
The idea for Stolen came from an image of a girl I don‘t know.
Let me back up: I’ve seen, when I’ve been asked to lead writing workshops, that it can sometimes be difficult for people to just jump in and make up a character. I’ve found that one way to get workshop participants started quickly is to provide them with a picture. “Tell me about this person,” I’ll ask. “What is he afraid of? Tell me a secret about her that even her best friend doesn’t know.”
For this exercise, I don’t want to provide pictures of my friends or family (I’d rather not hear someone say about my grandmother: ‘I think she looks like a serial killer…’); and I don’t use people from magazines (because sometimes it’s hard to disconnect an actor from the roles he’s played, or a famous person from the events that made her famous). Instead, I use pictures of people nobody is likely to know. Some of my pictures are ones I’ve bought in antique stores or flea markets, others are from internet sites where “found” pictures are posted. These are pictures that have been left behind when someone moves out of a house, or that have been used as a bookmark in a book sold at a second-hand shop, or that have been picked up by someone collecting trash along the side of a road. There are hundreds of pictures to choose from; but for my workshops I choose faces that I find interesting--faces I believe people could think of as a character with a story to tell.
Stolen started because I found one of those pictures so haunting that I decided I wanted to try my hand at making up a story about her.
White Cat by Holly Black
May 4, 2010
Cassel comes from a family of curse workers -- people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail -- he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.
Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.
Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single touch can bring love -- or death -- and your dreams might be more real than your memories.
Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel .jpg)
August 3rd 2010
When Lenah Beaudonte, a 500-year-old vampire queen, wakes up a human teenager at an ultra-cliquey prep school, she must choose between embracing the humanity she’s always craved and saving her new friends from her vicious coven. The first in a sizzling new YA series. Lenah Beaudonte is, in many ways, your average teen: the new girl at Wickham Boarding School, she struggles to fit in enough to survive and stand out enough to catch the eye of the golden-boy lacrosse captain. But Lenah also just happens to be a recovering five-hundred-year-old vampire queen. After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah is able to realize the dream all vampires have -- to be human again. After performing a dangerous ritual to restore her humanity, Lenah entered a century-long hibernation, leaving behind the wicked coven she ruled over and the eternal love who has helped grant her deep-seated wish. Until, that is, Lenah draws her first natural breath in centuries at Wickham and rediscovers a human life that bears little resemblance to the one she had known. As if suddenly becoming a teenager weren’t stressful enough, each passing hour brings Lenah closer to the moment when her abandoned coven will open the crypt where she should be sleeping and find her gone. As her borrowed days slip by, Lenah resolves to live her newfound life as fully as she can. But, to do so, she must answer ominous questions: Can an ex-vampire survive in an alien time and place? What can Lenah do to protect her new friends from the bloodthirsty menace about to descend upon them? And how is she ever going to pass her biology midterm?
8. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn MacklerReasons: sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group
Book Info
