books – Page 6

Orange Houses

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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The Orange Houses
by Paul Griffin

This story follows three kids through the pressure cooker of inner-city teenage life as it moves toward its crushing conclusion.

Tamika Sykes is a partially deaf student agonizing over whether she really wants to hear all the noise surrounding her.

Fatima Esperer is a 16-year-old refugee who fled the violence and poverty of her unspecified African country to live in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

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Jimmy Sixes, already a disturbed veteran at age 18, is either a street poet or a junkie. The three form an unusual friendship, connecting both artistically and emotionally. All this is set in a city that has become a powder keg of anti-immigration sentiment (thanks to a recently passed law that rewards citizens for reporting illegals) and is perilously close to the ever-present spark of gang violence.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
750L	High School	176	Adventure	2011	0142419826

Stitches

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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Stitches: A Memoir
by David Small

The story starts when the narrator is six years old and follows him into adulthood, with most of the story spent during his early adolescence. The youngest member of a silent and unhappy family, David is subjected to repeated x-rays to monitor sinus problems. When he develops cancer as a result of this procedure, he is operated on without being told what is wrong with him. The operation results in the loss of his voice, cutting him off even further from the world around him.

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Small’s black and white pen and ink drawings are endlessly perceptive as they portray the layering of dream and imagination onto the real-life experiences of the young boy. Small’s intuitive morphing of images, as with the terrible post-surgery scar on the main character’s throat that becomes a dark staircase climbed by his mother, provide deep emotional echoes. Some understanding is gained as family secrets are unearthed, but for the most part David fends for himself in a family that is uncommunicative to a truly ghastly degree.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
750L	Middle School	329	Autobiography	2010	0393338967

Henry & Mudge

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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Henry & Mudge Collection
by Cynthia Rylant

Will this lovable duo ever run out of opportunities for good times and good feelings?

This fun series of a boy and his best friend will amaze even the youngest of readers.

This series is a perfect marriage of pictures and words.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
400	Elementary School	30	Adventure	2005	0545048087

Book of Dares

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares
by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

Dash and Lily, 16, find themselves on their own in Manhattan at Christmas. Dash is alone by choice –he’s told each of his divorced parents that he’s spending the holiday with the other, leaving them both to take vacations out of town.

Lily’s parents are taking the honeymoon they couldn’t afford when they got married. They think that Lily is in the capable hands of her older brother, but he’s less interested in her than in his new boyfriend, and then he gets sick and spends most of the holiday in bed.

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He does, however, start in motion the activity that is central to the story. It involves a red Moleskine notebook with a list of literary clues that Lily leaves in the stacks at the Strand bookstore. Bookish and erudite Dash finds it and is intrigued enough to follow Lily’s lead and leave some clues of his own. The dares in the book’s title refer to innocent things such as going to various crowded places like Macy’s and FAO Schwartz to pick up messages. As the dares go on, the teens reveal more and more about themselves in the pages of the notebook, until they finally meet under the worst possible circumstances.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
860L	High School	272	Adventure	2010	0375859551

Ship Breaker

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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Shipbreaker
by Paolo Bacigalupi

Set on the American Gulf Coast, Nailer works light crew. His dirty, dangerous job is to crawl deep into the wrecks of the ancient oil tankers that line the beach, scavenging copper wire and turning it over to his crew boss.

After a brutal hurricane passes over, Nailer and his friend, Pima, stumble upon the wreck of a luxurious clipper ship. It’s filled with valuable goods –a “Lucky Strike” that could make them rich, if only they can find a safe way to cash it in.

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Amid the wreckage, a girl barely clings to life. If they help her, she tells them, she can show them a world of privilege that they have never known. But can they trust her? And if so, can they keep the girl safe from Nailer’s drug-addicted father?

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
690L	High School	336	Adventure	2010	1594480001

Magic Half

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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The Magic Half
by Annie Barrow

The middle child between two sets of twins, Miri often feels left out, overlooked, and unremarkable. When her family moves to a new home, she feels lonelier than ever. She soon learns from an elderly neighbor of a legend surrounding her house.

According to town lore, many years earlier a thief left buried treasure somewhere on her property. Quickly, the siblings race to uncover it. Soon after the hunt begins she notices a small piece of glass taped to her wall. Looking through the lens, Miri finds herself still in her room, but in 1935.

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It is here that she meets Molly, a girl badly in need of help to escape her abusive situation, but Miri accidentally returns to her own time before she can save her new friend. Alone again, she must figure out how to rescue Molly before it’s too late.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
640	Middle School	224	Drama	2007	1594480001

Whangdoodles

Posted on September 29, 2013 by webmaster

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The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
by Julie Andrews Edwards

What on earth is a Whangdoodle? A “fanciful creature of undefined nature,” it was also once the wisest, kindest, most fun-loving living thing in the world–until people stopped believing in it.

When that lack of faith became widespread, the last of the really great Whangdoodles created a special land full of extraordinary creatures: furry Flukes, the sly High-Behind Splintercat, and the wonderful Whiffle Bird. But when an open-minded professor–the one adult who still believes in the Whangdoodle–joins forces with three children with active imaginations, they become an unstoppable team on a fantastic and sometimes terrifying journey to Whangdoodleland.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
620l	Middle School	224	Adventure	1999	0060218053

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Kite Runner

Posted on September 29, 2013 by webmaster

The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini

Amir is the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant are best friends. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted.

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Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
840	Middle School	32	Adventure	2004	1594480001

Compound

Posted on September 28, 2013 by webmaster

The Compound
by S.A. Bodeen

In a burst of panic about a nuclear attack, nine-year-old Eli, his sisters, and his parents move into an underground bunker built by Eli’s billionaire father. It is an enormous complex, with rooms similar to those in the family’s Seattle mansion. Only his grandmother and twin brother don’t make it in.

The first six years of the planned 15 have been fairly routine, but now some food has spoiled, and certain things just don’t seem right, or even possible. Eli is starting to have doubts about his father’s motives, explanations, and sanity.

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Eli’s father has a solution… provided they jettison all morals and ethics. Repulsed and already suspicious, Eli begins investigating his father’s claims, and sets up a family death match against a man who grows increasingly irrational and sinister but no less powerful.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
570L	Middle School	272	Thriller/Suspense	2009	0312578601

Unidentified

Posted on September 28, 2013 by webmaster

The Unidentified
by Rae Mariz

In a startlingly plausible dystopian society, the school system has failed to the point that the government gives over control of national education to corporations. These conglomerates have banded together to create what are known as Game Centers. Here students like Katey Dade, or Kid, go to “school” in refurbished shopping malls. They swipe cards to get in and out, they carry issued cell phones with GPS trackers, they post continuously to profile pages and status feeds (similar to Facebook and Twitter), while administrators and corporate officials monitor their every move.

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Students who achieve the highest scores in games, set the coolest fashion trends, and gain the utmost popularity are “Branded”, instantly assisting the corporations to plug their wares. Kid coasts, never looking to become Branded, but then she is taken up by not just one corporate sponsor, but two, as a “trendspotter”.

As she tries to balance new expectations with betrayals by lifelong friends and new relationships, Kid also begins to question the societal structure around her. Drawn to the prank-pulling group calling themselves The Unidentified, she longs for her previous anonymity and blissful ignorance of the shady dealings all around her.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
780	High School	304	Fantasy	2010	0061802085

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