Social Issues

Outcasts United

Posted on November 10, 2014 by webmaster

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Outcasts United: The Story of a Refugee Soccer Team That Changed a Town
by Warren St. John

With conviction and skill, Jordanian Luma Mufleh established and coached three soccer teams known as the Fugees. Her players were haunted by memories of war-torn homelands and personal tragedies and were struggling to adjust to life in the United States. However, her high expectations and willingness to help families impacted her young players. Despite challenges to locate a practice field, minimal funding for uniforms and equipment, and zero fans on the sidelines, the Fugees practiced hard and demonstrated a team spirit that drew admiration from referees and even their competitors.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
980L	High School	240	Drama	2013	0385741952

Captain Awesome to the Rescue

Posted on November 12, 2013 by webmaster

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Captain Awesome to the Rescue
by Stan Kirby

Eight-year-old Eugene McGillicudy is an imaginative boy who loves comic books and superheroes. Eugene also has his very own super secret superhero alter ego named Captain Awesome.

When the McGillicudy family relocates to a new town called Sunnyview, Eugene starts a new school, finds a best friend, and even finds time to defend his toys from his two-year-old little sister, Molly! Luckily for Sunnyview, Captain Awesome is there to protect the town (and the universe) from a hilarious cast of comical “bad guys.”

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
NP	Elementary School	128	Comedy	2012	01442435615

Paper Towns

Posted on October 1, 2013 by webmaster

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Paper Towns
by John Green

Quentin Jacobsen, 17, has been in love with his next-door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, for his entire life. A leader at their Central Florida high school, she has carefully cultivated her ‘bad-ass’ image. Quentin is one of the smart kids. His parents are therapists and he is, above all things, “goddamned well adjusted.”

He takes a rare risk when Margo appears at his window in the middle of the night. They drive around righting wrongs via her brilliant, elaborate pranks. Then she runs away (again). He slowly uncovers the depth of her unhappiness and the vast differences between the real and imagined Margo.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
850L	High School	320	Romance	2009	014241493

Matched

Posted on October 1, 2013 by webmaster

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Matched
by Ally Condie

Cassia Reyes is a model student, daughter, and citizen. How could she not be when the Society has everything planned and functioning perfectly? All of her needs are met: food, shelter, education, career training, and even her future husband are selected by officials who know what is best for each individual by studying statistical data and probable odds.

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She even knows when she will die, on her 80th birthday, just as the Society dictates. At her Match Banquet she is paired with Xander, her best friend and certainly her soul mate. But when a computer error shows her the face of Ky, an Aberration, instead of Xander, cracks begin to appear in the Society’s facade of perfection. A series of events also shakes her dedication to Xander and puts her future in jeopardy.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
680L	Middle School	400	Thriller/Suspense	2010	014241977X

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

Compound

Posted on September 28, 2013 by webmaster

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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

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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

Giver

Posted on September 28, 2013 by webmaster

The Giver
by Lois Lowrey

In the ‘ideal’ world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children’s adolescent, sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community’s Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are ‘released’ –to great celebration– at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also ‘released’, but with no fanfare.

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Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment: the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society’s collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
660L	Middle School	192	Science Fiction	2002	00440237688

Blizzard

Posted on September 28, 2013 by webmaster

The Blizzard
by John Nez

Melanie Hondel is the all-American high school student. She is popular, pretty, and attracts the attention of more than a few boys. One of them is Chet, who Melanie thinks is handsome enough, but whose determined self-reliance she has always found a bit strange and hardly romantic. When Melanie refuses the advances of a classmate, Tommy, and is beaten by him, she flees into a blizzard, where she falls through the ice. Her cries for help are heard by Chet, who is able to save her.

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They find refuge in an isolated cabin, where they shed their icy clothing and huddle together for warmth…in a bed. Rescuers arrive the next day, followed closely by Melanie’s father, and there is confusion and anger. Mr. Hondel insists that Chet be arrested and refuses to accept his daughter’s explanation, thereby leaving everyone convinced that Chet is dangerous.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
NA	High School	188	Drama	2010	0984568069

Nineteen Minutes

Posted on September 24, 2013 by webmaster

Nineteen Minutes
by Jodi Picoult

These are the words that seventeen-year-old Peter Houghton says when he is found after a school shooting spree huddling with a gun in his hand by Detective Patrick Ducharme. An outcast who had been bullied since kindergarten, Peter kills ten, including a teacher, and injures many more.

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At first glance, it looks like a straightforward act of revenge, but things are revealed to be more complex. One of his victims is Matt Royston, the boyfriend of his former childhood friend, Josie Cormier, and others are members of the in-crowd, but others have seemingly no relation. In the days before the trial, and in the days leading up to the shooting, we are given the backstory, told mostly from Josie’s, Peter’s, and their mothers’ viewpoint. We learn of the incessant teasing this boy received, adults’ unsuccessful attempts to help him fit in, and of the stormy relationship between Josie and Matt.

During the trial, we hear from the victims who survived and the devastation the crime has wrought on their lives. In the end, the reader may still be undecided whether Peter is primarily a victim, perpetrator, loyal friend, or all three, but that is the point.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
890L	Young Adult	460	Thriller/Suspense	2007	0743496736