Angry Young Man by Chris Lynch

Xan (Alexander) is an unuasual kid who just doesn’t fit in anywhere.  He’s moody, way too sensitive and possibly depressed.  He’s dropped out of high school, and spends his days in the room he shares with his older brother Robert or taking long walks in their hometown.  They boys’ single mom is doing her best to raise them, but the bill collector who keeps stalking his is about to drive Xan to his limit.  The story is told from Robert’s perspective, who the readers discover hasn’t always been the best big brother.  He can barely remember not coming to Xan’s rescue when kids relentlessly harassed him in middle school, but cares about Xan in his own way.  This slim book is a character study of what might happen when a young person is an outsider without anyone to really talk to.  It might remind readers of students who have gone on shooting sprees at Columbine High and other schools throughout the country.  When Xan makes some friends in a community college class on social change that he is sitting in on, he is drawn to the violence their charismatic leader suggests as a method of protest.  “It is not because he is stupid or weak-minded,” Robert says. “It is because he cares so much, and because he wants, so much, to belong.”  Here Xan finally gets Robert’s undivided attention, and the two brothers must work together to try to make the most moral choice as well as the safest one.

I liked this book a lot, as I do most of Lynch’s books.  He has a way of seeing into the psyches of teenaged boys that feel honest and realistic.  I recommend this to all young adults, especially those who like Chris Lynch titles or are interested in what it feels like to be an outsider.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

Fire is a companion book to Graceling; I couldn’t wait to read it after I finished Graceling. I love reading fantasy, and I thought Graceling was a truly creative and imaginative story. Fire equals Graceling in creativity, characters I cared about and suspenseful plot. In the kingdom of the Dells, Fire is a human monster who is afraid she may turn out to be as vicious as her father, a human monster who advised the last king. When the royal family needs her help to protect the king from competing lords who want to overthrow him and seize power, she goes to the capital to help. There Fire finds people who instantly mistrust her and others who completely support her. She finds plots against the king and her personally, including a mysterious assassin who seems to be working for a shadowy figure no one knows. As the action builds, Fire realizes people respect and cherish her, which causes her to take risks on their behalf. The book stays suspenseful until the very end!

Review by Ms. Goldstein-Erickson

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

In this gripping novel in verse, Hopkins tells what happens to three suicidal teenagers who meet in a clinic for “troubled youth” in Nevada.  First there’s Conner, who seems to have the perfect life if you don’t look too closely.  He lives in a mansion in an exclusive part of town and is very popular at school. Along with this, however, he has parents with impossibly high expectations who are always comparing him to his “perfect” twin sister Cara.  Then we meet Tony, a street kid who’s been in the juvenile detention system since he was a young child, but readers won’t learn why until much later in the book.  We just find out that he’s gay and been a prostitute on and off just to survive.  Lastly is Vanessa, the beautiful girl with a secret so dark the only way she believes she can relieve her pain is by cutting herself.  These three patients slowly become friends as they find they have more and more in common with each other.  Sharing their pasts is excruciating, but carefully they reveal their darkest mysteries to each other, learning to trust and love in the process.

This book is full of bleak topics: sexual abuse, self-mutilation, drug abuse, parental neglect, mental illness and suicide. Like all of Hopkins’ books, the author has done her research, and presents her characters in a realistic, if depressing fashion.  I found this book engaging, yet sad.  It didn’t really matter that I read it after I read Perfect, as there was only one character in common.  I would highly recommend this to teen readers who like realistic fiction and fans of Hopkins’ other titles.

Click HERE to see the review of the companion novel Perfect.

The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson

First in the Forensic Mystery series, this book introduces us to Cameryn Mahoney, a 17 yr old girl in Colorado whose father is the county coroner. Always fascinated with forensic science and having studied on her own, Cameryn convinces her father to hire her as his assistant. After assisting on a case, Cammie is drawn into a friend’s fascination with a television psychic. When the friend becomes the victim of a serial murderer known as the Christopher Killer, and the psychic who predicted the murder comes to their town, Cameryn is determined to find who murdered her friend. The crime scenes are not as graphic as the descriptions of the autopsies, but the author does a good job of eliminating the gross-out factor. Fans of the CSI shows will love this series!

Reviewed by Ms. Goldstein-Erickson

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Like many readers, I’m predicting that this title is going to be one of the hot books of this year!  It has adventure, suspense, mystery and even some paranormal romance between a human and an angel.  Karou is an art student in Prague who lives on her own even though she is still in high school.  She goes on mysterious “errands,”  not even sharing her true self with her best friend Zuzana, who is about to disown her.  Because that’s not strange enough, she also draws strange characters in her sketchbooks that the students at her school drool over.  ”Issa, a serpent from the waist down and a woman from the waist up, with the bare, globe breast of Kama Sutra carvings, the hood and fangs of a cobra, and the face of an angel.”  There were also drawings of Twiga, Yasri, Kishmish and most importantly, Brimstone.  When her friends ask her where she got the ideas for the drawings, Karou shrugs and tells them they’re real, with a wry smile.  Of course, no one in their right mind believes her; the crazy part is that they are real and they raised Karou from a child in Brimstone’s shop where he collects teeth and does mysterious things with them.

As if Karou doesn’t have enough difficulty balancing her human art student life along with her worldwide errands for Brimstone, she starts noticing black, burned handprints on the doors which are secret portals she uses on her errands for Brimstone.  And when she runs into one of the beautiful, but frightening angels who is making these marks, sparks the size of Texas fly between them!  What follows is a search for the truth, star-crossed love and a quest for peace between two ancient peoples.

I found this book to be very engaging, although I’m usually not much of a fantasy fan.  The plot moves along quickly, and Karou is an interesting and unusual character.  She reminded me in many ways of the way all teenagers mature and come to terms with who they are and where they come from.  I highly recommend this to teen fantasy fans.

Dust & Decay by Jonathan Maberry

As the sequel to Rot & Ruin, this book picks up where that one left off.  Benny, Nix, Lilah, Morgie and Chong are training with Benny’s brother Tom as zombie hunters and survivalists for their trip into the ruin.  They are planning to go east to look for the jet they all saw during the destruction of Game Land the previous year.

“The jet, and all that it symbolized, was a big silent monster that had followed them around since they’d returned last September. The jet meant leaving, something that Nix and Benny were going to do, and Chong and Morgie were not.  Tom called it a ‘trip.’ suggesting that tyehy would eventually teurn, but Benny knew that Nix had no intention of ever returning to Mountainside…Once they left, though, he was pretty sure that their road trip was going to be permanent.”

While this book was not as satisfying as Rot & Ruin, it was a decent second novel in a series.  I was a little disappointed about the direction the plot took (no spoilers here!), but still enjoyed the story and can’t wait for the next book.  What  really appreciated was that Maberry gave enough exposition about the first book to help readers remember what had happened.  This also sets up readers who didn’t read Rot & Ruin, which is a great opportunity.

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

I haven’t read any Ellen Hopkins titles for awhile, and I forgot how emotionally wrenching they can be.  This one was certainly no exception in terms of teenagers trying to make their way in a hostile world.  Like she often does, the writer uses free verse poetry to tell four different yet overlapping stories in alternating chapters .  Cara is coping with the suicide of her twin brother Conner, who finally cracked under their parents’ unreasonable expectations for their perfect off-spring.  For Kendra, being perfect means having the perfect figure and face, even if it requires anorexia and plastic surgery.  Sean want to have the perfect future, which in his mind includes an athletic scholarship to Stanford and Cara as his girlfriend. Andre’s parents are high achievers, a plastic surgeon and an investment banker, and expect him to follow in their footsteps, even though dancing is what makes his heart sing. Here’s how we meet Andre Marcus Kane III:

“Don’t Get Me Wrong

I do understand my parents wanting only

the best for me.

Am one hundred percent tuned to the concept

that life is a hell of a lot more enjoyable

with a fast-flowing

stream of money carrying you along.

I like driving a pricey car, wearing

clothes that feel

like they want to be next to my skin.

I love not having to be a living, breathing

stereotype because

of my color.  Anytime I happen to think

about it, I am grateful to my grandparents

for their vision.  Grateful

to my mom for her smarts, to my dad

for his bald ambition and yes, greed.

Not to mention

his real intuition.  But I’m sick of being

pushed to follow in his footsteps.  Real

estate speculation?

Investment banking?  Neither interests me.

Too much at risk, and when you lose,

you lose major.

I much prefer winning, even if it’s winning

small.  I think more like my grandfather.

Andre Marcus Kane Sr.

Embraced the color of his skin, refused

to let it straightjacket him.  He grew up in

the urban California

nightmare called Oakland, with its rutted

asphalt and crumbling cement and frozen

dreams, all within

sight of sprawling hillside mansions.

I’d look up at those houses, he told

me more than once,

and think to myself, no reason why

that can’t be me, living up there.  No

reason why at all, except

getting sucked into the swamp.”

I loved this book, in fact, it’s one of my favorites from fall 2011.  I think all teens can identify with the issues these four struggle with, even though the characters’ problems are taken to pretty extreme lengths.  I recommend this to all young adult readers, with a  special shout out the the Berkeley High Ellen Hopkins fans!  By the way, this is the companion novel to Hopkins’ earlier title Impulse.

World War Z by Max Brooks

Zombie fans will adore this book, as it’s an account of the recent fictitious  zombie war told through first-hand accounts of those who experienced it up close and personal.  Those who enjoyed Brooks’ tongue in cheek Zombie Survival Guide (2003) will find this volume a good companion to it.  The narrator works for a government commission and has collected accounts from various participants in the devastating zombie war.  Each “chapter” of the book is an interview with another person, some of whom are essential, like the Chinese doctor who treated “patient zero,” the first case of zombie infection.  Other chapter feature the stories of lesser-known people, but whose perspective fleshes (pardon the pun) out the whole picture for the readers.

My favorite is Easy Bib, used my many of our programs here are Berkeley High.  Unfortunately, it’s only available for the iPhone at the present time, but it is amazing.  It has a built in barcode scanner that lets you skip typing in the title or ISBN.  Best of all, it’s FREE!.  Here’s a description for the App Store:

“Create accurate MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations in seconds by scanning a book bar code or by typing the name of a book. Build and manage your works cited. Once done, email your citations and then export your citations to EasyBib.com’s popular bibliography management service.

Works best with iPhone 4.

Also works with iPad and iPod Touch, but camera on these devices requires that barcodes need to be held steady and at a proper distance for the scanner to pick up.”

If you have a regular smart phone, you’re still in luck.  For 99 cents, you can buy Quick Cite, which works similarly to Easy Bib.  The App Store description reads, “Snap a picture of a book’s barcode and send a citation for the book to your email. Choose from APA, MLA, Chicago, or IEEE styles.”

Recommendation:  If you have a choice, I would suggest Easy Bib.  It’s very similar to the online app many student already use, it has more powerful features (like making your entire bibliography for you), and will also share citations with its online version.

Here’s my personal favorite: