Gerta’s father and brother visit West Berlin when the Berlin wall went up, nearly over night, trapping Gerta, her mother and second brother in East Berlin and separating their family for four long years. Meanwhile, the Stasi police has bugged their apartment so the family cannot talk freely in their own home about the government’s horrific control. Then Gerta spots her father on the other side of the wall signaling her to dig. Getting a secret note from her father, she realizes the location and risks her life to dig an underground tunnel under the width of the wall to freedom. Excitement and danger mixed with complications and setbacks make this book a great read.

It is unfortunate that Larissa’s family has been cursed with family members’ untimely deaths throughout the generations. Well, Larissa helps her parents by cleaning the family’s antique shop where she encounters a creepy doll that has been in the family for years, and then gets strange calls on a disconnected, antique phone with messages to trust the fireflies. Larissa finds the fireflies at the Bayou Bridge where she time travels learning of her great grandmother’s disrespect which caused the curse. It is up to Larissa to save her family’s future! This story is written so mysteriously that it will entice readers!

This is a story set at Christmas time. It begins in a forest with a winter storm blowing through the bare branches of trees. Only the little fir tree is calm, quiet, and comforting to the forest animals in need of new homes due to the forest’s broken branches. The storm calms at midnight “For far away, a baby had been born beneath a star, while heaven’s angels danced and sang for joy.” Later, “stars from the angels’ cloaks drifted down through the still air.” The trees with their bare branches all wanted the stars to land on them, but the stars only landed and stayed on the soft green branches of the fir tree “the place where there is love.”

The first half of this lovely story illustrated  in soft colors describes the coming of winter in nature with snow and wild animals in their dens.Then the story branches off to people making paper decorations, singing special songs, baking cookies and other special foods. Finally, “Hanukkah is Here!”

This book could easily be used for compare and contrast Hanukkah and Christmas by simply substituting the word Christmas for Hanukkah. Then asking if this is true for Christmas as well as for Hanukkah. This activity could be as simple or as complex as the group doing the comparing and contrasting is ready for.

“Test your knowledge about the beautiful game, the world’s most popular sport and one that’s making new fans in the United States every day. This book features informative sidebars, a trivia quiz, a glossary, and further resources”.

Four chapters from “Rookie” to “Hall of Famer” are written in a Q & A format.  Beautiful, colored photos on every other page related to the information shared. The trivia quiz on pages 44 & 45 helps the reader check his/her own comprehension.  This book is part of a series which includes baseball trivia, basketball, hockey, football and Olympic trivia. Kids will probably read this juvenile nonfiction over and over!

SennTech is pleased to announce its latest and finest creation: a Hart-style Bot who can see individual DNA signatures. Her first assignment: find Edmond West and stick to him like glue. She’s not the only one obsessed with the former-inventor; hostile forces are converging on the little island where Edmond and Hart are hiding and all seems lost. But General Liao isn’t the only one with a secret weapon…

Plot was difficult to follow having not read books #1 and #2.  This book is a YA read and I would suggest only purchasing it if you are able to also purchase books #1 and #2.

This young adult book has violence (bullets exploding through people’s heads, suffocation) ‘bad’ language ( bastards, sons of bitches), and non-descript sex all making this book for high school and above reading audiences.

This is book two of three in an action packed, macho political/military battle of not one or two sides of a story, but three and four sides of the story because that is what life is truly like. It is thought provoking!

I gathered from the bits and pieces of the characters memories that in book one, Divided We Fall, the state of Idaho is seceding from the United States of America, sometime in our near future, because citizens’ rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights have been taken away.

As Burning Nation begins, Idaho is being blockaded from supplies of food by the Federal Government until the Idaho rebels turn themselves in to the U.S. Army soldiers stationed in Idaho to re-establish the peace. “  ‘Attention!’ A loudspeaker on the tank called out into the dark. ‘All Idaho military, militia, and law enforcement personnel must surrender to federal authorities immediately. All Idaho civilians must disarm, remain in their homes, and await instructions from federal authorities. Failure to comply will be met with deadly force.’  “(25)

Tension runs throughout this story. The tension felt by the armed high school students in the Idaho National Guard hiding from the federal troops, the tension of the families of Idaho National Guard members not knowing if their sons and daughters are safe, the tension of the non-violent Idahoans as to whether or not food shipments will be getting through the blockades, the tension in the New England states and Southern states calling all of their National Guard units to active duty locally so they won’t be sent to fight other Americans in Idaho, and the tension in Idaho caused by not knowing what is going on in the rest of Idaho and the United States because President Laura Griffith has cut off all communication to and from and within Idaho, only official United States propaganda is being released about the ‘Idaho crisis’ throughout the country.

Daniel Wright and his armed unit are hiding out. They have a high school friend, TJ, in their hometown of Freedom Lake, Idaho, who is secretly keeping them abreast of what is happening in the town and bringing them needed supplies when he can. After Governor Montaine and the Idaho state legislature “declare our home to be [the] fully independent Republic of Idaho. We hereby dissolve all formal ties with the United States of America …” (73)   Wright and his unit begin running recon missions, shooting at Fed troops, and bombing Fed buildings. On one of these missions, Wright is caught. Major Alsovar tortures him using extreme heat, waterboarding, and electric shocks in his effort to extract secret base locations from Wright in Alsovar’s effort to end this Idaho war. While Wright is in captivity his unit joins with another resistance group, ‘the Brotherhood’. Weeks pass. Wright is rescued.

Outside of Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Montana are forming plans to defy the strangle hold President Laura Griffith has put on their states citizens’ rights and freedoms. In a coordinated effort, these states force the federal troops to retreat and redeploy.

As Burning Nation comes to an end, the reader is left with the Wright’s thoughts, “We’d fought hard, risked everything, to win freedom and start a new country. What kind of society was this?” (417)

Non-fiction texts are getting all of the spotlight because of common core standards and authors who choose interesting topics will get their books sold. So is the case with Chocolate: Sweet Science and Dark Secrets of the World’s Favorite Treat. Kay Frydenborg gives exceptional insight into so many aspects of chocolate. On the science side, readers will be intrigued to know how chemically perfect chocolate is as a source of food. Historically, the roots of chocolate go so far back in South American culture. Treated like money, people were killed for chocolate.

The second two-thirds of the book will most likely be enjoyed more by students as they get into the history and rivalry of commercialized chocolate producers like Cadbury, Hershey and Lindt. Different types of chocolate, new advances in chocolate and conncetions back to history round out this extremely well written book. Recommended by Junior Library Guild, Chocolate should be in most school libraries and all public libraries. Because why wouldn’t people like chocolate?

Lerner’s Inside Elections series is a timely look into how political parties, special interests, voters and the media function around elections in the United States. The book Voters: From Primaries to Decision Night by Robert Grayson details how voting works; primaries, caucuses and conventions; the campaign and voters; the electoral college; election day promises and problems; and counting the vote. This is 58 packed pages explained in an easy to understand, conversational tone for students. For example, Grayson writes “You may be thinking, ‘Wait a minute, I thought elections were decided directly by ordinary voters, not by special super-voters’” (34). He goes on to detail how the nation’s founders had a very different United States in terms of population, communication, and education level. Thus the electoral college, though it might be outdated today, was a justifiable means to get a more perfect end. Page layout, sidebars and graphics help make these classic ideas even more interesting. If your collection’s book on these topics are shabby, this is a really nice collection that will be worth adding this fall.