Superstar book authors on getting into Ivy league schools have pulled together great advice on hitting a grand slam with the Standford application essay in this book.  The first chapter gives 25 mistakes to avoid when writing the essay, most of which would apply to any college admission essay.  But then the fun starts where Tanabe interviews former Stanford admission officers for their personal advice on how to do well with specific questions on the essay.  The remaining 2/3 of the book are actual essays written by students with an analysis afterwards.  If Stanford is the goal for any particular student, then this is the book for them.  Highly recommended for any high school library or career center.

Grandma is coming over a play date!  And she always brings so many friends.  By simply hanging a bed sheet near a window, grandma uses body shadows to have her granddaughter guess as different animals in a parade, including an elephant, monkeys, an ostrich, kangaroo, rhinoceri, and for the finale, “Gramme and me”.  For a preschool aged audience, Hooray Parade will push kids to use their imaginations to figure out the creatures with the question “Can you guess what’s coming next?”. Repetition, alliteration and onomatopoeic language further it’s whimsical feel that are complimented with it’s pencil sketch and water color artwork.  This would be a great read aloud for public libraries and a gift for grandparents.

Every elementary teacher knows his or her tricks to keep the glue in check.  For Matty, his art teacher says “Glue drops, not puddles!”.  But Matty loves glue.  At home, his parents help him produce all sorts of zany creations with different varieties of glue.  So when he is given the opportunity to have glue bottles in his hands, he has to squeeze hard…and jump belly first into the glue.  Sure, he gets stuck to the table, and as his buddies, teacher and father try to free him, a masterpiece is born.  Jason Lefebvre has captured such a wonderfully simple concept as “too much glue” that most children have heard or experienced first hand and let it spread into a fabulous story that parents, teachers and kids will love.  Zac Retz’s illustrations are clever and bright, whimsical and yet spot on.  Too Much Glue is a thoroughly enjoyable book that will stick with you like glue.

True love that is life changing.  True love that is breath taking.  True love that is heart aching.  This is the love that Skye has hoped would magically show up during the summers of her teen years.  With school beginning in just days, it looked like this summer would be hopeless as well, until she made eye contact with Seth.  Seth is a year older and leaving for college soon.  One amazing evening alters their worlds.  When the plan to meet again the next morning is disrupted by Seth’s mother’s early arrival in town, the two are left without any good byes.  But they just can’t get each other out of their own minds.  With no contact information, their chance meeting again at the end of next summer was expected.  Luckily there are other parts to this novel that help it stand on it’s own, such as the alternating chapters in Skye and Seth’s voice, the side drama of Skye’s girlfriends’, and Seth’s art.  A teenage romance novel with honest voices amidst in an idealistic, narrow life, Skye and Seth will question if each other is really all they need.  If you’re a Colasanti fan, you’ll know the answer and still love reading the book to watch it unfold.   Recommended for high school audiences.

Blue’s world has exploded — literally.  She is on the run but she’s not sure what from.  Slivers of flashbacks haunt Blue but she just can’t put together the whole picture.  Lisa Jahn-Clough unfolds the mysterious back story of Blue’s before life in alternating chapters with her present tense scared, homeless self in her novel Nothing But Blue.  Now on the road east, Blue learns to eat out of garbage cans and avoid staying in one place for long.  But people recognize her.  They say her face has been on the television.  But why?  “All dead. No one survived. All dead.”  This is the chant that keeps Blue in the shadows.  In the shadows is where she befriends one magical dog that guides her through challenges again and again. Aptly named Shadow, the team continues east in search of a to a time where she was comfortable, even if a little insecure.  Jahn-Clough weaves familiar teen issues of self-image, sex, independence, and parental angst in a story about a girl that needs to learn to trust herself and to move on despite the horror she witnessed.  Recommended for grade 9 and up.

With her first novel, This is How I Find Her, Sara Polsky develops a rare theme for young readers exploring the territory of a mentally ill parent, a child left to cope alone with that parent from too young an age and without explanation, attempted suicide, teen guilt and things left unsaid as the relationship of mother, daughter, and the family unfolds.

Sophie Canon has been mother figure to her bi-polar mother for 5 years, until the day she finds her mom near death from an overdose of pills. During the subsequent hospitalization and slow recovery of her painter mother, Amy, who feels her medication interferes with her inspiration, Sophie stays with the family that seemingly deserted her years before, whom she now feels she hardly knows. Frozen in silences, both Sophie, her cousin Leila, and her Aunt Cynthia finally learn to speak their uncertainties, to open the curtain of misunderstandings and fear that has hung too long between them. Sophie, too, realizes she cannot live for her mother anymore at the expense of her own life.

As she makes her way through her own pain and silence, she finds there are people around her who care, who want to know her thoughts, and who have reasons of their own for the distances that have kept Sophie and Amy so alone over the years. The plot is well crafted, the characters identifiable and well drawn, and each grows into better understanding of themselves, each other, and their needs by the happy conclusion of this book.

Highly Recommended

With kids growing up watching more reality TV than other programming, it’s no wonder The Daughters series would be picked up by a publisher.  And with a name like Philbin attached to it, Poppy took a chance.  Does is matter that teens probably don’t know who Regis Philbin is?  A little, because as one reads The Daughters Break the Rules, Carina, who narrates this second installment of the series, finds is frustrating to be known as “the daughter of a billionaire” because of the assumptions that are constantly made.  But Philbin is realistic in her portrayal of these three teen starlet children living in NYC.  While Carina is at first crushed when her father cuts her off from her lavish spending habits, a reader can clearly see that she’ll rebound.  She can make it on $20 a week.  But I really like the fact that Carina is allowed to become part old self and part new self by the end.  Her vision of the world is much more broad, thanks to a love interest from a different “league”, but she clearly loves her high end lifestyle and embraces that again with new respect for others.  This can be read as a stand alone.  If the other books follow the same plot line but with different narrators, I can imagine the story might get uber predictable.  7th – 10th grade girls into fashion and drama will enjoy this flighty, fast paced read.

The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills captures the angst and insecurities of an American teenager through the observations of the main character.  Janice Wills is a smart, analytical young woman who aspires to be an anthropologist. She decides to catalog high school social behavior in anthropological terms as her entrance letter to college. Using the scientific approach to understanding human behavior, she identifies the rules and rituals of American teenagers.  She also participates in the local Miss Livermush Pageant and Scholarship competition, the local “must-do”, coming of age rite of passage for the young women in her small North Carolina town.  With her astute observations of social interaction of her peers, she comes to an understanding of her own behavior, especially that observing can inhibit participation and that honest insights can be hurtful.  Humorous, witty and occasionally painful, Janice Wills is a literary persona that is likeable, irritating and ultimately endearing.  This book is an enjoyable read for the high school  audience.

Prisoner B-3087 is the touching, heartbreaking journey of survival of a young Jewish boy during the Second World War. He becomes a man, celebrating his Bar Mitzvah, as the Germans restrict all Jews to the Warsaw Ghetto.  The subtle, tightening vice grip of Nazi control and determined hatred catch Yanek and his family off guard.  They all perish. He has only himself and his will to survive.  This true story of Jack Gruener, Yanek,  is written  as historical  fiction to emphasize the random, senseless cruelty that he endured for six long years.  The unimaginable horror of forced labor in ten concentration camps, two death marches, continual starvation, beatings and moments of almost certain death evoke empathy as well as disbelief that humans can do such things to each other.  This awareness of the past horrors is important to teach the terrible truths of genocide and the remarkable drive for survival in the human spirit.  This is not an easy book to read, but it is an important addition to the literary testaments of personal survival and endurance.

Anguished and angsted Greer Cannon is smart — smarter than she let herself take credit for.  Though she learned to use her body for the wrong purposes and found shoplifting to be addictive, which landed her at the McCracken Hill rehabilitation school for teens, Greer knows when to talk and when to just keep chill.  This is why Addison is so attracted to her.  Addison’s violent behavior topped with alcoholism are in the shadows behind his great looks and qwirky personality — a personality that is too often swayed by Joshua Stern, Addison’s Narcotics Anonymous sponsor. Thus the battle of the minds, and hearts, begins.  Readers may start to find frustration in how obvious the brainwashing is, how unlikely the trip to the Piconos and events during their stay is, how naive Greer tries to be in supporting Addison versus being true to her own spirit.  The book jacket really does make this seem like it will be a psychological thriller, but it certainly lacks any over the top drama.  In fact, the conclusion was lack luster at best.  This dark tale is going to be picked up, but it may not be finished by all.

The Indigo Spell is the third book in the Bloodlines series, following the very popular Bloodlines and The Golden Lily.  Fans of the series will find familiar characters as well as new ones in this suspenseful adventure.  As with the previous books, The Indigo Spell features the paranormal with witches, vampires and Alchemists. Themes of friendship, romance and betrayal will keep the reading rapidly flipping the pages.

Steamy romance and danger will thrill the reader and have her watching the calendar for the release of the fourth book, The Fiery Heart, due out in November, 2013.

Lost in the River of Grass, the story of a two teenagers lost in the Everglades, is an absolute nail-biting, breath holding page-turner.

Written by a native Floridian, Ginny Rorby, this young adult novel appears on the Truman Award final nominee list for 2013-14.

The adventure story of how a local boy, and an urban girl ostracized by her field-trip classmates, survive four days in the Everglades with nothing but a knife, a can of Spam, and half a bottle of Gatorade, while wading neck high in swamp water and fending off alligators, wild boars, fire ants, cottonmouth, water moccasin and rattlesnakes, will keep the reader’s heart racing. An excerpt from chapter 13 provides a example of the suspense:

I raise my head to look at the gator, estimating the distance between us to be only about ten yards. It has closed its eyes, but there is something else moving through the grasses near the trail…Whatever it is slides slowly beneath the flattened grasses…”There’s another, Andy!” I grab his arm. My cry startles the gator, but it’s too late. Like a flash of lightning, a giant snake strikes the side of the gator’s face. “Holy Christ.” Andy jumps up and jerks me to my feet. I bite my fist to keep from screaming. Blood whooshes in my ears. Minutes ago, Andy and I walked right past that snake.

Issues of class, bullying, and race make this more than just an adventure story. However, this book is so suspenseful that the reader will be tempted to read the entire 255 pages in one sitting to discover whether the teens (and the orphaned ducking the girl rescues) will make it out unscathed.

Thirty four action filled baseball stories by authors including Zane Grey, James Thurber and Garrison Keillor, make up this expanded edition of Baseball’s Best Short Stories. Featured stories begin with the famous baseball poem from 1888, Ernest Thayer’s ‘Casey at the Bat’ and continuing with stories from the early 1900’s, into the 1920’s, through the 1940’s and 50’s, and into modern times with Brendan DuBois’ 2001 ‘A Family Game.’  This collection reflects the best stories of American’s favorite past time and will be enjoyed by any baseball fan.

Cheerleading, a title in the Science Behind Sports series from Lucent Books, is a 100 page report on what body parts are in motion while performing cheers and dance moves.  The first chapter gives an historical overview of the development of cheerleading into the competitive sport it is today.  The final chapter covers some psychological aspects of cheer, including crowd management, stress, and positive speaking.  There’s nothing spectacular about this book.  It fits a need if one exists in showing that cheerleading is a physically active sport.  But there aren’t many references to research studies or data from scientific journals to make this very authoritive.  This reader would actually encourage students to supplement this with much more web research.

Abdo Publishing has got the right style going on with their Contemporary Lives biography series.  Glossy pages full of color photos, sidebars, and to be honest, font at a size 14, really makes the information easy to get through.  Specifically, Lisa Owings writing about Adele was very intriguing.  Owing keeps readers interested by her own exciting diction such as dazzled, rocketed, belted, and fizzled.  Her writing also focuses on the emotional side of the Adele, allowing readers to feel Adele’s excitement, passion, and soul for music.  Any student in middle or high school would enjoy this  100 page biography.  Other artists in the series that this librarian plans to pursue include: Beyonce, Drake, Cee Lo Green, Jennifer Lawrence, Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj and Kanye West.  Highly recommended for school and public libraries.

Merle is 18 and ahead of her time in 1978.  Head strong but a drifter at heart, art school seems like the perfect path out of her isolated Appalachian upbringing.  But she flounders, drops out, lives in poverty and steals spray paint to graffiti her Radiant Days tag around town.  Her sexuality is explored, but is not the intent of the novel.  Instead, readers are introduced to Arthur Rimbaud circa 1870– Merle’s cosmic twin.   Hand switches to writing in 3rd person as readers look through a window into the poet’s turbulent teen life.  Chapters then switch back and forth between Merle’s 1st person voice and Rimbaud’s 3rd until the two finally meet.  Driven together by a magic key and a lock house, the two learn about each others art and ultimately about themselves in the course of one night in which they cross between 1978 and 1870.  Leaping through that mystic void of time allows each to see that they have a purpose in their own lives that will focus their art.  Hand’s writing is very lyrical and allows for introspective opportunities for the read as well.  A daunting novel to attempt, this is a heady work that artsy high school students will grapple with and most likely enjoy.

Life in rural China is excruciatingly painful for Jade Moon.  Without her mother and under the Zodiac sign of the Fire Horse, she is a quick to speak, hot tempered, feisty young woman in a society that would never let her be true to her spirit.  She yearns for freedom — that which America could bring if she follows the aptly named Sterling Promise, her adopted cousin, to the United States.  Dreams of Jello and unbridled opportunity give strength to this Fire Horse as her new world does not match up that of her imagination.  The realities of how Americans treated Chinese immigrants coming into Angel Island in the 1920’s as well as the underground gang-like world of San Francisco’s Chinatown come from Kay Honeyman’s fastidious research.  This research also provided the thread for the Romantic narrative woven into the storyline through the Chinese oral tradition of storytelling that Nushi, Jade Moon, and Spring Blossom share with the reader.  The Fire Horse Girl is an excellent piece of literature that blends multiple worlds, has action that both male and female readers will enjoy, and will allow for rich classroom discussion.  Highly recommended for 8th – 10th grade humanities classrooms to adopt into their curriculum as well as for classroom, school and public libraries to promote.

The Rising of water has created a new world order for humans.  Most of the earth is now covered by oceans.  Whole townships live within floating structures.  Humans have even adapted to be able to live entirely subsea.  Yet economic commerce retreated to basic supply and demand.  These forces combine to give Ty and Gemma a mission they never want to go on again.

Ty’s Dark Gift of sonar will help them overcome human and animal attacks, but will is be enough to locate his kidnapped Ma and Pa?  Mind games make for another level of mystery in this fast-paced middle level novel.  There is a deepening fondness growing between Ty and Gemma but everything is totally appropriate for its intended audience.  Kat Falls very creative dystopian story is full of imaginative details that should impress all readers.  In Ty, she has made a compassionate, charismatic role model for boys and girls.

Blend a detailed lesson on discovering your personality/learning type with Marie and Law’s first hand knowledge of 82 possible colleges/universities majors and enviroments from across the spectrum and you see the potential their text Find the Perfect College for You has for students who just don’t know where to start their college search.

Every high school student does some sort of learning styles inventory during their school career.  Marie and Law’s inventory asks readers to evaluate themselves in being either:Introverted or Extroverted, Sensitive or Intuitive, Thinking or Feeling, and Judging or Perceiving.  Once a student identifies their learning style, the 82 colleges are listed with a description of how that college meets different combinations of the learning styles.  For example, this reviewer scored a E, S, T, J combination.  Using the index, I can find colleges that match my learning styles based on their values, structure, and the majors and minors offered.  With clear, realistic examples of each throughout the text of the learning styles for each college listed, a student can walk away with a pretty hardy list of colleges that might best fit their learning style.   I think this text would be especially  helpful for those students who don’t “fit the mold” or don’t “like the structure of organized mass education”.  They will be exposed to some smaller, unique schools.  It’s a great idea to connect learning styles to the style of the college and every career/college center should have this available for students to check out.

This biography of this well-known writer is excellent in that it is direct and factual. Inspiration for so many of Myers’ books is from his life.  The subtitle of this book, Urban Fiction Author, emphasizes the main focus of Walter Dean Myers’ writing.  He writes to speak to the unrepresented, disillusioned, struggling teenager that has no voice or sense of direction. Myers never forgets the challenges he faced as a young, under-educated black man growing up in Harlem in the 50s. Trying to overcome his own speech impediment, he began writing and reading poetry, winning his first writing prize at age 13. He has written over 20 books, many of which have been recognized for his ability to speak to young adults in an authentic voice. His work targets the disconnected, shy, lonely, frustrated young person that is trying to understand his world and hoping to figure out his role in that confusing, ever-changing scene.  Myers does not shy away from the tough topics, addressing them with humor, understanding and persistence. The only drawback is that it is every page is text.  Not a single picture to give interest.   Still, this biography is a useful addition to a middle or high school library as an example of a successful adult who does achieve his life-long dream, through guidance, inspiration, and most of all persistence.  It is fascinating to read the life story of such a prolific writer.

Bianca struggle for self-control is edgy and probably a bit too sexy for a school audience in Kody Keplinger’s The Duff (Designated Ugly Fat Friend). The storyline is pretty predictable but the redeeming value is Bianca’s reflective, smart, sometimes in-your-face voice as the narrator.  Bianca is best friends with two girls she believes are much more attractive than her.  To appease her friends, she often sits on the sideline of their teen hangout while they dance the night away. Enter Wesley Rush, one of the most attractive and sexually active boys in the school.  Wesley informs Bianca that he’ll hang out by her in order to attract her best friends’ attentions because she’s the DUFF of the group.  After drowning him in Cherry Coke, one would think Bianca would have nothing to do with him again.  But then the plot gets interesting, and quite hot.  Biance turns the tables, or bed, so to speak on Wesley.  To escape her stress about being the DUFF, as well as her parents imminent divorce, she turns to Wesley, who will sleep with anything. Throughout the story, Bianca goes from highs to lows.  She’s honest with her intentions, but sometimes a bit too self absorbed, like EVERY teenager out there. There is a happy ending in it all, and upper high school or public library patrons will probably enjoy this more than they might admit in person.  (Blush, blush).

Authors of this self-help book are both Harvard graduates who have crafted a fine book of guidelines for parents, students and school staff for how to succeed in all the many aspects of college/university choice and acceptance.  Any student in 10th or 11th grade ought to examine this book with their parents at their side because it provides so many practical and proven tips on testing, ratings, applications, essays, recommendations, visitations–just to name a few.  Each chapter begins with key points that will be covered, and there are highlighted text boxes that show examples of various points throughout.  A rather exhaustive book, my suggestion to readers is to break it down and refer to various chapters as needed:  pre-college planning, preparing an essay, how to prepare for the interview, what makes for a good recommendation and how to garner one, etc.  Humor helps break up the intellectual tone of the book, i.e., ice cream colleges and “No-No” topics for essays.  I disagree with the authors’ remark that there is a ton of financial aid available due to recent economic cut-backs.  Resources, sample worksheets that can be printed and written on and an index are included.

Michael Carroll’s success with his Quantum Prophecy series continues to spill over with this second book of a trilogy that is a prequel to the 1st series.  The evil Krodin was gone, or so the superhumans Roz, Abby, Lance and Thunder thought 3 weeks earlier when walked away into their separate lives again.  But overnight everything changes.  The U.S. is now run by Chancellor Krodin.  Martial law is in place and each of the main characters will be chase all over the U.S. by Krodin’s forces once they begin using their superhuman powers.  This section of the story is a bit challenging to read as a stand alone.  Though Carroll does give background via character’s conversations and has flashbacks to the previous book, each chapter also houses at least two shifts of scene, sometimes three.  For a few pages Abby will shooting her arrows to crash a hovercraft and then Lance will be in jail for alledgedly lying to a police officer. Carrol is a master of creating suspenseful cliffhangers — great to keep a reader going, but slightly frustrating that the next chunk jump around so much, like from Max’s setting in the citadel to Roz’s scene with Victoria.  It’s difficult to have to wait until it’s Max’s scene again.  Still, any cartoon superhero fans will probably love this prose rendition of a superhero tale.  With not a single love interest or use of foul language, it can easily span upper elementary to high school audiences as an additional purchase if you already have the Quantum Prophecy series.

Flyaway grabbed me from the start and I didn’t stop until the final decision was made.  Stevie is a junior in high school with too much on her figurative plat and very little on her real plate.  Her mother’s “profession” gets her harrassed at school and her mother’s personal choices keep Stevie’s mind racing as to her mother’s safety.  With issues no high school student should have to deal with, but probably too many of our actually do, Flyaway is a fierce account of one girl’s mental fight to do what is right just for her.  Helen Landalf does not shy away from any of the issues she brings up.  Drugs and alcohol abuse keep this title for the older young adult audience, but I particularly like the brutal honesty that comes from all of Landalf’s characters.  Stevie is not an angel herself, but she will make the right choices to lift herself to better places in the end.  This is highly recommended for high school libraries.

The honest, evenly balanced research and writing of Denver Nicks in Private Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History is refreshing.  Nicks assessment of situations, inferences from thousands of both email transcripts and personal interviews, and wry writing style give a fair critique of both t Manning and the U.S. government’s responsibility for the leak to happen at all.  Woven throughout this battle, of course, is the entity of Wikileaks itself, with Julian Assange at the helm.  Readers will not only get a history lesson, but two biographies to boot.  Nicks braids the story of Bradley Manning, from his entry into the Armed Forces to his detention at Quantico and beyond, with that of Assange, a hacker turned self-righteous solicitor of information and money, though his rule over Wikileaks ironically turns out to be more autocratic than one would think Wikileaks would allow.  Much interesting information is given about the positive connotation of the hacker community in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.  Had Bradley Manning been born 20 years earlier and had found a safe haven with his sexuality, his intelligence would have gotten him much farther in the “Information should be free” world.  But Manning has manic periods brought on by so many reasons, all of which are fairly and tastefully explored by Nicks. And his choice to pursue a military career is the perfect storm.  This text holds a wealth of information and should be in all college and public libraries.