Sohpie’s parents sell books at their books store and give away dream catchers that customers can exchange for new ones at any time. However, underneath the store is a secret dream shop where dreams are extracted from used dream catchers, bottled and sold. Sophie has never dreamed, but when she was six, she drank a dream serum and brought a monster from her dream back to reality. When kids from school disappeared at the same time that Sophie’s parents were kidnapped, Sophie believes that Mr. Nightmare, a dream shop customer is to blame. She and a friend sneak into his house to witness a monster “cockfight” in the pit where Mr. Nightmare sells winning monsters to his audience. It is there that Sophie learns that Mr. Nightmare’s daughter also is a non dreamer who drinks dream serum and brings big monsters back to reality for her father’s pit fights. Through twists and turns, creepy darkness and danger, Sophie and her friend saves the day. This book contains mystery, darkness, humor and crazy twists!

When I picked up this book, I was hoping for a book of cross-section schematic drawings with photos of the One World Trade Center section by section  as it was put together. But that is not the meaning of the word “HOW” as it applies to the title of this book. The “HOW” in this title refers to ‘what were the designers thoughts and desires’ for this building after the Twin Towers demise.  Once that is established, the “HOW”s include: not being identical to the Twin Towers, not being in the same location as the Twin Towers, using bullet resistant glass, using 80% recycled waste materials, collecting rainwater on the 57th floor, using more natural lighting with fewer electric lights, with wider staircases, with a bomb-proof base, with a National September 11 Museum on the ground floor, with an observatory on the top floor, and being 1776 feet tall for the year this country was founded.

“One World Trade Center is made from concrete, steel, and glass. It is rectangular in shape with a triangular front that reaches to the top of the building.The skyscraper starts off wide and slowly becomes thinner until it looks like there is a needle at the very top. The blue-green glass makes the building glitter for miles around…Also, called the “Freedom Tower”… (5)

The book does include photos of the Twin Towers – before and after the attack on September 11, a timeline of the construction of One World Trade Center, a view of One World Trade Center in the New York City skyline, and a view from the observatory floor.

There is a period (.) missing at the end of the last sentence on page 22.

If you are looking for a book to use for comparing and contrasting, this might be the one for you. In this book extreme  temperatures from around the world are pictured and talked about.The title says it all! The book, also, goes into vocabulary dealing with temperature, for example: heat index, windchill, relative humidity, heatstroke, and hypothermia.

The hottest air temperature was measured in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on July 8, 2003. “That day, air temperature soared to 108 F (42 C) and relative humidity was greater than normal. These conditions made it feel like 176 F (80 C). ..that is only 36 F (2 C) cooler than the point at which water boils.” ( p. 14)             The coldest air temperature was “On August 10, 2010, the East Antarctic Plateau…wind chill made it feel like -136 F (-93 C).” (p.21) Being prepared to withstand such extreme temperatures is key to survival.

Water temperatures at hydrothermal vents deep  in the Atlantic Ocean can reach 867 F (464 C). The book then talks about going into glacier ice caves at Mount Hood, Oregon, but never mentions a temperature. It does predict that many of these caves will not last another ten years due to global climate change.

The last page contains a recap of the book’s ” True Statistics”.

Approximately one third of each page consists of a photo or diagram, while the other two-thirds of the page is text.

The front cover shows a photo of an erupting volcano with the caption ” Lava temperatures can reach up to about 2,200 F  (1,200 C).” though there are no volcanoes inside the book.

Marsico is delving into what the future will bring us as far as cars are concerned, namely, self-driving cars. Systems in cars already exist that is a step into self-driving, such as, anti-lock brakes, cruise control, parallel parking, and gps, to name a few. Self-driving cars are anticipated to save lives as well as fuel, but that remains to be seen. Google has already developed a car on the road that drives itself in residential areas. Many factors are left to be decided and developed before we will see these cars on the road, and the infrastructure they require will be a budget buster, but technology is developing at a rapid pace. The main questions in my mind are, one, will people be able to afford it, and two, what do we do with all the other human-driven cars?

Tally and her best friend and neighbor Yulia have been sharing their ups and downs since they were little. Now they are in  middle school with its own set of up and downs. Yulia loves being in the school band. Tally loves snowboarding and is quite an important member on the snowboarding team. No problems so far. Enter Tally’s immigrant Vietnamese grandparents with whom she lives. Grammy and Pop want Tally to broaden her interests and try new things. Tally doesn’t think she has the time for anything more in her life right now. Grammy phones the school and has Tally signed up to begin band next week. WHAT?! It is the end of first semester, she doesn’t even have an instrument. No problem Grammy says. The band teacher, Mr. Byrd, will let her play the school’s French horn. How can this be? Tally has been calling the band members Band O’ Geeks for years. Yulia knows it, but doesn’t mind because she loves band. But how will Tally’s snowboarding friends react to her being in the band? (I guess band is not ‘cool’ in some parts of the country. I personally have not experienced this.) Yulia and Tally hatch a plan.  Tally will wear a disguise to band, it’s right after lunch, there will be time to change into it. So then Tally’s snowboarding friends at school won’t know of this terrible thing her grandparents have done to her. It works at first. Tally is able to unhappily take band during school . Then go to snowboarding practice after school. When Mr. Byrd asks if she has been practicing, Tally admits she has not. This is a big disappointment to the other French horn player. He tells her if one French horn sounds bad, the whole section sounds bad. It isn’t fair for her not to practice. Then, Mr. Byrd announces the big snowboarding competition to the band members during class. He tells the class it would be wonderful if Tally’s fellow band members would go to cheer her on. Yikes! on Saturday as Tally is getting ready to compete the Band O’ Geeks are there cheering for her. Tally does her best to ignore them. Her first run is great, but not great enough for first place. Here comes her second run. Just at a critical point, Tally looses her concentration and crashes. Tally is out with a sprained ankle for the rest of the season. Both her band friends and her snowboarding friends visit her at home. Eventually her snowboarding friend insult her band friends while both are visiting Tally.  Though ashamed, Tally doesn’t stand up for them. Back at school, the band members, even Yulia, give Tally the cold shoulder. Tally comes to a conclusion, ” Having to choose between my snowboarding friends and my band friends, if I could call them that, I mean, the snowboarders were my friends. But I’d been friends with Yulia for a long time. And some of the other band geeks were pretty cool, too. Who said I had to choose, anyway?” ( 89) Mr. Byrd explains how he lived through a similar experience. On a home visit, Jasper, a band member, discovers Tally can play guitar. This will later resolve the problem of snowboarders verses band geeks for Tally. The school band is scheduled to play at the school dance in a few weeks. Jasper, Yulia, and Mr. Byrd work together to give Tally a guitar song with Jasper on drums, and Yulia singing their original song entitled “Finding My Wings”  at the dance. Thus bringing both sides together for a happy ending.

Each chapter includes one black and white illustration by Anna Cattish. The girls are always ‘wide-eyed’ in a modern Japanese fashion. The cover art seems a little too young to grab middle school readers interest.

The kids in Class 507 were so poorly behaved that their frustrated teacher quit her job right in the middle of the school day. However, the office never received the message. Class 507 had no teacher! The students quickly formulated a plan to keep this fact a secret, strategizing their actions to give the illusion that everything was normal in their room, except everything was not! Students tended to do what ever they wanted, wrestling, throwing objects, drawing, until parents started wondering why their kids had no homework. Things really got complicated when they realized their field trip was coming, and Class 507 was responsible for writing a play production they had to perform for the whole school. Maggie, the smartest kid in the class, gets all the kids on track by assigning lessons in class and assigning double homework, as well as having students write and prepare for the play. The students soon realize that keeping a classroom running is way more work than they thought!

Middle school aged horse loving girls will enjoy this story of a young girl as she begins working with her first horse. The story, also, contains the conflict between the wealthy girl from a broken family and the girl who is willing to work hard to get the horse she wants.

Annie has worked for 13 months at the Top Tier Stables, mucking stalls and caring for horses, to earn enough money to purchase her own horse. The day has finally come! Top Tier’s stable manager, Jack Manley, and Annie are at the horse sale in Colorado after the wild horse round-up by the United States government. Annie is now the proud owner of a 4 year old Buckskin Mustang. Back at Top Tier, Peggy- a young wealthy girl about Annie’s age, is riding her Olympic dressage champion Thoroughbred (Jinx) and talks down to Annie ordering her around. Annie is just happy to have her own horse which she has named Poco. “I brush the coat of a horse that has never before been brushed, Imagine that.” (23) Jack and Annie begin to slowly show Poco a saddle blanket and saddle so she does not get spooked. Jack makes it look so easy, but when Annie tries, everything goes wrong. They will need to start over again tomorrow rebuilding the trust between Poco and Annie. In the meantime, Jinx and Poco are stabled next to each other’s stalls. Jinx has never left any other horse in that stall alone before now. A few days later, Jinx goes missing. Peggy blames Poco for corrupting her horse by her wildness. As it turns out, the lock on Jinx’s stall was broken by someone. The girls won’t go home until Jinx is found. An unspoken truce is formed between the girls.  Annie is awakened by Poco’s neighing, in the middle of the night, when Jinx returns wounded and cornered by a wolf outside. Jack hits the wolf with a baseball bat getting it to leave.  Jinx needs 46 stitches, but the wound is not from the wolf. Badly needing sleep, Jack and Annie will watch the newly installed security camera footage tomorrow. The next day when Annie returns with her step-father to view the security tapes, they ‘smell smoke’. The barn is on fire! Annie runs into the barn freeing the horses closest to the fire first. Jack is having to come up with a new method for undoing the new lock on Jinx’s stall in a hurry. Jeff is taking the horses from Annie and putting them into outdoor paddocks. As the firefighters arrive and start putting water on the fire, there is no sign of Jack or Jinx. Then, the barn’s roof collapses! Were Jack and Jinx still inside? It turns out, Jack and Jinx made it out of the barn and into the paddock on the far side of Jack’s house. When Jack, Jeff, and Annie finally watch the surveillance tapes, they discover Peggy’s and her father’s body guard / chauffeur injured Jinx and let Jinx run off. As they watch even more of the tapes it shows the same man setting the barn on fire. With some detective work on Jeff’s part, the injured Jinx and later the fire was set to solve Peggy’s father’s ‘bad business decisions’ leading him towards bankruptcy. He was after the insurance money on the horse.  The book ends with a silver lining when an old friend of Jack’s comes to the burnt out Top Tier Stables with her large horse trailer offering to put up the twenty-five horses until the barn can be rebuilt.

There are two proof-reading errors. The first one is on the first page, line 3, the third word should be capitalized, since it is the first word of a sentence. The second error is grammatical on page 32, on the seventh line. The subject and predicate do not agree. It should read, ” She doesn’t resist when I…” not “She doesn’t resists when I…”

In Silent Alarm by Jennifer Banash, the author creates a visually explicit story filled with detailed character development in a traumatic high school event.  The various stages of grief are followed as Alyse Aronson’s young life as a violinist is interrupted when her brother shoots and kills fifteen students at their high school resulting in Alyse’s guilt and internal struggles. The story follows Alyse’s life as she first hand discovers that the school shooter is her brother and the aftermath which follows her family who has been left behind to face the harsh realities of the school trauma. Throughout the book, the author has taken enormous care to develop all of the books characters and events in such heightened detail. However, these character descriptions can be excessively over developed and the reader could become lost within the narrative.  The intensively creative detailed language allows the reader to experience the range of emotions of a young high school student could feel in this situation, including the betrayal from her friends, parents, and a boyfriend.  The emotions are incredibly fierce and raw throughout the narrative.  Readers will appreciate the painstaking and haunting details which force them into such a terrible incident that is becoming too common in our high school communities.  All readers will travel this path with Alyse as she fights an internal struggle between loving her brother and wanting him back with their family to the unknown person who killed her friends and almost turned the gun on her.  Recommended for its point of view on a school shooting.

The Battle of Britain is one book of a 10 book series titled the Essential Library of World War II produced by Abdo.  A very readable book suitable for middle and high school libraries, author Tom Striessguth begins in medias res describing attention grabbing details of midair duels between Britain and German sources for the 1st chapter.  Once hooked, readers are escorted into Chapter 2 with the chronological march of events up to the Battle of Britain, the time period in which Germany’s focus was on bombing Britain from the air.  Students will not only learn about strategies deployed by both sides and weaponry used, but they should be able to glean critical pieces of information from the full page primary source photographs of men, women and the technology of the time.  Additional side bars add further dimensions to the snapshot in history.  What stands out to this reader is how well the author’s focus on the tactical maneuvers made by each side are interwoven with the realities of what life was like for average civilians as well as pilots.  Personalized accounts such as the story of RAF pilot Douglas Bader who was shot down over France, had already lost both of his legs earlier in the war, and was treated to dinner by a German pilot before being sent off to a POW camp.  The only drawback is a lack of maps when specific places are discussed.  For example, most students don’t know the distance between England and France or how close London is/isn’t to the coast.  Still, this individual book is worth ordering if one doesn’t have this battle covered in their collection and this librarian will be looking at the other titles as well.  Recommended.

In the scheme of things, senior Higgs Bosun Bing’s last week at Sally Ride High School ought to be a dream, following his four years as a leader, a winner, a Harvard-bound super-achiever who had never before questioned his lucky life or his family-inspired goals. Instead, it becomes an out-of-control awakening as Higgs realizes, in painfully accelerating circumstances, how little the life he’s led so far has to do with who he really is, what his heart really desires, and what it may cost those around him.

It starts with a hypothetical question from his flighty but popular steady girlfriend. “If I needed a kidney, would you give me yours?” Unable to take the question seriously, he does not answer, and so finds himself vilified by her and her friends in ways that begin to unravel his future plans, his self-confidence and his image in the school. Lisa Yee has skillfully created a loveable central character whose journey towards self-awareness takes him into the company of a challenging Goth girl in an Airstream trailer, a person who is not what she seems. As the final seven days before graduation progress, we follow Higgs as he tries to discover who is making his life miserable in school and why this is happening to him.  And he finds true, clear-eye understanding that he wants to follow a far different career path than dentistry: Something like farming! The book explores themes of family, loss, friendship, peer-pressure, self-deceit, humor, love and self-discovery in a very readable way. Highly recommended.