Girls who love math, science, girl scouting, are Hispanic, or just love a great true success story will love this book!

The struggles in this book are real dealing with living between two cultures.

Sylvia Acevedo began life in such an ordinary way. From a small town in South Dakota near Ellsworth Air Force Base born to a Mexican mother and a college educated United States Hispanic father, the family soon moved to Las Cruces,  New Mexico. They lived in an all Mexican part of town until her younger sister contracted meningitis. This changed their lives forever. Sylvia’s mother (Mami) only had a sixth grade education but she knew how to care for her family. Mami sensed her family would do better in the Anglo part of town and set off to make this move happen, even with her limited use of the English language.

Mami realized her children would need to know English to succeed in school, so Mami arranged to have a tutor for Mario and Sylvia.  After Mario entered first grade, Sylvia continue to go to the tutor by herself. Then a new program began- Head Start. Many of the mothers did not trust Head Start, but Mami saw its advantages and enrolled Sylvia. In Head Start, Sylvia was forced to use only one last name, that of her father, leaving her mother’s last name off, a bit of her culture taken away. “I would soon understand that it wasn’t just English that I was going to learn, but also a new way of life.” (79)

Sylvia learns to live between two cultures. Neither culture is put down. She learns to take the best of both and fly with them.

When Sylvia learns to read, she also learns she will be able to get her own library card. Her mother makes her save up $5.00 in a kitty bank, then deposit it in a savings account in a bank, in case a library book is damaged, before getting her library card. Sylvia does all of this, but sees at the same time her older brother not being made to do the same thing because he is a boy. Sylvia takes it all in stride. Just like her father (Papá) a chemist, whose at home time was spent reading, going to libraries, visiting his  father and mother, and with Sylvia’s older brother Mario, but not with her because she was a girl.

When Mami enrolls Sylvia and Mario in the Anglo school, she is automatically placed in the second grade remedial class by the principal because of the school from which they transferred. This does not happen to Mario because there wasn’t a remedial fourth grade. In this new school Sylvia feels alone until the day she wore her Brownie uniform to school. Now the whole new world of Girl Scouting and friendships opens up to her, Sylvia is automatically one in the sisterhood of Girl Scouts.

Girl scouting teaches Sylvia budgeting and planning through the cookie sales. Sylvia sees the value in these skills, along with the other badges, like science and cooking, that Girl Scouts allows her to experience.  Budgeting and planning ahead were skills Sylvia’s home life hadn’t taught her. Sylvia begins to start saving for college on her own, realizing this is not something her family will help her with financially. Girls get married and have families, they do not go to college.

Sylvia excels at school. Sylvia was inherently good at math, she loved reading, she won awards for her drumming (not an instrument usually played by girls in either culture), and basketball.

Domestic violence between her parents rears its head. Sylvia separates herself as much as possible from Papá and his temper. Arguments abound. Sylvia refuses to have a quinceañera, which Papá wants so much for her. “My family loved me, but they didn’t understand me, and I often felt like an outsider in my own home.” ( 263)

Eventually, Sylvia realized she wanted to be an industrial engineer. Here she had to prove to the people around her, the dean at New Mexico State University and their scholarship board, she knew what she wanted and was capable of succeeding at it. Sylvia credits much of it to skills she learned through Girl Scouts: people skills, organization, and planning.

While at New Mexico State University , Title IX came into effect. Sylvia had to prove to the  coaches, she was capable of succeeding at basketball though she had no formal training and had not played on any teams. She made the varsity team at New Mexico State University. Sylvia played one season, mostly as a benchwarmer, then gave it up to pursue her education.

While at New Mexico State University, Sylvia had a summer internship at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “The four-hour drive from Las Cruces to  Albuquerque was probably the best time I ever had with my father. He talked the entire way, but he gave me great advice about working in a laboratory, because he had worked in one too.” (284) The advice dealt with being the ‘victim of silly pranks’, never to complain, “not to get upset, even if my coworkers seemed to be taunting me… to perform flawlessly” (285) , being a woman, a woman in science and math, and being Mexican American.  Sylvia succeeded there, went on to Stanford, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In the Epilogue on page 299 Sylvia states, ” I learned to create opportunities for myself.”

Meredith Goldstein knows the Boston area and teens’ complex anxieties and coping mechanisms. So the setting and characters work. The story is cute, a bit typical, in that love interests get tied up in the drama of guessing who will end up together while knowing it all along.

High school senior Maya works in her deceased mother’s university lab as a summer intern transcribing notes for her mother’s research partner.  Then her ideal boyfriend dumps her for another. In her grieving she stumbles on to research left her by her mother who was studying methods to keep relationships alive with love and attraction. As a way to win back her boyfriend, she becomes the subject of formulas to make another attracted to you. Three young handsome men and a summer of trials leads to the discovery that there are other factors involved in attraction than chemical compounds. A slightly different take on the the YA romantic novel, Maya is a smart young woman with college plans and an independence many will like.

On October 30. 1938 thousands of Americans panicked when the breaking news on their radios was believed to be that of an actual alien invasion when, in fact, it was a radio drama based on H.G.Well’s play, War of the World. Hysteria swept the nation, and the police and state patrol phone lines were jammed in Trenton, and throughout the state of New Jersey, as residents called for help, and made desperate pleas for authorities to check on their relatives living in the area. Few listeners realized that the dramatic reporting was that of actor H.G. Wells and his Mercury Theatre players.
In this nonfiction title author Gail Jarrow shares in gripping detail the famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast from 1938, examining the artists behind the broadcast, the broadcast itself, the aftermath, and the repercussions which remain relevant today, including the current controversial issue of “fake news”.

Filled with primary sources, Spooked! contains archival photographs and images, a timeline, bibliography, and an index. Spooked! makes a good resource for discussions about fake news, propaganda, and the role of media.

Blacklisted! Hollywood, the Cold War, and the First Amendment chronicles a shameful period in American history when tensions between the Soviet Union and the US were at an all-time high. A “Red Scare” was sweeping America, where supposed communist threats were everywhere. Under the misguided leadership of Senator Joe McCarthy, the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities was formed to investigate those threats. Author Larry Dane Brimner tells the story of 19 men, all from the film industry, who are summoned to appear before the committee on Un-American Activities. The men believe that the committee’s investigations into their personal associations and their political views are a violation of their First Amendment rights. As they refuse to answer the committee’s questions, they are cited for contempt of Congress and blacklisted.
Brimner uses primary sources, including numerous black and white photographs, to outline the plight of these accused men.

Blacklisted! would make an excellent supplemental reference in the study of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and well as for US History units on McCarthyism. Blacklisted! is one of several Social Justice titles by this author. Others include Birmingham Sunday, Black & White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L. Shuttleworth and Eugene “Bull” Connor, Twelve Days in May: Freedom Ride 1961, and We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin.

In Rory’s new school, none of the many clubs seem like a good fit.  He gives the Astronaut, Prancing Unicorn and the Extra Math Homework Clubs a try, but they didn’t seem quite right.  His mom and dad encourage him to start his own club about something he loves.  More than anything, Rory loves reptiles.  Rory gives out Reptile Club fliers and puts up posters at school.  No one seems interested.  His first meeting starts and he’s about to give up because no one showed up, when he hears whispering in the hall.  When he opens the door, he finds a crocodile, anaconda, and a gecko.

Lots of fun reptile facts are interspersed in the story.  Unfortunately there is one section that encourages confusion between fact and opinion.  “It is fact that I adore Rocky Road ice cream,” and “It is a fact that I think Barry the basilisk lizard is a big show-off.”  While it’s possible to use this confusion as a teaching opportunity, it is also way to easy for young readers to miss the contradiction.

“It’s easy for me to wash up after I get dirty.  But cleaning the Earth isn’t so easy.”  This book in the Go Green series does a great job at making the a huge concept approachable for young learners.  Rather than place blame or bemoan the situation, the focus is on everyday behaviors that can help reduce pollution such as saving power, the three Rs, and driving less.

Illustrations provide colorful and engaging support for the story.

This book features 8 birds with a unique and interesting body features.  Each informational spread on the bird’s unique body part is prefaced with a spread asking the reader, “What bird has a (body part) like this?” with a close up illustration of that body part.  The informational spread includes a description of the bird, its unique body part and how that adaptation helps the bird survive.  It also includes an illustration of the bird in its natural habitat. Eight additional birds are briefly highlighted in the “Other Awesome Birds” section at the end of the book.

A good choice to support primary level science curriculum, but also sure to be a hit with young animal lovers.

Review written by OHS student, Lia K.

Eighteen years ago, two princes, heirs to the kingdom of St. John del Mar, were kidnapped and murdered by the rivaling kingdom of Mondrago. Three friends, Elias, Mercedes and Ulises were all deeply affected on a very personal level. So what happens when maps show up hinting that the little princes are in fact alive just hidden? Should the friends go searching for the truth, even if it’s the most dangerous path?

You should read this book because the writing was phenomenal. The plot amazing. It left me on my toes wondering what happened at every turn. It also switched narratives without using first person, which was great!

This book starts with discussing the danger of floods, then defines what a flood is and identifies different types of floods.  It concludes with ways to protect people and property from floods.  Simple text and color photographs make this is good choice for young readers.

Glossary contains Tier 2 academic vocabulary (absorb, bank, evacuation, raging) but not the Tier 3 domain specific vocabulary introduced in the book, specifically levee, fluvial flood, coastal flood, or flash flood.

The bulk of this book focuses on weather and ends with a two page spread explaining climate and climate change. Information is communicated in a visually appealing and stimulating way with small chunks of text interspersed with diagrams and illustrations.

My reservations with this book are two fold: the title implies a greater focus on climate.  The interdependence and differentiation between weather and climate are only addressed briefly at the very end of the book.  Secondly, I found some of the factual information misleading or even incorrect.  For example it claims that absolute zero is the coldest possible temperature (p. 12) which scientifically is incorrect.  While it is true that lightening can be hotter than the surface of the sun (p. 21), both the sun’s atmosphere and all other layers of the sun far exceed the temperature of lightening.

Despite these reservations, I still recommend this book as an appealing informational text on weather.