Teen and Staff Reviews

Staff Review

The Alex Crow

By Andrew Smith
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Apr 8, 2015

Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys is the home to Ariel and Max for the summer. Six weeks without technology, living in the Jupiter cabin (all the cabins are named for planets) they quickly realize they are different from everyone else at camp. Sent there not to overcome their addiction to technology (the advertise goal of the camp) Max and Ariel are there because their father works for Merrie-Seymour and camp tuition is free for employees. The only ones not obsessed with getting a sweet taste of the internet, the boys of Jupiter quickly begin to win the cabin competition.

Staff Review

Noggin

By John Corey Whaley
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Chris K.
Mar 26, 2015

There is no delicate way to tell a person that he is holding a container full of the incinerated remains of his own body.

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"Grow apart." So often, when two people are asked to explain why their relationship has changed and isn't working out, at least one of them will say that they have simply grown apart. They have grown in different ways so that they have less connection and less in common than they once did. Sometimes it's not so much a matter of growing in different directions as growing at different rates.

Staff Review

The Only Thing to Fear

By Caroline Tung Richmond
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Mar 26, 2015

Eighty years after German super-soldiers crushed the Allied forces in World War II, Zara works as a maid at a Nazi cadet academy in the Easter American Territories. Zara can't escape the Nazi's constant obsession with the Aryan ideal, with a Japanese father and American mother she doesn't fit in with the occupying forces. Although she can't hide her lineage she can hide another genetic gift from her father, the ability to control wind. If the Fuhrer knew about her ability, she would be eradicated. 

Staff Review

Please Ignore Vera Dietz

By A.S. King
Star Rating
★★★★★

Rated by Chris K.
Mar 25, 2015

Now Charlie’s dead and I’m here in the kitchen—on my way to school, and then to work. It’s my senior year and I still have no idea what I want to do with my life. I am motherless, and in the last year, I lost my best friend twice, fell in love with a guy I shouldn’t have (twice), got beat up by a skinhead Nazi, and had things thrown at me, including beer cans, money, and dog shit.

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I quietly hoped it would all go away and sent my old PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ signals into the atmosphere.

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A brief word from the reviewer:

Staff Review

I'll Give You The Sun

By Jandy Nelson
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Mar 20, 2015

Jude and Noah are twins who share more than just the same birthday, they share the world. The two are incredibly close and share their secrets, friends, talents and more. A novel told from two perspectives, in two different times in the twins' lives, I'll Give You The Sun shows the rift that came between the twins, then shows the reader the trauma that began their separation. 



Staff Review

Beware the Wild

By Natalie C. Parker
Star Rating
★★★★★

Rated by Jennifer R.
Mar 18, 2015

In her debut novel, Natalie C. Parker brings together a unique southern gothic mystery in the thrilling Beware the Wild. One day, after a particularly awful fight, Sterling's brother Phin runs into the mysterious swamp outside their home and never returns.

Staff Review

The Darkest Part of the Forest

By Holly Black
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Chris K.
Mar 16, 2015

Hazel lives in an out-of-the-way town where faeries are real. The locals know enough lore to stay safe and be respectful, so for the most part the magical creatures leave them alone. Not so much with the tourists, who come because of the stories and to see the horned boy who has been sleeping, unchanged, in a glass coffin in the forest for generations and who sometimes end up dead.

Staff Review

A Time to Dance

By Padma Venkatraman

Rated by Library Staff (not verified)
Mar 5, 2015

Veda lives in India and is a classical (Bharatanatyam) dancer. She lives and breathes dance, has for as long as she can remember. She plans to make dancing her career, despite her mother continually pushing her toward engineering. She is amazingly talented and has just won first place in a major competition. After the competition, the bus taking the competitors back home crashes. She wakes in the hospital with her right leg missing below the knee. Talk about a strong female protagonist! This girl simply will not give up!

Staff Review

Going Over

By Beth Kephart

Rated by Library Staff (not verified)
Feb 27, 2015

Beginning at midnight on Sunday August 13, 1961 the German Democratic Republic, communist East Germany, ran coils of barbed wire fencing through the center of Berlin. By morning, East Berlin was completely cut off from West Berlin. After the wire came the wall and the Stasi – the East German state security service, one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies to ever have existed.

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