#9 Looking for Alaska by John Green – 2005. Puffin, 2005. ISBN: 9780142402511 ,221  pp. Publisher’s Description: Miles “Pudge” Halter is abandoning his safe, boring life. Fascinated by the last words of famous people, Pudge leaves for boarding school to seek what a dying Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Pudge becomes encircled by friends whose lives [...]

#10 Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Scholastic nonfiction, 2005. ISBN:  9780439353793, 176 pp. Publisher’s Description: “I begin with the young. We older ones are used up . . . But my magnificent youngsters! Look at these men and boys! What material! With them, I can create a new world.” [...]

#14 Unwind by Neal Shusterman. Simon & Schuster, 2007. ISBN:  9781416912040, 335 pp. Publisher’s Description: In America after the Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies came to an agreement: The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of [...]

I think I neglected my elementary collection before by not purchasing enough Marshall Cavendish Benchmark titles like the Backyard Safari series. I had the most fun with the titles Birds and Squirrels, but the series also includes Spiders; Frogs and Toads; and Caterpillars and Butterflies. Since moving to my five acres in the country, I [...]

During ALA Annual in New Orleans I visited the HarlequinTeen booth to seek new romances for my mature eighth grade girls. When I was in middle school, I was reading my mother’s Harlequin Romances and  I wondered what the trend had veered toward. Imagine my surprise when they asked me if I preferred my romances [...]

Ever have a moment with you writing happily away when suddenly a term or phrase totally slips out of your mind? I experienced that when I couldn’t pull the phrase “text box” out to describe why I liked certain features by Marshall Cavendish. I sat there moving my hands around as if they could pull [...]

What is steampunk? Steampunk is an interesting mixture of technology, alternate history and 19th Century England. If you are like me, you may have read several steampunk novels without realizing it like Leviathan or the Harlequin Teen Romance novels by Kady Cross. I recently read The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross which is [...]

Okay, I confess that I am still contemplating the possibilities of Ashfall occurring in real life and people writing off Iowa and states westernly as a dead zone. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll have to read my post and definitely get your hands on the book Ashfall when it releases. I [...]

Ever read a title expecting it to be a simplistic tale out of newsmedia headlines? You basically know the plot and expect to have all of the answers? Well, I’m afraid to disappoint you, but you aren’t going to find typical cliches, easy answers, and predictable plots in Blood Wounds by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Instead you [...]

Oh, how fortunate I feel to have nabbed an advance reading copy of Laini Taylor’s newest title Daughter of Smoke & Bone. I found the writing so compelling it was difficult to break away from the world of seraphims and  chimaera. The cover I read looked like the image on the right. The image below [...]