Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell. Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House. 2009. Review copy from publisher. Book website. The Plot: Iris and her best friend, Collette, are fourteen. It’s summer, a hot, humid Louisiana summer; the last summer of childhood. They play some of the make believe games of their childhood, but this year [...]
The Queen of Water by Laura Resau and Maria Virginia Farinango. Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House. 2011. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: At age seven, Virginia, an indigenas living in an Andean village in Ecuador, is taken from her family to be a servant of a mestizo couple. Her parents, poor tenant [...]
Fixing Delilah by Sarah Ockler. 2010. Little Brown. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: Delilah Hannaford, almost seventeen, is in a car headed from Pennsylvania to Vermont. It’s been eight years since she’s been to her mother’s hometown. Back then, it was for her beloved grandfather’s funeral. Because of a fight between her mother, [...]
Hush by Eishes Chayil. Walker, a division of Bloomsbury. 2010. Review copy from publisher. The Plot: Gittel is a teenager, preparing to graduate High School, get married, get a job. She is haunted by memories of her childhood friend, Devory. When they were both nine, Devory hanged herself in the bathroom of Gittel’s house. Now [...]
Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers. Amistad, an imprint of Harper Collins. 2010. Copy borrowed from friend. The Plot: Maurice “Reese” Anderson will be fifteen in a month. For the last twenty-two months, he’s been at the Progress Center for young offenders aged twelve to sixteen. He’s on a special work-release program a few days a [...]
The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove by Susan Gregg Gilmore. Crown, a division of Random House. 2010. Reviewed from uncorrected proof from publisher. The Plot: As the title promises, the life of one Bezellia Louis Grove, starting with her birth announcement in 1951. Bezellia recounts her youth and teenage years as the daughter of one [...]
Tales of the Madman Underground (An Historical Romance 1973) by John Barnes. Viking. 2009. Reviewed from ARC from a conference. The Plot: Lightsburg, Ohio, 1973. Karl Shoemaker has a simple resolution for his senior year: don’t get the “ticket,” the slip of paper from school that sends him to group therapy during school hours. Instead, be [...]
Efrain’s Secret by Sofia Quintero. Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House. 2010. The Plot: It’s not a secret that high school senior Efrain Rodriguez takes his future seriously. He has a plan: Harvard. Maybe Yale. Ivy League, not New York City. The problem is he’s at a Bronx high school where Ivy [...]
The Twin’s Daughter. Lauren Baratz-Longsted. Bloomsbury. 2010. Reviewed from ARC from author. The Plot: Victorian London. Lucy Sexton is thirteen when she opens the door and sees her mother…. No. Not her mother, Aliese Sexton; it is her mother’s identical twin sister, Helen. A twin no one knew about. Aliese and Helen were separated at [...]
The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork. Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic. 2010. Review copy from publisher. The Plot: Pancho Sanchez, seventeen, ends up at St. Anthony’s Home after he is left alone. His mother died when he was young; his father was killed in a work accident; [...]
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