13 Gifts by Wendy Mass

It doesn't take long for Tara Brennan to realize that breaking into school to steal a goat while wielding a can of pepper spray is not a good idea. As punishment for her misdeed, Tara's parents send her to the sleepy little town of Willow Falls to stay with relatives she hardly knows, including her eleven-year-old cousin Emily, who, the last time they were together, ate an entire stick of glue. Tara quickly learns that Emily isn't even remotely the strangest person in town. There's a boy who sings in the bottom of an empty pool, two best friends who use blackboards to Communicate, and a green-eyed girl who may—or may not—be dating the world's hottest teen movie star .

Due to another huge lapse in judgment, Tara finds herself beholden to perhaps the strangest person of all: Angelina D'Angelo. If Tara can't collect thirteen mysterious objects for the old woman in time for her rapidly approaching thirteenth birthday, the consequences will be REALLY BAD. Like losing-her- immortal-soul kind of bad. And that's just for starters! Tara's adventures take her and her new friends to places they'd never thought they'd find, some in the real world, and a lot deep inside themselves.

Author Interview

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

It's 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War, with the first lunar landing on the horizon. When eighth grader Doug Swietek  and his family move to a small town in upstate New York after his bad-tempered father loses his job, Doug immediately dubs the town "stupid."

After he meets local girl Lil, everything changes. Lil challenges him to prove he is not the "skinny thug" everyone assumes he is. Following her into the library, he finds the works of Audubon on display and befriends a librarian, who coaxes him to try drawing. Doug's artistic efforts parallel his struggles to fit into the town and rise above the preconceptions people have about his family. When Doug says, about the first Audubon painting he sees, "This bird was falling and there wasn't a single thing in the world that cared at all," it's clear he's talking about himself as much as he is the Arctic tern.

Doug's journey to self-acceptance isn't a straight one, and several times he proves his theory that "when things start to go pretty good, something usually happens to turn everything bad," but readers will root for him even when he stops rooting for himself.

I know that a book about a boy who likes paintings sounds lame- but it isn't at all. You will root for Doug, you will care about Doug, you will want the best for Doug. And you may learn to appreciate Audubon's artwork too. Maybe.

Author Discusses the book
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Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Did you know that the Cinderella story is one of the world’s oldest fairy tales? The first version can be traced back to ninth-century China and was written about a heroine named Yeh-shen. Today, more than 1500 versions of the tale exist, many with a unique twist. Marissa Meyer has written a new story based on the old fairy tale that I found to be really interesting.

Cinder Linh is a cyborg – part human, part robot – who knows nothing of her birth parents or history. She is a ward of her evil stepmother, Adri, who relies on Cinder’s extraordinary talent as a mechanic to support the family all the while vilifying Cinder at every opportunity. Together with two stepsisters, Pearl and Peony, they live in technologically advanced, post-World War IV “New Beijing.” Unfortunately, New Beijing is threatened by an airborn plague called letumosis, which strikes at random and has an almost 100% fatality rate.

When Prince Kai brings a broken robot to Cinder to fix, romance is sparked between these two star-crossed, unlikely lovers. As a cyborg, Cinder is hated by New Beijing society, and there is no one higher on the societal echelon than Prince Kai, heir to the empire. This doesn’t stop the two from becoming friends, although Cinder takes pains to hide her cyborg nature from him.

Meyer introduces another evil villain to the fairy-tale plot in the form of Queen Levana, the mind-controlling ruler of the Lunars – a colony of people originally from Earth, who are inhabiting the moon. Over time, the Lunars have evolved from human to something else entirely, with their own culture and psychic powers. Levana craves the throne and pursues poor Prince Kai relentlessly.

Does this story turn out like the traditional Cinderella story?
Does the prince win Cinder over? or does Queen Levana win her prince?

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The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

Well, he would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are lots of dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . . .

Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead?
Can he learn to live among the living?
Can Bod evade those who want him dead?

Video Book Talk