Chip's Chapter: January 2014

Best Foot Forward by Joan Bauer

Jenna Boller is back from her life-altering trip to Texas, dripping with instant maturity. She’s got a new job as assistant to Madeline Gladstone, Director of Quality Control for Gladstone Shoes, and a handsome protégé named Tanner Cobb.

But balancing all these responsibilities with the angst of junior year and her needy family isn’t easy, especially when she’s uncovering nefarious dealings at a mysterious shoe factory called Plant 453 and her protégé happens to be a shoplifter. Jenna finds it difficult to trust Tanner, although his street smarts might be just what she needs when the going gets tough—filling so many shoes is a tall order! But Jenna’s sense of humor keeps her grounded and helps her understand maturity is a work-in-progress.

Meet the Author

Excerpt from the Author's Website: (http://www.joanbauer.com/bff-info.html)

From Joan:

I was angry and hopeful when I wrote Best Foot Forward—

Angry at the corporate corruption that keeps making headlines;
Hopeful at the power some people possess to do the right thing no matter what.
Angry at the toll that alcoholism takes on a family;
Hopeful at how many people are learning to overcome the disease.
Angry that poor kids don't get the chance to succeed;
Hopeful that children can find resilience in impossibly bleak situations.
Angry at a Wall Street system that rewards the bottom line and doesn't always care how the money is earned;
Hopeful that some of that is changing.
Angry at people so steeped in denial that they can't fess up when they've done something wrong;
Hopeful that truth is stronger than falsehood.

Best Foot Forward has all of this packed inside. I plunged my narrator, sixteen-year-old Jenna Boller, feet first into the thick of it. And as I watched her sink a little and swim a lot, I saw that it's fairly easy to do your best when everything is going well, but it takes a special kind of courage to summon up the best you've got when close to everything around you shouts that it won't make a difference.

We need that kind of courage today. I believe when people grab hold of it they're fully at their best

Lexile 640
183 pages

Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne

Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.

In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel Monument 14, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.

Book Trailer
Lexile: HL 590
Pages: 294

Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman

"I bought the milk," said my father. "I walked out of the corner shop, and heard a noise like this: T h u m m t h u m m. I looked up and saw a huge silver disc hovering in the air above Marshall Road."