Three Star Rating

Pop by Gordan Korman

in Three Star Rating

New in town, and training for his upcoming football tryouts, sixteen-year-old high-school quarterback Marcus Jordan meets Charlie, an older man who is great at helping him train. Marcus is amazed to discover that Charlie is Charlie Popovich, or the “King of Pop,” as he had been called during his career as an NFL linebacker. Marcus soon discovers that Charlie has a big secret, and his family is desperate to keep it.

***

Chasing Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson

in Nonfiction, Three Star Rating

This exciting account of President Lincoln's assassination and the 12-day search for his killer reads like a historical thriller. The dialogue all comes from original sources, which adds a chill to the already disturbing conspiracy! The book takes the reader on a journey, almost hour by hour, following the brutal murder scene at Ford’s Theatre. While the President lay dying, John Wilkes Booth’s accomplices attempted to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Booth had to convince or trick friends and strangers into helping him escape. The text is accompanied by abundant period photos of the key players in the conspiracy and historical documents. This is the young adult version of Swanson’s bestselling Manhunt.

*Note that the Waupaca Area Public Library will be hosting a traveling Lincoln Exhibit August 16-September 24 and is one of only 25 sites nationwide to host this traveling exhibit! Stay tuned for more details about events including a Lincoln impersonator!

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Peak by Roland Smith

in Three Star Rating

Peak has just been caught scaling a skyscraper, and faces criminal charges. Instead of a trial and a serious punishment, the judge agrees to release Peak into his absentee father’s care with the promise that Peak will be out of the country and therefore out of the newspapers. Peak soon realizes that his father’s motives might not be with his best interests in mind. His father owns and operates a mountain climbing excursion company, and he wants Peak to make history for him by being the youngest climber to summit Everest—a dangerous and sometimes deadly climb for an experienced adult climber. Will Peak make it to the top? And does he really want to?

***

Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman? by Eleanor Updale

in Three Star Rating

Montmorency is the story of a thief who falls through a glass roof and hovers on the brink of death. A brilliant young doctor convinces the prison warden in charge to let him saves the thief’s life. The doctor takes the thief to lectures to display the miraculous recovery of Prisoner 493. After completing his term in prison, and with an exclusive knowledge of Victorian London’s new sewer system gained by listening to the various lectures he attended with the doctor, 493 becomes the most successful and elusive thief in London—a man he calls Scarper. In order to keep his identity a secret, he has also become a man named Montmorency, who is a respectable, wealthy gentleman. By maintaining the dual identities, he has a successful career as a thief, but Montmorency starts to prefer the honest life. And one tiny mistake could betray his whole existence! Will he decide to quit being Scarper the thief, or will he continue to live as two different people? And can he keep it a secret?

Don’t miss the exciting sequels:
Montmorency on the Rocks
Montmorency and the Assassins
Montmorency’s Revenge

***

The Mailbox by Audry Shafer

in Three Star Rating

Gable Pace was in the foster system since his mother died, but two and half years ago, he found himself living with his mother’s half-brother, Vernon Culligan. Uncle Vernon is a war veteran from Vietnam, where he lost the lower half of his left leg.

One day after school, Gabe comes home to find that Uncle Vernon has died. Shocked and frightened, Gabe doesn’t tell anyone. He realizes that if he tells anyone, he'll have to return to the foster system. The next day, he finds a mysterious note in the mailbox that reads “I have a secret. Do not be afraid.” He then discovers that Uncle Vernon’s body has disappeared!

Gabe begins a correspondence with the note writer, and doesn’t feel so alone. The note writer even gives Gabe a dog to keep him company. But he and the note writer are not prepared for what happens when the authorities find out about Uncle Vernon. Who will be his guardian now, or will he have to return to the foster system? Who is the mysterious note writer?

***

The Hound of Rowan: The Tapestry Book One by Henry H. Neff

in Three Star Rating

On a trip to the art museum with his dad, Max McDaniels discovers a magical Celtic tapestry showing the mythic Cattle Raid of Cooley, in a secret room at the museum. His discovery doesn’t go unnoticed, as he is soon after contacted by the Rowan Academy, a secret school for Potentials. A Potential is a student who displays special aptitude or skills in aspects of magic. After being invited to attend Rowan and surviving the perilous journey there, Max discovers that there’s more to being a Potential than just learning some fancy tricks. He soon learns that Rowan Academy trains the Potentials to become Agents who work against the Enemy. Finding himself firmly embroiled in a centuries old battle between good and evil, Max must learn to use his skills much sooner than a Potential normally would. His life depends on it.

I felt this book was a combination of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, and the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. There’s Celtic mythology, a boy with special magical powers, only one parent is present, there are magical creatures, and a magical school building. The disappointing factor is that the writing didn’t measure up to the quality of Rowling or Riordan. Max is a fantastic character, well developed and complex, but the supporting cast wasn’t given compelling histories of their own. They seem to purely exist to move the story along. In many ways they are interchangeable. I wonder if this is fixed in the second book of the series, The Second Siege. And maybe it is unfair to make the comparisons between Riordan, Rowling, and Neff, but with so many similarities, it’s hard not to do so.

Overall it was a good book to read, and I liked it a lot. I would recommend it.

***

Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

in Author Visit, Three Star Rating


Catherine Gilbert Murdock will be visiting Waupaca on Monday, September 28, 2009. She will be visiting the High School and the Middle School!


Sixteen-year-old DJ Schwenk spends her summer vacation taking care of her family’s dairy farm. DJ is responsible for the farm because there’s no one else to do it. Her two older brothers had a fight with her father and won’t communicate with the family. Her younger brother is in the middle of his little league season. Brian Nelson, the quarterback of her high school’s rival football team is forced by his coach be help out at the farm, and worse yet, he’s supposed to have DJ train him for the upcoming season. Although they can’t stand each other at the beginning of the summer, DJ and Brian become friends. During the training, DJ decides that she will try out for her high school’s football team, but she also decides not to tell Brian. DJ realizes that not only does she love football, but she might also love Brian. She becomes torn between the two, until realizing that she must choose one. Which will she choose? Can she and Brian be friends, rivals, and possibly somethimg more--all at the same time?




Check out what happens next for DJ in The Off Season, and the stunning conclusion to her story in Front and Center--which will be published in October 2009!!!!

***

The Compound by S.A. Bodeen

in Three Star Rating

While on a camping trip one night nine-year-old Eli, his billionaire father, and his family are alerted of a pending nuclear attack, and rush to the safety of an underground compound that Eli’s father has built to house the family in case of nuclear war. Only after the door is sealed, Eli realizes that his Gram and his twin brother Eddy didn’t make it into the compound. And Dad won’t open the door. Heartbroken, Eli finds that Dad has created a world very similar to their life above ground. There’s a gym, a library, a media room with more CDs and DVDs than Eli could ever watch or listen to in fifteen years. And fifteen years is the amount of time they need to spend in the compound to outlast the nuclear fallout. Six years pass, and in spite of Dad’s planning for every contingency, the family’s situation has become dismal. Eli has created a routine for himself that involves as little contact with his family as possible. He can’t bear to think about his brother Eddy, and distances himself as much as he can. The family’s food supplies have started to dwindle and the livestock that was supposed to sustain them has died. Dad has a plan involving something called “The Supplements,” but Eli is sure that he wants nothing to do with it. One day, Dad gives Eli a CD with a faulty label. As Eli peels it away, he sees that it was recorded only a few weeks ago. But if that’s true, how did his Dad get it? And what is happening in the outside world? Was there really a nuclear threat, or is the family captive for another reason?

The writing in the book is very action driven. In some sections there doesn’t seem to be enough words on the page to fully describe what is happening. I had to reread sections just to make sure I understood at least part of what was going on in the scene. In that sense, I don’t think the writing was very well done. However, the plot really was interesting, and I was impatient to know what was going to happen next. Another criticism I have is that there were a few characters that would be more believable if the author had given them some flaws. Eddy, the twin left behind, was described as being the “good” brother. In all the memories that include Eddy, the reader never sees him doing anything remotely bad. He’s always the hero. I didn’t feel that this was very realistic. Also, Eddy and Eli are supposed to be twins, but I really felt the way their relationship was described, Eddy seemed much older than Eli. I thought that the character of the older sister Lexie was very well done. She was written as a very complete character. She had mean qualities, and a rough relationship with Eli, but she was smart and knew where her loyalties needed to be even if it meant she was in some danger.

I didn’t love this book, but the plot was so intense and unique that I rushed to finish it. I would recommend it.

Absolutely, Positively Not by David Larochelle

in Three Star Rating


Steven is a typical teenager: he’s trying to get his drivers license, he feels disconnected from his parents, and he is trying hard to fit in at his high school. But in many ways he is not a typical teenager. He enjoys square-dancing with his mom, he finds himself thinking about his new teacher Mr. Bowman more often than he would like, and he keeps a men’s underwear catalog under his bed! He struggles to prove to himself, and the world that he is not gay by doing anything he can think of: buying Playboy, dating as many girls as possible, even eating lunch with the hockey team! Somehow these schemes go awry: he ends up purchasing a copy of a parenting magazine instead of Playboy, his dates, although numerous, never quite seem right, and the jocks at the hockey team table mostly ignore him. Next he tries wearing a rubber band on his wrist, as a punishment for thinking about Mr. Bowman, but that turns into a trend at his high school, and doesn’t seem to stop him from thinking about his teacher. As he begins to accept that he is gay, he agonizes over “coming out,” especially to his parents. In fact, to avoid telling them, he takes his friend Rachel’s dog Kelly to the prom! When he comes out to his best friend Rachel, he’s horrified to find out that she had guessed it all along. She becomes so supportive that she proposes forming a club. While Steven isn’t ready to broadcast his coming out by joining a club, he does seek out a support group in another town. Steven's next step will be telling his parents, but how will they react? And will he ever find love?

While the vocabulary, dialogue, and style of the writing are not especially distinctive, the topic of the book is timely and unique. The book merits discussion based on the clever way it deals with the topics of homosexuality and acceptance.

I enjoyed this book. There was a great deal of humor presented through the narrator, both in his use of metaphors and the situation in which he found himself. I think the inclusion of so much humor is a nice touch on the part of the author considering the depth and heaviness of this topic has the potential to bring to a book. I think young adults will definitely appreciate the humor in the story, and the way such a serious topic is made accessible to them without taking away any of the intellectual context of the topic. I would absolutely recommend this book.

On a side note, I think that the paperback cover, with the superhero, is way more fun than the hardcover.
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