| | Ellen Wittlinger |
The author of Hard Love comes up with a short, but interesting book about two teenagers suffering from unresolved grief. One kidnaps the other and they spend the night trying to survive. How they resolve this situation without violence is the challenge in this book.
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| | Lois Ruby |
Dan just moved to Boulder, Colorado. He meets Laurel, a popular, smart student. Dan is searching for a group to join and meets people who are powerful and attention-getting, the Skinheads. The power of hate transforms Dan. Can he be saved or is he going to go off the deep end?
a gritty, realistic look at a serious concern.
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| | Ann Mariah Cook |
The Quest sled dog race in Alaska. A family from back East in the US writes the story of their winter at Two Rivers, near Fairbanks. They have 35 Siberian husky sled dogs.
a true and very interesting story that reads fast.
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| | Virginia Walter |
Robbie, a 13-year-old, murders an elderly shopkeeper. He and his friend, Ruben, have invented a superhero named Megaboy who helps them both to cope with life. Many points of view of Robbie and the murder comprise the short chapters of this book.
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| | Sandra Scoppetone |
This older novel examines the bitterness and prejudice many teens have toward homosexual activity within their group.
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| | Sharon Draper |
Andy and Robbie are members of the Tigers high school basketball team. After an exciting game, a tragedy occurs. How do the team-mates cope with this result of drunken driving?
A well-written book, as well as a sad commentary on drinking and driving, and the toll it takes on everyone related in anyway to the victim.
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| | Rita Williams-Garcia |
Thulani, a high school student from Jamaica, observes a rape while he is high above the street tending to his doves. He helps Ysa, the victim, and then cannot forget her.
For mature young adults.
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| | Sid Hite |
Cecil is 17 and is emerging from his dreamy trance to now see what is going on around him. This is a warm, funny, romantic novel with nothing offensive - just pages from a high school boy's life.
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| | Chris Crutcher |
Louies a high school senior, trying to make it as a starter on the football team. His belief in sportsmanship and fair play goes up in smoke quickly during a game. Becky, his girlfriend, helps him through this but even this relationship ends abruptly. These seemingly insurmountable obstacles to his senior year clutter his mind and emotions.
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| | S.L. Rottman |
Stetson is living a life on the edge. He places bets at school in order to buy food because his alcoholic father spends all of his money at the local bar. His mother has been gone for years. The teen is on the verge of being suspended from school. Then he arrives home one day to find a 14-year-old inside, explaining that she has nowhere else to go because their mother has just died. It turns out that his mother was pregnant when she left, and that he has a sister. Stetson must now teach her how to fend for herself in a trailer with a verbally abusive, often-absent, father. Rottman tackles many social issues from the perspective of a socially outcast 17-year-old who has raised himself and has only one real friend. The story is told mainly through dialogue. Rottman leaves readers with the hope that her protagonist will be able to succeed on his own but also with the nagging feeling that he just may psych himself out of his success. Nevertheless, you will be cheering him on to the end.
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| | Julie Schumacher |
Jane Haus, single and pregnant, goes home to the Jersey shore where her eccentric father lives. When her successful, but annoying, older sister arrives the stage is set for a dysfunctional family stay.
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| | Alex Flinn |
Nick has a violent dad. No one knows this including his friends and Caitlin, his new girlfriend. Soon Nick exhibits the same type of behavior toward Caitlin, starting with verbal abuse and escalating.
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| | David Ball |
Intense, page-turner chronicles 6 couples who have adopted Chinese babies. A startling turn of events causes 3 couples to flee in terror across China pursued relentlessly by the government.
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| | Bryce Courtenay |
Peekay is an English boy, nursed as an infant by a black woman, in South Africa. In early WWII and beyond, he becomes a successful boxer through strife and struggles as he matures.
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| | Jane Orcutt |
First a tragedy, then a budding romance, make this Christian novel enjoyable to read.
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| | Chris Crutcher |
For the high school swimming crowd or just anyone interested in what it takes to be an athlete, this book is about 4 senior boys and one girl. The boys swimming coach decides they need a grueling week of endurance to bring them up to peak performance. This is called Stotan Week. What follows in each of their lives is the story of this award-winning book.
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| | Martha Brooks |
Late one night, a disaster-prone, aimless 17-year-old girl arrives in a small town and decides to stay awhile. As the locals offer her a helping hand, they are slowly able to reach out to one another. This book highlights the power of a community. (SLJ Review, 12/03)
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| | Neal Schusterman |
16-year-old Blake was the lone survivor of a school bus crash when he was only 7. Now he is the only responsible member of a dysfunctional family that includes his wild younger brother Quinn. While tracking Quinn Blake falls into a fantasy amusement park where he and all others there have to ride and survive all the rides to come out alive. No one has ever survived before.
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| | Sharon Creech |
13 year old Sophie is the only girl on a sailboat crossing the Atlantic to visit Bompie - their father and grandfather in England.
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| | Carolyn Mackler |
Virginia is the youngest (15) in a perfect family of three children, 2 parents - all thin and successful except for her. Virginia is fat with her own list of rules for dating. Virginia struggles in high school not because she is isn't bright, but because she is not confident.
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| | Alice Sebold |
The author of the popular fiction book, Lovely Bones, tells the harrowing story of her own rape in her first year of college. The trial of the rapist is shared in detail. The long term effect of the rape on her life is eye-opening.
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| | Will Weaver |
Jed is a 16 year old with a perfect life...until...a strange girl enters his life with a bizarre tale. Her family is now connected to his with catastrophic results.
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| | Michael Crichton |
If you like Science Fiction, technology and the Middle Ages, this book is for you. Several graduate anthropology students are sent back in time to rescue their professor. By the author of Jurassic Park and Lost World, this book will keep you gasping.
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| | Walter Dean Myers |
This book is the story of a young boy, Steve Harmon, aged 16, in prison and on trial for murder.
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| | Jennifer Donnelly |
Mattie, a good student living in the North Woods of New York state in 1906, dreams of going to college and becoming a writer. This is an uncommon goal for anyone at this time in history let alone a girl. A mysterious drowning at a resort where Mattie works adds an element of mystery especially since Mattie has been asked to dispose of the dead womans letters.
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| | Tim Wynne-Jones |
Jim is coping with his dads mysterious disappearance when he meets the bad-girl step-daughter of the town preacher. She says she knows his father is dead and also can name the murderer.
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| | Dai Sijie |
Two city youths are sent to the mountains to be re-educated during Maos regime in China. One of the things they really miss from their middle class lives is reading since books are banned. They devise various strategies to survive including involvement with the little seamstress.
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| | Kyoko Mori |
15 year old Megumi is upset when her mother moves out saying she will not see nor talk to Megumi for 7 years. This leaves Megumi with her always absent father and authoritarian grandmother. Her solace appears in an injured bird leading her to a woman who teaches her how to save it. This book is about determination and survival against personal challenges.This is a novel with elements of Japanese culture.
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