Celestine North lives a perfect life. She’s a model daughter and sister, she’s well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and she’s dating the impossibly charming Art Crevan. But then Celestine encounters a situation in which she makes an instinctive decision. She breaks a rule and now faces life-changing repercussions. She could be imprisoned. She could be branded.
Young Adult (ages 14-18)
Material appropriate for young adults
In-Between Days
Sixteen-year-old Jacklin Bates (aka “Jack”) believes the only way to soar beyond her life is to drop out of school and move in with her free-spirited sister, Trudy. But Jack quickly discovers her sister isn’t the same person she used to be. And when Jack loses her job and the boy she loves breaks her heart, she becomes desperate for distractions.
Playing For The Devil’s Fire
Thirteen-year-old Boli lives in a small pueblo near Mexico City, a landscape destroyed by drug crime, and when his parents leave town and are not heard from, Boli hopes to inspire a luchador to help him find them.
Red Ink
When her mother is knocked down and killed by a London bus, 15-year-old Melon Fouraki is left with no family worth mentioning. Her mother, Maria, never did introduce Melon to a “living, breathing” father. The indomitable Auntie Aphrodite, meanwhile, is hundreds of miles away on a farm in Crete and is unlikely to be jumping on a plane and coming to London anytime soon.
The Disappearance Of Ember Crow
After a daring raid on Detention Center 3 to rescue their trapped peers, Ashala Wolf and her Tribe of fellow Illegals — children with powerful and inexplicable abilities — are once again entrenched in their safe haven, the Firstwood.
The Book Thief
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel–a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
Anna and the Swallow Man
When her university professor father is sent by the Gestapo to a concentration camp, seven-year-old Anna travels the Polish countryside with the mysterious Swallow Man during World War II.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 8, Issue 4
Raymie Nightingale
Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 8, Issue 4
A Year In The Life Of A Complete And Total Genius
Arthur Bean is a genius-it’s just that no one else realizes this quite yet. He’s going to be a world-famous author, and the first step is to win this year’s story-writing contest. What he writes is pretty funny, but it gets him into trouble too.
