January 11, 2010 at 4:08 pm (Adventure, Realistic Fiction)
~ Annie Trask, Blue Team
Lolly Emmerson is an independent, free-spirited, fifteen-year-old, who sets out for an evening sail on her boat, the “Mugwump,” in the Florida Keys. She leaves a note for her mother, and heads to the small boat she has sailed on countless journeys. This time, though, things are different; they don’t go as smoothly as usual. Her boat hits something underwater, causing it to overturn. Suddenly, Lolly is thrown overboard with only her life-vest for support. After hours of struggling and receiving a bump on her leg, she is absolutely sure that her boat has collided with a bull shark.
What if it’s still under there someplace…!?!
Finally, she manages to get back on the boat, but her fragile hold doesn’t last long before she slips right back into the sea-foamy water, and what she believes to be a certain death.
However, as Lolly beautifully relates her story, she explains that it wasn’t a shark she hit, but three manatees. One of them allows Lolly to glide through the water on his back, to a warm spring. Lolly credits these beautiful creatures with her eventual survival, but, once rescued, she finds it difficult to describe her curious adventure to news reporters and interested friends.
Read this great novel about friendship, courage, and trust, and watch Lolly’s relationship grow with the manatees!
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January 5, 2010 at 2:58 pm (Uncategorized)
~Sophia Fredo, Blue Team
Three months ago…
I stared in horror at the mass of destruction on the television screen. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. My mum’s message, scrawled in coral-pink lipstick, read: “EMILY, PLEASE FORGIVE ME!”
Present…
My heart flutters as Owen passes my table at lunch. Finally, my mind is distracted from my terrible loss of three months ago. For a change, it feels good to have a wholesome crush, to think of something else besides not having parents anymore. But the most annoying part of the whole mystery, the part that makes my mind churn even more than being near Owen, is wondering why my mum’s last words had been an apology to me.
An apology. In lipstick.
What does it mean?
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December 11, 2009 at 1:14 pm (Realistic Fiction)
~ Annie Trask, Blue Team
If there were a place called “The Town of Creative Writing,” twelve-year-old Jason Blake would surely be Mayor.
Jason is very good at writing and yet no one knows of his talent. He wants to become a writer when he grows up. Jason sounds like a regular kid , right? But there’s one thing stopping him…he’s autistic, and everyone thinks he is really weird. In his hometown of Shelton, Connecticut, he has few friends and no one knows what an amazing writer he is.
Then, one day he discovers a website called Storyboard, where he posts his writing and receives comments on his work . One person in particular , “Phoenix bird,” often posts stories back to him. Jason eventually finds out that “Phoenix bird” is a girl.
Things really get interesting when Jason’s mom decides it’s time to take a break and go for a trip. She’s taking Jason to the Storyboard convention in Dallas, Texas! The night before he leaves, “Phoenix bird” writes and says the convention is in her town. She’s going to be there. They’re going to meet. In real life.
Will Jason finally find a friend?
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November 25, 2009 at 2:46 pm (Realistic Fiction, Sophia Fredo's Reviews)
~Sophia Fredo, Blue Team
I could see it now, in my mind’s eye: the dream above all dreams, the reason I lived and breathed. I shut my eyes, playing the mental move I had seen too many times to count.
Flashing lights, thunderous applause, music pounding heavily from intricately decorated speakers. The click of stiletto heels on the marble catwalk. The swishing of my latest and greatest designs, flowing elegantly from the models’ lithe, slinky frames. Judges whispering and hissing in heavy Italian accents, shooting comments from the corners of their mouths faster than shooting stars. Competition. Firenze. Am I going to win?
Eight models
Seven designers
Six outfits
Five days
Four houses
Three broken hearts
Two judges
One catwalk
Will it be me?
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November 24, 2009 at 11:44 pm (Fantasy, Ms. Ryan's Reviews, Realistic Fiction, Uncategorized)
Bobby is a Dublin kid, always in trouble. He thinks nothing of stealing money, crashing cars, or dodging the police. In fact, these are the things he most enjoys. Only when he’s out of control does he feel truly alive.
To save her son from inevitable trouble with the law, Bobby’s mother moves the family to a small house in the Irish countryside. There, she says, they will start a new life.
“I won’t stay,” Bobby tells her. “I’ll go back to the city, first chance I get.”
Bobby thinks the country is a bore, with its cows and daisies and broken-down stone walls. And it isn’t just boring, either. It’s creepy. The man who last rented this house disappeared without a trace. The people before him were rumored to have murdered their own daughter. And now, Bobby’s little brother is talking about strange noises during the night.
Suddenly, Bobby is scared: scared of the wild energy inside him, of the future that seems so hopeless, and most of all, of whomever — or whatever — is visiting their house in the dark.
(For all you eighth-graders: this is a really good novel for book forms because it’s full of symbolism and character development. And it’s also very suspenseful — I read it in one day.)
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November 11, 2009 at 6:06 pm (Memoir, Ms. Ryan's Reviews)
This memoir, about a teenage girl and her battle with depression, won’t appeal to everyone. Some readers may find it too heavy, too real, and maybe even too scary. But for anyone interested in adolescent psychology and the long journey from desperation to hope, the author’s story will captivate.
Mathilde Monaque, a young French woman born in 1989, was hospitalized at the age of 14 for severe depression and a possible eating disorder. She had no idea why she felt so bad; she felt totally unconnected to the other teenage patients around her; she saw herself as a burden on her family; she denied herself food and nutrition; she considered herself altogether unworthy of happiness.
The plot and action of the memoir take place almost entirely inside Monaque’s “troubled head.” We learn of her pain, her affections, her insecurities, and most of all, finally, her love. The lessons she learns, after much fighting and suffering, are ones that all of us should embrace: our place in this world is unquestionable and others will benefit from our unique presence, even if we are far from perfect.
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October 17, 2009 at 4:09 am (Fantasy, Ms. Ryan's Reviews)
*Check out the author’s response to this post! (Comment below.) How exciting that Michelle Zink is already working on the third book in the series. I can’t wait for the second one to come out!
In honor of Halloween, I thought I should feature a dark novel, and this one, a sort of fantasy-thriller, is absolutely perfect for a chilly October afternoon. It opens in a cemetery, on the day of Lia’s father’s funeral. She and her twin sister Alice, along with their little brother, are now orphans. Lia is grief-stricken, and her mourning is intensified by the appearance of a strange, circular mark on her wrist. It’s the sign of the jorgamund, a snake eating its own tail. Instictively, Lia knows to say nothing about it — not to her friends, not to her aunt, not even to Alice, her twin sister. Especially not to Alice.
Thanks in part to a mysterious book discovered among her father’s possessions, Lia begins to suspect that the jorgamund is part of an ancient prophecy, one that’s been turning sister against sister for thousands of years. Now, Lia and Alice have inherited the curse. One twin is destined to be the Guardian, the other, the Gate; one to protect the world from evil, the other, to invite evil in. It seems crazy at first, but when Lia meets another girl with a similar mark on her wrist, she can no longer deny the forces at work within and around her. But what exactly is her role in the prophecy? Is she the good twin or the evil twin? And what can she do to keep the demons at bay?
This novel has all the ingredients of a good gothic suspense story and then some: countryside estates, seances, messages from the dead, hellish creatures threatening the world’s ruin, and even the threat of sibling murder. I’m warning you, it’s dark. Just look at the cover! (But isn’t the cover awesome, though?)
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October 7, 2009 at 1:05 pm (Ms. Ryan's Reviews, Mystery, Realistic Fiction)
I know what you’re thinking. Hoot? Are you serious? That book is lik
e seven years old! Ms. Ryan is just getting around to reading it? And my answer, sadly, is yes; after receiving dozens of recommendations, I finally listened to Hoot this weekend, on CD, in my car. Last spring, I read Scat, which was brand new at the time. That’s right, I didn’t let the dust settle on that one.
Both novels, as some of you know, are funny, are set in Florida, and feature middle-school kids going up against big, bad corporations in the name of endangered animals. Here’s a fact. I liked Scat so much that I drove down to Southern Florida this summer and visited the Everglades. It was just as wild and weird and beautiful as Hiaasen promised. Wow. (Photos of the trip available for interested readers.)
In Scat, the animal in danger is the Florida Panther; in Hoot, it’s the Burrowing Owl. Some other characters you will encounter on the pages of these uproarious books: a barefoot running boy, a fake-fart champion, a scary Science teacher with a collection of real stuffed animals, a boy who snacks on pencils, a pancake house spokeswoman, several renegade eco-activitsts, and a few regular kids to whom you might actually relate.
Seriously, don’t wait seven years. Give these a try
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September 18, 2009 at 11:42 pm (Ms. Ryan's Reviews, Mystery)
Mystery fans, rejoice! Gilda and Enola, two of the most brilliant young sleuths in literature, are at it again. Happily for us, Jennifer Allison and Nancy Springer have been hard at work, penning new installments of the Gilda Joyce and Enola Homles series, respectively. For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with these charaters, Gilda is a contemporary high-school girl who just happens to be interested in solving paranormal mysteries. Using her psychic abilities (ahem) and her typewriter, she bravely runs into ghostly situations, while most other people are running away. As for Enloa, she’s Sherlock Holmes’s intrepid little sister who refuses to behave as a proper Victorian English girl should; instead, she wanders the streets of London alone, usually in disguise, and always on the run from her older brothers, who are determined to make a lady out of her. As if! Enola loves ciphers and codes, but her penchant for solving puzzles often leads her into dangerous — and even murderous — territory. (The second book in the series, The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets, is downright scary.) So, it’s going to be a good weekend for me. I plan to read both books by Monday. Anyone else up for the pleasure? If so, here are the latest titles:
Gilda Joyce: The Dead Drop, by Jennifer Allison
Enola Holmes and the Cryptic Crinoline, by Nancy Springer
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September 1, 2009 at 1:30 pm (Ms. Ryan's Reviews, Realistic Fiction, Science Fiction)
There is so much going on in this book that it’s hard to summarize cleverly and succinctly. So, for this one, I’m going to try a list of facts to see if I can convey the flavor of this intriguing novel:
1. Miranda, a sixth-grader, knows the streets of her Manhattan neighborhood like the back of her hand, including which corners to avoid, when to cross the street, and where the crazy homeless man stands every afternoon.
2. One day Sal, her best friend, gets punched in the stomach for no reason by some random kid they don’t even know.
3. Now, for some reason, Sal won’t talk to Miranda anymore, so she has to walk home from school alone.
4. Soon after this, Miranda’s apartment is broken into. The spare key is missing from its secret spot. Yet nothing seems to be missing. Strange…
5. Then, Miranda finds a mysterious note from somebody who says he wants to save her friend’s life. What? Even weirder, the notes keep coming, and they seem to be predicting events before they even happen.
6. Could somebody be trying to reach her from the future? And is Sal ever going to speak to her again? After all, it wasn’t Miranda’s fault he got punched!
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