Middle School Book Discussion

SEPT Schooled by Gordon Korman (Realistic Fiction)

Capricorn Anderson is different from other thirteen-year-olds. He has never watched television, never heard of a Starbucks, and never attended a public school, but he knows how to drive a car. Cap and his hippie grandmother Rain's lifestyle is reminiscent of a 1960s farm commune. Rain is Cap's only family, friend, and teacher until a tragic accident lands Rain in the hospital, forcing Cap to live with strangers. Before Cap can blink, he is enrolled at Claverage Middle School with students who make him a target for their ridicule. Cap's strange appearance and nanve ways encourage students to nominate him for class president, which at this school is not an honor or sign of popularity but instead an age-old joke. The in crowd sets out to ensure that Cap fails at every endeavor, especially the Halloween dance, but the joke is on them. Students stop laughing at him and begin revering Cap because of his pure heart and immeasurable patience. Before long, the roles are reversed, but Cap is no longer there to witness the change in his peers. Korman creates an intricate novel in which goodness and strength of character prevail over the shortsightedness of others. Readers are reminded that the underdog can win without conforming to the constraints of society. Through chapters that alternate characters' points of view, readers gain insight into the turmoil that each person is experiencing as Cap influences their lives. Teens will relate to these characters whether it is the jock, the nerd, or the outcast.

OCT City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (Sci Fic/Mystery)

Fifteen-year-old Clary Fray visits her favorite New York City night club late one evening and watches attractive teenagers follow a blue-haired boy into a storage room. Next thing Clary knows, the boy is dead and the body disappears. Clary is not your typical mundie-she can see Shadowhunters and the demons that they hunt. Clary's mother is kidnapped, their home is ransacked, and Clary kills an evil Ravener in her home. She is then temporarily adopted into the Shadowhunter clan and begins to learn their ways. For some reason, Clary has the Sight and must use her powers and her new friends to find and rescue her mother. Along the way, she is burdened by the love of her best friend, Simon, and the complicated feelings she has towards Jace, a Shadowhunter. This fast-paced fantastic thriller will keep readers on the edge of their seats. It includes everything from werewolves and mind-sucking librarians to vampires and a brother unknowingly kissing his sister-just what teenagers love to read. Clary is an independent, saucy female character who adapts to her newfound powers easily and thinks nothing of throwing a weapon at a werewolf. The dialogue is awkward at times, leading to the 3Q rating. Clary makes some trite remarks that interrupt the narrative flow. The author is in a writing group with Holly Black, author of dark fantasies similar to this one.

NOV City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau (Fantasy/Movie Release)

Gr 4-7-DuPrau debuts with a promisingly competent variation on the tried-and-true "isolated city" theme. More than 200 years after an unspecified holocaust, the residents of Ember have lost all knowledge of anything beyond the area illuminated by the floodlamps on their buildings. The anxiety level is high and rising, for despite relentless recycling, food and other supplies are running low, and the power failures that plunge the town into impenetrable darkness are becoming longer and more frequent. Then Lina, a young foot messenger, discovers a damaged document from the mysterious Builders that hints at a way out. She and Doon, a classmate, piece together enough of the fragmentary directions to find a cave filled with boats near the river that runs beneath Ember, but their rush to announce their discovery almost ends in disaster when the two fall afoul of the corrupt Mayor and his cronies. Lina and Doon escape in a boat, and after a scary journey emerge into an Edenlike wilderness to witness their first sunrise-for Ember, as it turns out, has been built in an immense cavern. Still intent on saving their people, the two find their way back underground at the end, opening the door for sequels. The setting may not be so ingeniously envisioned as those of, say, Joan Aiken's Is Underground (Turtleback, 1995) and Lois Lowry's The Giver (Houghton, 1993), but the quick pace and the uncomplicated characters and situations will keep voracious fans of the genre engaged

DEC Inkheart by Cornelia Funk (Fantasy/Movie Release)

Gr 4-8-Characters from books literally leap off the page in this engrossing fantasy. Meggie, 12, has had her father to herself since her mother went away when she was young. Mo taught her to read when she was five, and the two share a mutual love of books. Things change after a visit from a scarred man who calls himself Dustfinger and who refers to Mo as Silvertongue. Meggie learns that her father has been keeping secrets. He can "read" characters out of books. When she was three, he read aloud from a book called Inkheart and released Dustfinger and other characters into the real world. At the same time, Meggie's mother disappeared into the story. Mo also released Capricorn, a sadistic villain who takes great pleasure in murdering people. He has sent his black-coated henchmen to track down Mo and intends to force him to read an immortal monster out of the story to get rid of his enemies. Meggie, Mo, Dustfinger, and Meggie's great-aunt Elinor are pursued, repeatedly captured, but manage to escape from Capricorn's henchmen as they attempt to find the author of Inkheart in the hope that he can write a new ending to the story. This "story within a story" will delight not just fantasy fans, but all readers who like an exciting plot with larger-than-life characters.

JAN Alabama Moon by Watt Key (Survival/PE)

It is 1980 and for all his ten years, Moon Blake has lived in the Alabama wilderness with his survivalist father, an antigovernment Vietnam vet. Moon's mother, whom he remembers only as warmth, is buried in a cedar grove near the family's camouflaged habitat. But life is good, and Moon's "pap" teaches him all the self-sufficient skills he needs to live off the land. Pap, however, has not taught Moon to endure loneliness, and when Pap dies of an infection caused by his refusal to get treatment, Moon's pain and his need to find Alaska, where Pap promised he would meet other survivalists, impel Moon into human contact. Moon's Alaskan quest begins, but it is a journey through a world now unmediated to him by Pap's opinions. Along the way, Moon inhabits child detention centers, jails, a wilderness shelter that he builds with other boys, and private homes. He finds a mixed bag of trust, betrayal, kindness, cruelty, stupidity, intelligence, comfort, suffering, enemies and friends. Most important, he learns what he can do alone and what he cannot, or would rather not. Moon is young, but his wise yet naive voice is compelling, and the themes and writing style are geared to older readers. The survival skills portrayed-how to fashion deer sinew into fishing line, for example-will please adventure fans. Moon endures so much that the rosy ending, although a bit contrived, seems fitting and forgivable. This book will make an excellent addition to any public or school library.

FEB Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson (Black History Month)

Frannie is discovering that change does not always come with a bang. Sometimes it can be as simple as a new student showing up at school. The Jesus Boy, as the class calls him, is faced with being the lone white youth in a black school. He hails from across the highway that unofficially segregates the black and white neighborhoods. The students start grappling with what it means to be different. Should they give the Jesus Boy a chance to settle into the class? Or will they continue relentlessly teasing him? When speculation begins that he really is Jesus, things quietly begin to shift. Hope seems to spread through the cracks of the students' lives. They become a bit gentler with one another. Maybe the Jesus Boy is capable of the type of miracle they need to make it through their urban existence. Frannie sees the humanity in the seams of her family-from her deaf brother's struggle to fit in to her mother's preparation for a new baby. The Jesus Boy also forces the youth to examine the wavering lines defining race. Is he really white, and if he is, why did he not simply stay across the highway? Maybe there is something magical about the Jesus Boy or perhaps the magic lies within the young people whom he encounters. Either way, this book is dynamic as it speaks to real issues that teens face. It is a wonderful and necessary purchase for public and school libraries alike.

MAR Figs and Fate by Elsa Marston (SS/Cultural Studies/Short Stories)

Gr 5-8-An enjoyable and often surprising collection of stories about Arab teenagers living in modern-day Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. Like Marston's nonfiction title Women in the Middle East: Tradition and Change (Scholastic, 1996), these stories dispel many stereotypes about this part of the world. The young people are facing some specifically Middle Eastern issues such as the U.S. embargo on Iraq and the hardships of life in a Palestinian refugee camp, but they also have concerns that will be familiar to American readers: loyalty to friends, dreams of a future career, and feelings of being torn between divorced parents. The characters are complex and interesting, and the Middle Eastern settings are described in rich detail. Each selection is followed by a note in which the author explains social issues specific to the story that may be unfamiliar to readers. This collection will appeal to those who enjoyed Naomi Shihab Nye's Habibi (S & S, 1997) and would also be a good choice for classes discussing this part of the world or multicultural issues in general.

APR One Of Those Hideous Books Where The Mother Dies by Sonya Sones (Poetry Month/ Verse Novel)

It is true that the mother dies, but this hilarious and painfully real novel in verse and letters is anything but hideous. Ruby Milliken knows everything that she needs to know about her father, Whip Logan, whom she has not seen since she was a baby. He is a world-class actor, and more important, a world-class jerk who left her and her mother and never wrote once. When her mother dies, however, Ruby is sent from her home in Massachusetts to Los Angeles to live with him. She resolves not to like him, a decision that is steadily worn down by a mutual love of classic cars and some first-rate mediation by Max, Whip's personal assistant. As the school year progresses, Ruby finds a home in Los Angeles and makes some important discoveries about Whip's absence from her life. Whip Logan might be in the movies, but Sones's sparse, carefully chosen prose is the star here, conveying Ruby's conflicts of home, friendship, and family in a sympathetic, thoroughly believable manner. Ruby's grieving for her mother is heartbreaking, but also humorous and never overwrought. Without being preachy, Sones addresses stereotyping, variations of friendship, betrayal by loved ones, and parent-child relationships. Readers will cry as easily as they laugh at Ruby's frank observations of life in, as she calls it, Hellywood, even if they do not have teachers named Feather who make them keep a dream journal.

MAY Tracking Trash by Loree Griffin Burns (Math/Sci/Non Fiction)

From the “Scientists in the Field” series, this text with its focus on trash in the world’s oceans and how currents move it around is one of most fascinating science texts for tweens and teens I have ever read. In five chapters, the author introduces us to “opportunity” spills of items like Nike shoes, tub toys, and Legos and then goes on to explain the “science of Ocean Motion”: specifically, waves, tides, currents, and gyres. The history of looking at trash and the role of beachcombers and trash trackers and what they have taught scientists about ocean movement is truly interesting and often inspiring. One of the subtle messages of this book is that is matters where this trash ends up in the ocean and that mankind needs to be more aware of the negative impact of this refuse in all our lives. Maps and pictures throughout the text clearly illustrate everything from currents to the type of spills that have occurred over the years. The format of the book is inviting with an abundance of bright hues against sea colors like blue, light green, and grey. As expected, the glossary is necessary and color-coded back to the chapter in which it first is used; I really loved that! Pages of “books to enjoy” and “websites to explore” round out the text.