Please enable JavaScript
All Books | Page 159 | LitPick Book Reviews
All Books
Dragon's Hoard
Chris Riddell, Chris Riddell, Paul Stewart
Synopsis: Unsure of the tales he is being told about a destructive dragon living in the forest, Free Lance goes to work to protect a wealthy merchant and discovers the truth that leads him into a head-to-head battle with the elusive and dangerous creature on his own turf.
Publication Date: 11/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Community Spirits
Jonathan Pearce
Synopsis: Young Joseph O. Kuhl is commanded by a beautiful transparent young woman to investigate spectral phenomena in his home town. Stimulated by the aspirins provided by his evil little brother, assisted by his Cousin Zack, and hindered by local journalist Patella Sackworth, Joseph encounters ghosts, orbs, explosions, earthquakes, and considerable puzzlement before finally saying farewell to the beautiful young woman.
Publication Date: 11/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
A Little Honesty
Jonathan Pearce
Synopsis: Second Edition. A creative, self-absorbed 16-year-old is trapped in summer school dullness, but his desire for a motorcycle and a date with a TV actress, a female fellow-student's romantic and violence-prone objectives, a confidence man's movie production scheme, and some counseling with a psychiatrist all serve to pique his enthusiasm.
Publication Date: 11/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Pretties
Scott Westerfeld
Synopsis: Having been transformed into a pretty girl after making promises while living in her ugly life, Tally is a happy girl with new friends and a positive outlook, but when the past comes calling, Tally doesn't want to live up to her obligations and now must fight to keep the life she loves without making the sacrifices expected by others. By the author of Uglies.
Publication Date: 11/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Seeing Emily
Joyce Lee Wong
Synopsis: The stunning new talent, Joyce Lee Wong, delivers a poignant, lyrical novel about the experiences of a Chinese American teenage girl by a stunning new talent.

In the successful style of David Levithan's The Realm of Possibility and Sonya Sones' What My Mother Doesn't Know, this free verse novel introduces readers to sixteen-year-old Emily, one of three Asian students at her high school in Richmond, Virginia, and the only child of protective, ambitious parents. She loves her parents and has always strived to please them, but her interest in a sexy new student, her growing passion for art, and her need to break away without breaking her tightly-knit family apart, force Emily to create a web of lies that ultimately traps her just as tightly as her circumstances. Through her art she finds a key to freedom and a new understanding of her place in the world.

Joyce Lee Wong's dazzling debut addresses the complexities of the contemporary Asian American experience, the pressures of American high school, and the age-old clash between teens and parents. This touching novel takes readers on a journey in which parents, peers and readers ultimately find new ways of seeing Emily.
Publication Date: 11/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Thou Shalt Not Dump the Skater Dude
Synopsis: When she breaks up with her boyfriend, a popular skater named C.J. Logan, Kelsey discovers that he doesn't take rejection well when he begins spreading rumors about her, which forces her to salvage her reputation and reinvent herself as a reporter for the school's newspaper.
Publication Date: 10/20/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Dark Angel
David Klass
Synopsis: A taut psychological thriller for teens Seventeen-year-old Jeff thought he would never again have to deal with his older brother, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence. But after six years, Troy’s sentence has been overturned on a technicality and he is released from prison. He returns to a family deeply divided about having him back home. Jeff can’t forget how his life was disrupted by his brother, how his family had to move to another state and start over. Still, his parents believe things will be different now. But Troy’s return makes a mess of Jeff ’s life – at home, at school, and with his girlfriend. When Jeff ’s rival on the soccer field turns up missing, Jeff suspects Troy is involved, and he sets out to prove it. But nothing could prepare Jeff for what happens as he gets closer to the truth.
With unexpected flashes of humor, David Klass once again gives readers a gripping, multilayered novel about good and evil and the powerful bonds of family. Dark Angel is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Publication Date: 10/11/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Second Life of Linus Hoppe
Catherine Temerson, Anne-Laure Bondoux
Synopsis: After intentionally getting himself expelled from Realm One, Linus Hoppe believed he would experience more of real life. But life in inferior Realm Two is a nightmare. For months Linus has been imprisoned in a factory, where he toils on an assembly line. At night, he’s so tired that he no longer dreams of a future, of the destiny he wanted to create for himself. As for his family and friends, he fears he’ll never see them again. He especially misses Chem and Yosh, his co-conspirators in fooling the Great Processor. What made them think they could change society’s rigid hierarchy? Ready to give up, Linus must somehow regain hope and the will to fight for his freedom.
Publication Date: 10/11/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Perfect Distance
Kim Ablon Whitney
Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Francie Martinez rides with one of the best equitation trainers in the country, and works as a groom to pay her way. She’s dreamed of winning the Maclay finals, and now that it’s her last year to compete the pressure is really on. But just when Francie needs to focus more than ever, everything turns upside down, and soon she’s not so sure if winning is really all that important, much less the point.
In this fast-paced coming-of-age story, brimming with fascinating details about the competitive horse world, Kim Ablon Whitney has drawn on her own experiences to create a backdrop perfect for Francie’s story as she tries to figure out who she wants to be and what really matters in life.
Publication Date: 10/11/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
M or F
Chris Tebbetts, Lisa Papademetriou
Synopsis: When Marcus, her best friend who is gay, encourages her to talk online to Jeffrey, the boy on whom she has a crush, Frannie asks for his help, and as Marcus begins chatting with Jeffrey, he discovers that Jeffrey is falling for him, not Frannie.
Publication Date: 10/06/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Moccasin Thunder:American Indian Stories for Today
Synopsis:

The ten stories that make up this collection are raw, original, and fresh. Although they are all about American Indians, they are as different from one another as they are from anything you've read before.

A supermarket checkout line, a rowboat on a freezing lake at dawn, a drunken dance in the gym, an ice hockey game on public-access TV. These are some of the backgrounds against which ten outstanding authors have created their memorable characters. Their work -- both poignant and funny, sarcastic and serious -- reminds us that the American Indian story is far from over -- it's being written every day.

Publication Date: 10/04/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Totally Joe
James Howe
Synopsis: Meet Joe Bunch. Lovable misfit and celebrity wannabe from Paintbrush Falls, New York. Like his longtime best friends Addie, Skeezie, and Bobby, Joe's been called names all his life. So when he's given the assignment to write his alphabiography -- the story of his life from A to Z -- Joe has his doubts. This whole thing could be serious ammunition for bullying if it falls into the wrong hands.
But Joe discovers there's more to the assignment -- and his life -- than meets the eye. Especially when he gets to the letter C, which stands for Colin Briggs, the coolest guy in the seventh grade (seriously) -- and Joe's secret boyfriend.
By the time Joe gets to the letter Z, he's pretty much bared his soul about everything. And Joe's okay with that because he likes who he is. He's Totally Joe, and that's the best thing for him to be.
Here is an exuberant, funny, totally original story of one boy's coming out -- and coming-of-age.
Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
May Bird and the Ever After
Jodi Lynn Anderson, Leonid Gore
Synopsis: Most people aren't very comfortable in the woods, but the woods of Briery Swamp fit May Bird like a fuzzy mitten. There, she is safe from school and the taunts and teases of kids who don't understand her. Hidden in the trees, May is a warrior princess, and her cat, Somber Kitty, is her brave guardian.

Then May falls into the lake.

When she crawls out, May finds herself in a world that most certainly does not feel like a fuzzy mitten. In fact it is a place few living people have ever seen. Here, towns glow blue beneath zipping stars and the people -- people? -- walk through walls. Here the Book of the Dead holds the answers to everything in the universe. And here, if May is discovered, the horrifyingly evil Bo Cleevil will turn her into nothing.

May Bird must get out.

Fast.

Within these pages, Jodi Lynn Anderson shares with us the beginning of May Bird's daring journey into the Ever After, a haunting place where true friends -- and one terrible foe -- await her on every corner.
Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Sign of the Raven
Julie Hearn
Synopsis: Mind the gap.

Something odd is going on in the basement of an old house in London. An inexplicable gap has formed, a gap in time that links the present to the past. And twelve-year-old Tom, who discovers the gap while on a visit to his grandmother, is torn between both worlds.

Lured by a mysterious voice, Tom leaps into the early eighteenth century, to a time when circus "freaks" like the Bendy Man and the Gorilla Woman appeared at Bartholomew Fair. The voice he hears belongs to Astra, a tiny changeling child, whose limbs are no bigger than a man's thumb. She has called him into the past, because she is convinced that Tom is the only one who can help her and her friends from danger. Doctors are paying a high price for unusual bodies to dissect, and Astra and her friends are prime subjects.

But Tom is dealing with difficulties of his own. His mum has cancer and is constantly fighting with his gran. And then he discovers a dark secret in his family's past...a secret that pulls the strands of time together and might just close the gap forever.

Publication Date: 09/27/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Ball Don't Lie
Matt de la Pena
Synopsis: Sticky is a beat-around-the-head foster kid with nowhere to call home but the street, and an outer shell so tough that no one will take him in. He started out life so far behind the pack that the finish line seems nearly unreachable. He’s a white boy living and playing in a world where he doesn’t seem to belong.

But Sticky can ball. And basketball might just be his ticket out . . . if he can only realize that he doesn’t have to be the person everyone else expects him to be.

A breakout urban masterpiece by newcomer Matt de la Peña, Ball Don’t Lie takes place where the street and the court meet and where a boy can be anything if he puts his mind to it.
Publication Date: 09/27/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz
Synopsis: Having always lived with his mother, young Elvin gets the surprise of his life when his high-spirited uncle appears and introduces him to the realities of the world--causing young Elvin to meet himself, understand his roots, realize his own inner strengths, and live for real for the very first time.
Publication Date: 09/20/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction

Pages



RECENT BOOK REVIEWS