Please enable JavaScript
All Books | Page 160 | LitPick Book Reviews
All Books
The Orphan Prince
Jeremy Lee
Synopsis: The silhouette of a man on horseback stood on the knoll against the brilliant backdrop of the lightning, a man with flowing long hair and a large cape that flapped wildly in the wind. Apparently, King Idan had also seen the horse rider, for he pulled on the reins and halted the horse's advance. Leaning back against his father, Ari remained still and peered ahead into the gloom, his heart beating with apprehension.At the age of six, Prince Ari witnessed his father's assassination. Five years later, he continues to have recurring nightmares about the tragedy.Although he's still heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Dinan, Ari's life since King Idan's death has been full of loneliness and misery. His uncle, Lord Peran, harbors no love for him, and his cousin, Roi, hates him.Ari blames his misery on his father's assassin, Black Wolf, a legendary swordsman from the Empire of Narsus whose faceless, shadowy figure haunts Ari's dreams. But Black Wolf's name inspires great fear and deep fascination in Ari.A few days after his eleventh birthday, Ari embarks on a perilous journey to Narsus in search of Black Wolf. What he finds at the end of the journey changes his life forever.
Publication Date: 09/19/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Chloe Leiberman (Sometimes Wong)
Synopsis: This is the deal with Chloe Leiberman (sometimes Wong):

· She lives, breathes, sleeps, eats and drinks fashion.

· She's half Jewish (father) and half Chinese (mother).

· She has one bow-tie(like Tucker Carlson)-wearing brother.

· She’s stuck in the OC.

· She always knows the right thing to wear. And what you should be wearing, too.

· She is a senior in high school.

· She didn't apply to college, even though her parents think she did.

· She has two best friends–Spring, 100% WASP, and Sue, 100% NOT.

· She's talented but doesn't know it yet.

· She dreams about going to design school in London.

This is her application.
Publication Date: 09/13/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Flush
Carl Hiaasen
Synopsis: Take a romp in the swamp with this New York Times bestselling mystery adventure set in the Florida Keys from Newbery Honoree Carl Hiaasen!

Noah's dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the harbor—which has made taking a dip at the local beach like swimming in a toilet. He can't prove it though, and so he decides that sinking the boat will make an effective statement. Right. The boat is pumped out and back in business within days and Noah's dad is in the local lock-up.

Now Noah is determined to succeed where his dad failed. He will prove that the Coral Queen is dumping illegally . . . somehow.


“The writing is pitch perfect.” —The New York Times
 
“A royal flush.” —Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Classic Hiaasen—laugh-out-loud satire in a Florida setting.” —Life
Publication Date: 09/13/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Nicky Deuce: Welcome to the Family
Charles Fleming, Steven R. Schirripa
Synopsis: It’s July, and Nicholas Borelli II’s parents are scheduled to spend two weeks on a cruise. Nicholas will spend those two weeks, as he does every summer, at Camp Wannameka. The night before he’s to leave, however, there’s a phone call: thanks to an explosion in the septic system, camp is canceled. The only place for Nicholas to go instead is to his grandmother’s house in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York.
Nicholas’s father grew up in Brooklyn, but you’d hardly know it. An Italian dinner at Nicholas’s house in the suburbs is whole wheat pasta, organic tomato sauce, and, if he’s lucky, a tofu meatball. And Brooklyn? Well, Brooklyn is the place his father left and never talks about. Nicholas has never been there, and he doesn’t want to go now.
But when Nicholas tastes his grandma Tutti’s meatballs for the first time, gets a nickname from his uncle Frankie, and makes a friend in the neighborhood, his feelings about Brooklyn–and family–begin to change.
Publication Date: 09/13/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Spain or Shine
Michelle Jellen
Synopsis: Elena is lost in the shuffle between her three overachieving siblings. But now that she’s on her own for a whole semester, she intends to keep the spotlight on herself—and Spain is just the place to do it. Once she starts living it up in tapas bars, lying out on the beach (even though it’s November), and having a nice, long siesta smack-dab in the middle of every day, Elena finds that Spain is everything she hoped it would be. She’s even met a to-fawn-over Spaniard, Miguel. But Elena has always been more comfortable writing plays than starring in them, and she’s beginning to realize that keeping out of the spotlight has its perks too. . . .
Publication Date: 09/08/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Foretelling
Alice Hoffman
Synopsis: A coming-of-age story that pierces the soul and heals the spirit, this is the tale of the future leader of the Amazon women warriors. Rain must hold fast to her inner warrior, but she is startled and mystified by the first stirrings of mercy towards the enemy.
Publication Date: 09/07/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
His Oldest Friend
Sonny Kleinfield
Synopsis: A vivid portrait of an uncommon friendship that spans generations, uniting the wisdom of youth with the spark of old age

They met under the least auspicious circumstances. He was a teenage volunteer at a nursing home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was a wheelchair-bound resident in her nineties. He was poor, Hispanic, living in a rented room in the barrio, separated from his family. Her life, at least before arthritis hobbled her, was comfortable, and her daughters and grandchildren visited as often as they could. But when Margaret Oliver’s daughter hired Elvis Checo to look in on her mother a few afternoons each week, nobody realized that this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
In His Oldest Friend, Sonny Kleinfield of The New York Times takes us inside the lives of these two unlikely friends to explore the world of the very young and the very old, showing how underappreciated these groups often are—a mystery to one another and to so many of us in the middle-class adult population. Too often we tend to group together “youth” and “the elderly,” submerging individuals into a group identity. But Elvis and Margaret offer each other that rarest of gifts: recognition and affirmation as a unique human being. Kleinfield opens their lives to us, and shows how their bond of friendship rescued each of them from the bleakness that defeats so many of the youngest and oldest among us.


Publication Date: 09/07/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch
Joseph Delaney, Patrick Arrasmith
Synopsis:

Capturing witches
Binding boggarts
Driving away ghosts

For years, Old Gregory has been the Spook for the county, ridding the local villages of evil. Now his time is coming to an end. But who will take over for him? Twenty-nine apprentices have tried–some floundered, some fled, some failed to stay alive.

Only Thomas Ward is left. He's the last hope; the last apprentice.

Can Thomas succeed? Will he learn the difference between a benign witch and a malevolent one? Does the Spook's warning against girls with pointy shoes include Alice? And what will happen if Thomas accidentally frees Mother Malkin, the most evil witch in the county ... ?

Publication Date: 09/06/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Small Eternities (Withern Rise)
Synopsis:

Four months ago in the snowy depths of winter, Alaric and Naia, two teenagers who'd never met, discovered they were living almost identical lives in different versions of Withern Rise, their riverside Victorian mansion. One day, they accidentally stranded themselves in the wrong realities.

Now it's summer, and heavy rains have caused the river to overflow. Withern Rise's grounds are under water when Alaric and Naia find their separate ways into an earlier reality -- a small eternity -- and meet a boy called Aldous. Aldous Underwood.

But who is this Aldous? Is he the old vagrant Naia has met in the present day, or an Aldous destined to die very soon, under mysterious circumstances? And will their meeting change Underwood history?

Publication Date: 09/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Dance of the Assassins
Herve Jubert
Synopsis:

In nineteenth-century London, Jack the Ripper has claimed another victim.

But this "London" is a crime-free virtual city, a historical theme park for tourists. Qualified witch Roberta Morgenstern and her fresh-out-of-the-police-academy assistant, Clément Martineau, set out to solve the murder.

A wild chase through the streets of old London brings the heroes face-to-face with the terrifying new Ripper. But then they realize their true quarry is the man behind the monster: the mastermind who is bringing some of history's most notorious villains back to life. The trail of evidence leads them from the Versailles of Louis XIV through Renaissance Venice to Montezuma's Mexico, where they have a date with the devil himself....

Publication Date: 09/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Arthur and the Forbidden City
Synopsis:

Arthur's quest takes him into the heart of the forbidden city ...

Arthur's backyard looks like a peaceful, ordinary garden -- if you are human-sized, that is. But if you're half an inch tall, like the Minimoys, this backyard is a vast world where fierce battles are fought, ferocious monsters are faced, and one evil wizard, Maltazard the Cursed, rules with cruel power from his terrifying stronghold: Necropolis, the forbidden city.

Now ten-year-old Arthur -- magically transformed into a Minimoy -- and his Minimoy companions, brave Princess Selenia and mischievous Prince Betameche, must somehow find a way into this forbidden city. Their mission: to rescue Arthur's grandfather, recover a stolen treasure, and save the land of the Minimoys once and for all, before it's too late.

But once you're inside the forbidden city .... can you ever get out again?

Publication Date: 09/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Out of Order
Betty Hicks
Synopsis: One million American children become part of blended family every year. What happens to stepsiblings when the oldest child suddenly becomes the middle child, and the youngest even younger? Out of Order delivers four electric points of view from stepsiblings, ages nine to fifteen, in a super-unsettled, scrambled-up family. An unforgettable Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament, plus 120 hazardous bug snacks, equals humor, insight, and serious indigestion. Betty Hicks gives us her most entertaining and complex novel yet.

Publication Date: 09/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Criss Cross
Lynne Rae Perkins
Synopsis:

Debbie is wishing something would happen. Something good. To her. Soon. In the meantime, Debbie loses a necklace and finds a necklace (and boy does the necklace have a story to tell), she goes jeans shopping with her mother (an accomplishment in diplomacy), she learns to drive shift in a truck (illegally), she saves a life (directly connected to being able to drive, thus proving something), she takes a bus ride to another town (in order to understand what it feels like to be from "elsewhere"), she meets a boy (who truly is from "elsewhere"), but mostly she hangs out with her friends: Patty, Hector, Lenny, and Phil. Their paths cross. Their stories crisscross. And in Lynne Rae Perkins's remarkable book, a girl and her wish grow up. Illustrated throughout with black–and–white pictures, comics, and photographs by the author.

Ages 10+

Publication Date: 08/30/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Friends and Enemies
David Field
Synopsis: Momentous events await fifteen-year-old Tommy when he goes on holiday to a chateau in the south of France near Toulouse. He sees a strange picture of an unknown and beautiful young woman and is magnetically drawn to her image. Suddenly, he's 400 years back in the past, in the France of 1599. In that faraway time he finds the living likeness of the picture in the form of Eloise. They run off for a series of hair-raising adventures together, falling in love in the process. Dynastic struggles, power-hungry bishops, outlaws living in the marshes, demonic caves, murderous clergymen and strolling players form the stock-in-trade of this wonderful historical romance. Its swift action and bubbling humour are matched by the author's canny portrayal of two teenagers meeting across four centuries. And how does Tommy resolve the culture clash? With his mobile phone, of course - another hero of the tale! Read on, and look out for more adventures from the masterful pen of David Field as the story of Tommy and Eloise spills over into the twenty-first century in a volume to follow. David Field lives with his wife and two children in Aarhus, Denmark.
Publication Date: 08/23/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Autobiography of my Dead Brother
Christopher Myers, Walter Dean Myers
Synopsis:

The thing was that me and Rise were blood brothers, but sometimes I really didn't know him. . . .

And so Jesse fills his sketchbook with drawings and portraits of his blood brother, Rise, and his comic strip, Spodi Roti and Wise, as he makes sense of the complexities of friendship, loyalty, and loss in a neighborhood where drive–bys, vicious gangs, and abusive cops are everyday realities.

Printz Award winner Walter Dean Myers delivers an unforgettable novel about life's hardest lessons, illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist Christopher Myers.

Publication Date: 08/16/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Tackling Dad
Elizabeth Levy
Synopsis:

From the author of Frankenstein Moved in on the Fourth Floor, Tackling Dad is the story of 13-year-old Cassie's struggle to make her father understand that even though she's a girl, she can still play football -- just as he did.

Publication Date: 08/02/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction

Pages



RECENT BOOK REVIEWS