Please enable JavaScript
All Books | Page 368 | LitPick Book Reviews
All Books
Shug
Jenny Han
Synopsis: Annemarie “Shug” Wilcox is clever and brave and true (on the inside anyway). And she’s about to become your new best friend in this enchanting middle grade novel from the New York Times bestselling author of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (soon to be a major motion picture!), Jenny Han.

Annemarie Wilcox, or Shug as her family calls her, is beginning to think there's nothing worse than being twelve. She's too tall, too freckled, and way too flat-chested. Shug is sure that there's not one good or amazing thing about her. And now she has to start junior high, where the friends she counts most dear aren't acting so dear anymore -- especially Mark, the boy she's known her whole life through. Life is growing up all around her, and all Shug wants is for things to be like they used to be. How is a person supposed to prepare for what happens tomorrow when there's just no figuring out today?
Publication Date: 05/01/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Once Upon Stilettos
Shanna Swendson
Synopsis: Click your heels three times and say,
“There’s no place like Bloomies!”

Katie Chandler’s life is pure magic–literally. As an executive assistant at Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., she’s seen more than her share of fantastical occurrences. A mere Manhattan mortal, Katie is no wizard, but she’s a wiz at exposing “hokum” pocus, cloaked lies, and deceptive enchantments. And she’s fallen under the all-too-human spell of attraction to Owen, a hunky wizard and coworker. Owen, however, is preoccupied. Someone has broken into his office and disrupted top-secret files, and it reeks of an inside job. CEO Merlin (yes, the Merlin) and taps Katie and her special ability to uncover the magical mole.

Keeping her feelings in check while sleuthing alongside Owen, Katie is shocked to discover that her immunity to magic is waning, putting her in grave danger. Soon she’s surrendering to the charms and enchantments of everyone and everything around her, including a killer pair of red stilettos. Katie must now conjure up her natural instincts to get to the bottom of the break-in, regain her power, and win the wizard of her dreams.
Publication Date: 04/25/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fantasy
Jumping the Scratch
Sarah Weeks
Synopsis:

Jamie Reardon has always heard that bad things come in threes. So after his cat, Mister, dies, his father leaves, and his aunt Sapphy has an accident that causes her memory to develop a skip, Jamie hopes his life will go back to being as normal as cornflakes. But unfortunately there's one more bad thing in store for Jamie -- something he'd give anything to be able to forget -- and this one leaves him feeling like a stranger to himself. Jamie tries in vain to find the magic trigger that will help Sapphy's memory jump the scratch, like the needle on her favorite Frank Sinatra record, but in the end it's Aunt Sapphy who, along with a curious girl named Audrey Krouch, helps Jamie unravel the mysteries of memory and jump the scratch in his own life.

Sarah Weeks's poignant characters and powerful prose come together in a story that is both heart wrenching and inspiring -- another gem from the award-winning author of So B. It.

Publication Date: 04/25/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Alice in the Know
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Synopsis: It's the summer before junior year, and Alice is looking forward to three months of excitement, passion, and drama. But what does she find? A summer working in a local department store, trying to stop shoplifters, and more "real life" problems than she could have ever imagined: A good friend becomes seriously ill, Lester has more romance problems than even Alice knows what to do with, and the gang from Mark Stedmeister's pool is starting to grow up a bit faster than Alice is comfortable with.... Fortunately for Alice her family and friends are with her through it all, and by the end of the summer, Alice finds she knows a whole lot more than she had in June.

Funny, touching, and always provocative, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor does it again, proving with this twenty-first book in the beloved Alice series that she understands what real girls think and feel.

Publication Date: 04/25/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Stay With Me
Garret Freymann-Weyr
Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Leila Abranel was born some twenty years after her sisters. Her elegant sisters from her father’s first marriage have lives full of work, love affairs, and travel. Leila doesn’t know either of them very well, but she loves hearing about them—details of Rebecca’s ruined marriage, Clare’s first job, and the strings of unsuitable boyfriends.

When Rebecca kills herself, Leila wants to know why. She starts by spending time with Clare and finally comes to know her as a person instead of a story. With Clare’s reluctant help, Leila tracks down Rebecca’s favorite places and tries to find her sister’s friends. Along the way, Leila meets Eamon. Eamon is thirty-one and writes for television. He thinks Leila is beautiful and smart, but he does not, he tells her, date teenagers. And yet, the months go by and Leila turns seventeen and learns that you can love someone you are not dating.

Maybe letting Eamon love her back is a mistake. Maybe she’ll never know why Rebecca did what she did. Maybe, Leila, decides, most people have a hard time figuring out which way is left or knowing when to let go and when to stay.
Publication Date: 04/24/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
The North Pole Was Here
Andrew Revkin
Synopsis:

The sun never sets, the air is twenty degrees below zero, and the ice is moving at four hundred yards an hour. Welcome to the North Pole. In 2003, environmental reporter Andrew Revkin joined a scientific expedition to one of the world's last uncharted frontiers, where he was the first New York Times reporter ever to file stories and photographs from the top of the world.

In his quest to understand the pole, Andrew leads readers through the mysterious history of arctic exploration; he follows oceanographers as they drill a hole through nine feet of ice to dive into waters below; peers into the mysteries of climate modeling and global warming; and ultimately shows how the fate of the pole will affect us all.

Publication Date: 04/22/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Defining Dulcie
Paul Acampora
Synopsis: When her mother decides to move her to California after her father dies, Dulcie plots to steal the family car and drive back home upon their arrival, yet after meeting a girl in her new neighborhood and learning of her difficult family situation, Dulcie realizes that her presence and strong will is exactly what her new friend will need to get her through her difficult period ahead.
Publication Date: 04/20/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Time Tripper - Book One: Yestermorrow
Synopsis: Teenager and genius Harry Keller discovers an alternate dimension he calls "A-Time," in which he can see and affect events in the past, present, and future. Original.
Publication Date: 04/20/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Series
The Raven League
Alex Simmons, Bill McCay
Synopsis: When Sherlock Holmes goes missing, Archie Wiggins, an ex-member of the Baker Street Irregulars, believes the Irregulars may have something to do with it, and sets out with other misfits to not only find the famous sleuth, but solve a few murders along the way.
Publication Date: 04/20/06
Age Level: 8 - 12
Genre: Mystery
Here Lies the Librarian
Synopsis: Peewee idolizes Jake, a big brother whose dreams of auto mechanic glory are fueled by the hard road coming to link their Indiana town and futures with the twentieth century. And motoring down the road comes Irene Ridpath, a young librarian with plans to astonish them all and turn Peewee’s life upside down.

This novel, with its quirky characters, folksy setting, classic cars, and hilariously larger-than-life moments, is vintage Richard Peck – an offbeat, deliciously wicked comedy that is also unexpectedly moving.

Publication Date: 04/20/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Ark Angel
Anthony Horowitz
Synopsis: Shot outside the offices of MI6 and left for dead by Scorpia, Alex Rider awakens in a top-secret hospital, glad simply to be alive. But danger has a way of following Alex, and when the boy in the next room is the victim of a kidnapping attempt, it is Alex who saves him—only to be kidnapped himself. The man behind the kidnapping? None other than Nikolei Drevin, wealthiest developer in the world, and the man who single-handedly is funding the first luxury hotel in outer space, Ark Angel. Yet the project is hemorrhaging millions of dollars along the way, and Drevin will stop at nothing to cease the bleeding. Even if it means blowing up Ark Angel. Even if it means sacrificing his only son. . . .
Publication Date: 04/20/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Science Fiction
Pish Posh
Ellen Potter
Synopsis:

Ultra-snobby Clara Frankofile has everything an eleven-year-old girl could want. She’s fabulously wealthy, she lives alone in a penthouse apartment with its own roller coaster, and all of New York City is afraid of her! Each night at the Pish Posh restaurant, she watches the glittery movie actresses and princesses, and decides who is important enough to stay and who she will kick to the sidewalk in disgrace. But Clara’s world is turned upside down when she discovers that a peculiar mystery is happening in the restaurant, right under her upturned nose.With the help of a whip-smart twelveyear- old jewel thief, Clara embarks on a wildly dangerous mission through the streets of New York to solve a 200-hundred-year-old secret.

Publication Date: 04/20/06
Age Level: 8 - 12
Genre: Mystery
The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs
Synopsis: On an unseasonably warm Easter Sunday, a young girl named
Ivy discovers a chilling secret in the basement of the Rumbaugh
pharmacy across the street from the hotel where she lives with
her mother. The discovery reveals a disturbing side to the
eccentric lives of family friends Abner and Adolph Rumbaugh,
known throughout their small western Pennsylvania town
simply as the Twins. It seems that Ab and Dolph have been
compelled by a powerful mutual love for their deceased mother
to do something extraordinary, something that in its own
twisted way bridges the gap between the living and the dead.
Immediately, Ivy's discovery provokes the revelation of a
Rumbaugh family curse, a curse that, as Ivy will learn over the
coming years, holds a strange power over herself and her own
mother.

In his third book for young adults, Jack Gantos has scripted a
completely original drama. With gothic flavor and black humor,
he depicts a group of people bound together by love,
compulsion . . . and a passion for taxidermy.

Publication Date: 04/18/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Penelope Bailey Takes the Stage
Synopsis: Against the wishes of her disapproving aunt, with whom she lives in 1889 San Francisco while her parents are on a scientific expedition, eleven-year-old Penny tries to prepare herself for an acting career.
Publication Date: 04/15/06
Age Level: 8 - 12
Genre: Fiction
Yellow Star
Jennifer Roy
Synopsis:

"In 1945 the war ended. The Germans surrendered, and the ghetto was liberated. Out of over a quarter of a million people, about 800 walked out of the ghetto. Of those who survived, only twelve were children. I was one of the twelve." For more than fifty years after the war, Syvia, like many Holocaust survivors, did not talk about her experiences in the Lodz ghetto in Poland. She buried her past in order to move forward. But finally she decided it was time to share her story, and so she told it to her niece, who has re-told it here using free verse inspired by her aunt. This is the true story of Syvia Perlmutter—a story of courage, heartbreak, and finally survival despite the terrible circumstances in which she grew up. A timeline, historical notes, and an author's note are included.

Publication Date: 04/15/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Being Bindy
Alyssa Brugman
Synopsis: Eighth grade is torture–at least it is for Bindy!
(1) Her best friend since kindergarten becomes her worst enemy.
(2) She’s stuck taking yoga in sports ed, where she unleashes the Very Bad Thing that gets the whole school talking.
(3) She suffers total humiliation when certain unmentionables are tossed around at assembly.
What’s more, Bindy’s divorced parents are behaving badly.
(1) Her laid-back father looks like he’s falling for–could it be?– none other than her ex-best friend’s mother. Which means that . . .
(2) . . . Bindy’s worst enemy might just end up as her sister!
(3) Her domineering mom always wants Bindy to do things her way.
Enough is enough! To survive the drama in her life, Bindy must make some tough decisions in this funny, searching novel about being true to yourself.
Publication Date: 04/11/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Chick Lit

Pages



RECENT BOOK REVIEWS