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12 and up | Page 309 | LitPick Book Reviews
12 and up
The Burying Beetle (Gussie)
The Burying Beetle
Ann Kelley
It was after I ate King that everything started to go wrong in our entire family, as if someone had put an evil spell onto us, a hex - like a bad fairy godmother had said at my birth, when you are eleven you are going to be struck by a sorrow so big it will be like a lightning bolt. There will be grief like a sharp rock in your throat. Twelve-year-old Gussie was born with a rare, life-threatening heart disease, but it hasn't hampered her curiosity. When she reads about the Burying Beetle, which has the unusual habit of burying dead birds, mice, and other small animals by digging away the earth beneath them, it becomes her mission to find one. As she searches the Cornish coast for the elusive insect, Gussie learns be like the Burying Beetle, to bury things past and to live.

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The Bower Bird (Gussie)
The Bower Bird
Ann Kelley
Gussie is not dead yet and she's got something to say. This moving piece of young adult fiction continues the story of a 12-year-old girl fighting for her life while facing the typical trials and tribulations of adolescence. Heartwarming and heartrending, The Bower Bird will have teens and adults alike rooting for Gussie with every turn of the page.

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The Sixty-Eight Rooms (The Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventures)
The Sixty-Eight Rooms
Greg Call, Marianne Malone
Almost everybody who has grown up in Chicago knows about the Thorne Rooms. Housed in the Children’s Galleries of the Chicago Art Institute, they are a collection of 68 exquisitely crafted miniature rooms made in the 1930s by Mrs. James Ward Thorne. Each of the 68 rooms is designed in the style of a different historic period, and every detail is perfect, from the knobs on the doors to the candles in the candlesticks. Some might even say, the rooms are magic.Imagine—what if you discovered a key that allowed you to shrink so that you were small enough to sneak inside and explore the rooms’ secrets? What if you discovered that others had done so before you? And that someone had left something important behind?Fans of Chasing Vermeer, The Doll People, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler will be swept up in the magic of this exciting art adventure!

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The Graveyard Book
The Graveyard Book
Margaret Atwood, Dave McKean, Neil Gaiman
The original hardcover edition of a perennial favorite, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which has sold more than one million copies and is the only novel to win both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal. Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place—he's the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians' time as well as their ghostly teachings—such as the ability to Fade so mere mortals cannot see him.Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead? The Graveyard Book is the winner of the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, the Hugo Award for best novel, the Locus Award for Young Adult novel, the American Bookseller Association’s “Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book,” a Horn Book Honor, and Audio Book of the Year.

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Nation
Nation
Terry Pratchett
The sea has taken everything.Mau is the only one left after a giant wave sweeps his island village away. But when much is taken, something is returned, and somewhere in the jungle Daphne—a girl from the other side of the globe—is the sole survivor of a ship destroyed by the same wave. Together the two confront the aftermath of catastrophe. Drawn by the smoke of Mau and Daphne's sheltering fire, other refugees slowly arrive: children without parents, mothers without babies, husbands without wives—all of them hungry and all of them frightened. As Mau and Daphne struggle to keep the small band safe and fed, they defy ancestral spirits, challenge death himself, and uncover a long-hidden secret that literally turns the world upside down. . . .Internationally revered storyteller Terry Pratchett presents a breathtaking adventure of survival and discovery, and of the courage required to forge new beliefs.

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The Forest of Hands and Teeth
The Forest Of Hands And Teeth
Carrie Ryan
In Mary's world there are simple truths.    The Sisterhood always knows best.    The Guardians will protect and serve.    The Unconsecrated will never relent.   And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.    But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power. And, when the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness.   Now, she must choose between her village and her future, between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?[STAR] "A bleak but gripping story...Poignant and powerful."-Publishers Weekly, Starred"A postapocalyptic romance of the first order, elegantly written from title to last line."-Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies series and Leviathan"Intelligent, dark, and bewitching, The Forest of Hands and Teeth transitions effortlessly between horror and beauty. Mary's world is one that readers will not soon forget."-Cassandra Clare, bestselling author of City of Bones"Opening The Forest of Hands and Teeth is like cracking Pandora's box: a blur of darkness and a precious bit of hope pour out. This is a beautifully crafted, page-turning, powerful novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it."-Melissa Marr, bestselling author of Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange "Dark and sexy and scary. Only one of the Unconsecrated could put this book down."-Justine Larbalestier, author of How to Ditch Your Fairy

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The Anatomy of Wings
The Anatomy of Wings
Karen Foxlee
Top Choice
Ten-year-old Jennifer Day lives in a small mining town full of secrets. Trying to make sense of the sudden death of her teenage sister, Beth, she looks to the adult world around her for answers.As she recounts the final months of Beth’s life, Jennifer sifts through the lies and the truth, but what she finds are mysteries, miracles, and more questions. Was Beth’s death an accident? Why couldn’t Jennifer—or anyone else—save her?Through Jennifer’s eyes, we see one girl’s failure to cross the threshold into adulthood as her family slowly falls apart.

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Lucky Breaks (Hard Pan Trilogy)
Lucky Breaks
Matt Phelan, Susan Patron
"Eleven is much more intrepid than only ten." On the eve of her eleventh birthday, Lucky wants to let loose and become intrepid; she's ready for life to change. But Hard Pan (population 43) drones on like it always has: Lincoln all tied up in knotty matters, Miles newly diagnosed as a genius but as needy as ever, Brigitte running her Café and trying to figure out what it means to be American. Enter Paloma, tagging along on a visit to Hard Pan with a pack of hungry geologists. She's smart and pretty and fun -- definitely best-friend material. But will Lucky be able to cope with tomato worms, Short Sammy's mysterious box, the potential for disaster when Paloma's parents visit Hard Pan, and Lincoln's fame among knot tyers of the world? Lucky's intrepidness is put to the test in this satisfying sequel to the Newbery Award-winning The Higher Power of Lucky.

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What's the Weather Inside?
What's the Weather Inside?
Barry Blitt, Karma Wilson
Here are more than 120 hysterical, philosophical, rhetorical, and commonsensical poems and pictures that explore the perfectly not-so-perfect world of picky kids, Miss Muffet's revenge, magic homework wands, yellow snow, and Sunday's sundaes! New York Times bestselling author Karma Wilson and renowned New Yorker cartoonist Barry Blitt have created a brilliantly entertaining poetry collection sure to be a source of pleasure and inspiration to kids everywhere.

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My Brother Abe: Sally Lincoln's Story
My Brother Abe
Harry Mazer
Virtually nothing is known about Sarah Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's older sister. This novel will follow the few known facts of the Lincoln family's early life, starting with the Lincolns' move from Kentucky to Indiana when Sarah was nine. It will cover their years living in a log cabin, the death of Sarah and Abe's mother when Sarah was eleven and Sarah's new responsibilities as woman of the cabin, and will culminate in the arrival of a stepmother a year later. The details of Sarah's character will be invented, but this novel will give us real insight into Abraham Lincoln's childhood, as well as the role of women on the frontier.

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