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12 and up | Page 90 | LitPick Book Reviews
12 and up
Gorgeous (Avery Sisters Trilogy)
Gorgeous
Rachel Vail
Allison Avery's cell phone is possessed—literally. Maybe. Growing up between two sisters of blond beauty, fiery and sarcastic Allison is fed up with being invisible. When the devil appears in a dream and offers to trade Allison good looks for her cell phone, she makes the deal. How much damage can a little phone do anyway? Allison begins to get tons of attention: new friends, a boyfriend, a chance to win a modeling contest. Is it all the devil's work, or is something more mysterious happening?

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Relentless (The Lost Fleet, Book 5)
The Lost Fleet: Relentless
Jack Campbell
Captain John “Black Jack” Geary races to save a group of Alliance POWs from certain death in this gripping novel in New York Times bestselling author Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series.   Alliance prisoners of war are being held at a labor camp in the Heradao star system, which also happens to be the location of the majority of the surviving Syndic warships. Determined not to leave any of his people behind, “Black Jack” Geary orders the fleet to strike hard and fast to rescue the POWs with minimal Alliance losses.   The raid is successful, but victory is short-lived. Geary discovers that the Syndics plan to ambush the fleet with their powerful reserve flotilla in an attempt to annihilate it once and for all—but he doesn’t know where the enemy is located. And as Geary has the fleet jump from one star system to the next, hoping to avoid the inevitable confrontation, saboteurs contribute to the chaos...

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Don Quixote (Candlewick Illustrated Classic)
Don Quixote
Chris Riddell, Martin Jenkins, Miguel de Cervantes
From the award-winning team behind the acclaimed retelling of Jonathan Swift€™s GULLIVER comes an accessible, lavishly illustrated edition of a beloved classic.One of the funniest and most touching novels ever written, Don Quixote has forever memorialized the story of a Spanish gentleman who reads so many books about chivalric knighthood that he is convinced his own destiny is to become a knight-errant. And so he embarks upon a series of fantastical adventures across sixteenth-century Spain, accompanied by his faithful and philosophical squire, Sancho Panza. Superbly retold by Martin Jenkins and illustrated with great wit and humor by Chris Riddell, this is surely the ultimate edition of a book that takes its place among the best loved in the world.

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Seattle Blues
Seattle Blues
Michael Wenberg
The summer of 1970 starts off badly for 13-year-old Maya. Her mother has sent her to Seattle to stay with the grandmother she's never met; her father is reported MIA in the jungles of Vietnam; and angry Maya's determined to get back home, even if it means running away. But slowly Maya begins to adjust, first befriending an autistic boy-and piano prodigy- living next door, and getting to know her grandmother. When Maya finds a trombone in the attic, she's mesmerized. She learns to play as her grandmother gradually unravels details of her past: Maya's grandfather was a famous jazz trombone player who died in a car crash, and her grandmother was a top jazz singer-who now only sings in church. Maya gradually adjusts to the prospect of life without her father, helps to mend mom's relationship with her grandmother, and takes the first steps to becoming an accomplished musician.

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Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks
Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks
Lauren Myracle
Wealth. Privilege. Way too many pastel-tinted opinions. That is Carly’s life, and . . . It’s. Getting. On. Her. Nerves. Carly is ready to ditch the southern princess act and become real. The thing is, she’s always counted on her little sister, Anna, to love and support her—and tell her how right she is. But when Anna turns “hot” over the course of a single summer, everything goes weird. Suddenly Anna’s swimming in the deep end with the big girls while Carly watches from the kiddie pool, alone. Carly’s always relied on the constancy of her sister, but now everything is different, and she’s not so sure she likes it.

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Speak
Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson
The first ten lies they tell you in high school."Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.Speak was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.

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The Stone Beach
The Stone Beach
Kim Chatel
The sun was dark shades of pink and red. The magic light burnished the leaves gold and painted the garden in dream colors. Caroline didn't bother to stop and take in the beauty. Her eyes were fixed on the underbrush looking for any sign of Casey. Down by the river, she called his name. What if he'd slipped on a rock and fallen into the river? Would he be strong enough to pull himself out? What if some wild animal found him? Caroline had heard rumors that coyotes prowled these woods. One of her friends at school had found only her cat's little white paws. Why had her parents moved them to this awful place? "Casey! Casey!" She felt foolish calling him, but she was far enough from the house that no one would hear her. She walked along the river's edge toward the stone beach and was so intent on peeking under every shrub, she didn't see the river open up before her until she came right up to the beach. When she saw the pink stones under her feet, she looked up and held her breath for a moment. The stones were a mirror of the sunset sky. The river was smooth obsidian. The sun lit the willows from behind and they glowed like gold filigree. This is truly the most beautiful place on earth, she thought, and sat on a large rock to enjoy the play of light area.

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Perpetual Check
Perpetual Check
Rich Wallace
Randy is a chubby ninth grader with a Cub Scout hair cut who guesses M&M colors with his eyes closed and makes up words. He’s also a chess whiz who has defeated his older brother Zeke in nine of their last ten matches. Zeke is a high school senior, a soccer champ, and a chess natural who can beat just about anyone if he decides to really concentrate. So why is his loser little brother the better athlete, the better chess player, and the first to have a girlfriend?The competition heightens when both Randy and Zeke qualify for the Northeast Regional of the Pennsylvania High School Chess Championships (Randy is seeded, Zeke is not)—and play their way right into a brother-tobrother final round. Told in alternating points of view between brothers, Rich Wallace’s new novel brings to life one of America’s favorite pastimes in a suspenseful story about competition and family loyalty.Rich Wallace is the author of several books for young adults, including One Good Punch, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; and Wrestling Sturbridge, an ALA Quick Pick. He lives in Pennsylvania.

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Sophomore Switch
Sophomore Switch
Abby McDonald
An uptight Brit and a hard-partying American swap lives in the smartest comedy of the season.Take an administrative snafu, a bad breakup, and "The Hot-Tub Incident," and you’ve got two thoroughly unprepared sophomores on a semester abroad. For American party girl Tasha, an escape to Oxford may be a chance to ditch her fame as a tabloid temptress, but wading Uggs-deep in feminist theory is not her idea of a break. Meanwhile, the British half of the exchange, studious Emily, nurses an aching heart amid the bikinis and beer pong of U.C. Santa Barbara. With an anthropologist’s eye for detail and a true ear for teen-speak, Abby McDonald crafts a funny, fast-paced, poignant look at survival, sisterhood, and the surprising ways we discover our true selves.

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Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared To Dream
Margaret A. Weitekamp, Tanya Lee Stone
They had the right stuff. They defied the prejudices of the time. And they blazed a trail for generations of women to follow.What does it take to be an astronaut? Excellence at flying, courage, intelligence, resistance to stress, top physical shape — any checklist would include these. But when America created NASA in 1958, there was another unspoken rule: you had to be a man. Here is the tale of thirteen women who proved that they were not only as tough as the toughest man but also brave enough to challenge the government. They were blocked by prejudice, jealousy, and the scrawled note of one of the most powerful men in Washington. But even though the Mercury 13 women did not make it into space, they did not lose, for their example empowered young women to take their place in the sky, piloting jets and commanding space capsules. ALMOST ASTRONAUTS is the story of thirteen true pioneers of the space age.

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