Mina Edelman thinks that her family—her parents and the three girls—are the Lincolns reincarnated. Her dad, whose initials are ABE, has gotten involved in the Civil Rights Movement during the summer of 1966. Part of Mina’s job is to make sure that when the riots ensue and folks start throwing bottles and rocks at the marchers that she keeps her family safe. She is truly afraid that they will meet fates similar to the Lincolns, including murder of her father, and death through illnesses of the children. (Three of Abraham Lincoln’s four sons died young. His wife, Mary, was reported to have gone mad, though there’s debate about it .)

I decided to read this book over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday as it takes place in and around Chicago and much of the focus is on King, his speeches, and the Civil Rights Movement. And while there’s a lot here that gives the reader a window into that movement as well as background on the every day life of Abraham Lincoln and his family (and their furniture ), much of it is pure fun because we see it all through the eyes of twelve-year-old Mina, a lovable oddball who wears a Fedora and mixes it up with the neighbor boy.

Though deeply concerned about equal rights, Mina’s dad, Albert, is often goofy and clueless about relating to others, including the African Americans with whom he marches. Objecting to the Vietnam War, he tells the wife of a neighbor turned soldier that he hopes her husband doesn’t come home in a body bag. This sets up conflict between the kids in the families. At one point, the neighbor boy, Hollister, shoots Mina with an arrow.

Albert also appears to be playing with fire as he develops a crush on Clara, the African American woman whose husband he pretends to be when they visit real estate offices, checking to see if they will be shown available houses in all-white neighborhoods. (It’s 1966—you can guess the answer.) Albert lies to his wife about his involvement in the movement.

Loosely, this can be considered a historical novel as it includes many period details—excerpts from Dr. King’s speeches, the kids playing “Viet Cong,” even a reminder of several nursing students murdered in their apartment. There is also much about the life of Abraham and Mary Lincoln that I didn’t know and found interesting. She was impoverished after his death, having spent fabulous sums that she didn’t have. Later, her surviving son had her committed to an asylum for the mentally ill. Abraham Lincoln’s coffin was opened at every train stop on its way to burial (20 days), so folks could gaze at his body.

But this is also a book about a girl growing up. She worries and wonders about the changes her body is going through, about her teen sister’s love interests. We see Dr. King through her eyes.

The author, Gayle Brandeis, will be visiting Colony High as part of the student writers’ conference on March 28. For those of you who plan to attend, I hope you’ll read this book beforehand. You can check it out from either of the school libraries. I think it leads to some good questions for the author: the period details, both the 1960s and the 1860s are outside the author’s experience. (She wasn’t born for the latter, and I don’t think she was for the former either. She certainly couldn’t have been twelve yet!) How did she come up with them? How did she use her own experiences to tap Mina’s feelings about growing up? You were twelve not so long ago. How could you tap your experiences for creative writing?

High Interest Series

Check for these books in our new library section: 372.41

 Choices series:

The Choices series is for teens who are emerging readers. They are not complete stories. They set up situations that require teens to make a choice. The choice is one that teens might have had to make in the past or will make in the future.

 The books are about 50 pages long. They work best for teens who are learning English. If you can already read at the 4th grade level or above, you might find Choices too easy. It may bore you. If you are learning to read English, you might like the Choices series. You might enjoy thinking about what you would do in the same situation.

 Sample title:

 Friend or Foe?

Two friends are running for class president. A third friend (Jazz) tells one of them (Cory) that he will vote for Cory. But Jazz would make a better class president. Should he keep his promise or should he run for class president?

 Orca Soundings series

The books in Orca Soundings vary a lot. They cover a lot of situations. They are written for teens who read below grade level. Most of the books have a 2.5-6 grade level of reading, but they have a lot of action. The pace is really quick. The topic are sometimes for mature readers—teenage sexuality, underage drinking, bullying. These are not books for students in grades 2-6.

I found the Orca Soundings books that I read to be interesting. I wanted to know how things would turn out. They are the same number of pages as the shorter books in the Bluford series. (I discuss the Bluford series next—see below.) Still, Orca Soundings books are a little shorter than Bluford books. The print is bigger.

Since the books aren’t connected as they are in most series, I’ve got three sample titles to give you an idea:

Comeback

Ria is rich, pretty, popular, and has a great boyfriend. Her problem is that her parents are getting a divorce. She blames her mother because her mother wanted the divorce. Ria enjoys her father’s positive attitude about life. She enjoys how he is always doing something fun.

I liked this book because I wasn’t able to guess what would happen. When Ria’s father won’t take her on a plane trip, I thought Ria would find out that her father was having an affair—and that she had misjudged her mother. But Ria’s father is very bad in another way, one right out of today’s headlines. He’s bad in a way that affects a lot more people than just his family.

Charmed

Charmed is for the very mature student.

Izzy is embarrassed of her mom’s boyfriend, Rob the Slob. He’s a racist. In fact, he’s a jerk in a lot of ways. The man of Izzy’s dreams is Cody Dillon. Cody’s a good-looking high school dropout and he’s popular with some girls. But Izzy thinks the “bada#$” boys are the best ones. And even with Rob the Slob as proof that she’s wrong, Izzy won’t listen to anyone about Cody.

When Izzy’s mom chooses Rob the Slob over Izzy, Izzy thinks Cody Dillon is her ticket out of the mess of her life. Bad choice.

Chill

Although Chill has a disability, he doesn’t let it affect him. He’s a great artist and he works on his strengths. He stood up to bullies when he was a kid in elementary school, so by high school, people respect him. But then a new teacher comes to town. And he truly is a bully, not just to Chill, but also to all of the students in his class. He seems to want to break their spirits. But he acts like a completely different person around other teachers, so the staff has no clue.

Through his talent in painting, Chill is able to stand up to Mr. Sfinkter. (Yes, ha, ha. Great name.) His story s also the story of friendship and how to learn to forgive friends when they let you down.

The Bluford Series

The books in the Bluford series are connected. They all take place at Bluford High, and some of the same characters appear in various books. Some are sequels, but the series isn’t one continuous story. If you want to know which books are sequels, check the link here or look under “Readers’ Advisory” on Colony Library Lady. It has a list of all the books and a quick blurb about each one, which tells you which are sequels.

The Bluford books are a little longer—150-180 pages—so they are able to more fully develop the characters. You feel like you get to know some of them. They have very real high school problems. They have a subplot, or second story line so the world of Bluford High seems real, with multiple problems. If you read one, you may get hooked. (And that’s a good thing.)

Sample title:

Pretty Ugly

Jamee Wills feels like she can never live up to her parents’ expectations because her older sister, Darcy, is the smart one. Darcy studies hard and plans to get a scholarship to college next year when she is a senior.

Jamee loves cheerleading because she’s a talented athlete, good at jumps, dance steps and tumbling. But of she doesn’t keep up her grades, she’s going to fail math—and then it won’t matter if she makes the cheer squad. But in order to go to practice, she lies to her parents about staying after school to get help from her math teacher.

In cheer practice, it becomes obvious which girls are the school’s queen bees. Particularly awful is Vanessa Pierce. Vanessa makes fun of Angel, a shy girl who is trying out. She goes on to bully Angel. When Jamee stands up for Angel—and for what is right—she also becomes the target of Vanessa’s attacks. With all the girls afraid to stand up to Vanessa (or they will be next), the attacks become worse and include cyber-bullying.

I particularly liked Pretty Ugly because it shows how hard being an outsider in high school can be.

The popular Bluford series  is here! We’ve got all 15 titles now. And there are 5 copies of each one, so come on over and check them out!

If you want to know which of the Bluford books are sequels or what order you might want to read them in, click here for a list of all 15 books and see which ones are related to others.

Newest five in the Bluford series:

No Way Out by Peggy Kern

Bluford High freshman Harold Davis is trapped. Medical bills for his sick grandmother are piling up, and a social worker has threatened to put him in a foster home. Desperate for money, he reluctantly agrees to work for Londell James, a neighborhood drug dealer. Will Harold escape the violence that surrounds him?

The Test by Peggy Kern

Liselle Mason is in trouble. For weeks, she ignored the changes in her body and tried to forget her brief relationship with Oscar Price, her moody classmate at Bluford High. But when Liselle’s clothes stop fitting, and her brother notices her growing belly, she panics. A pregnancy test confirms her biggest fears. Unwilling to admit the truth, Liselle suddenly faces a world with no easy answers. Where will she turn? Who will she tell? What will she do?–From back cover.

Breaking Point by Karyn Langhorne Folan

Vicky Fallon can’t take it. Her father has lost his job. Her parents are constantly fighting, and her troubled little brother is out of control. Once an honor student, Vicky is quickly falling behind in her classes at Bluford High. Now her teachers, friends, and new boyfriend, Martin Luna, want answers. Pressured from all sides, Vicky knows something is about to snap. But the explosion that hits her home is worse than anything she could image.–Book back cover.

Pretty Ugly (sequel to Breaking Point)by Karyn Langhorne Folan

Jamee Wills never expected Vanessa Pierce and her friends to go this far. The trouble starts at cheerleading practice when Vanessa begins teasing Angel McAllister, a shy new girl at Bluford High. When the insults turn nasty, Jamee tries to stop them. She wins Angel’s friendship but makes many enemies. Now Jamee is a target, and someone is texting lies and pictures of her all over school. Unwilling to tell her family or snitch on her fellow cheerleaders, Jamee is cornered. Will her next move solve her problems–or make them worse?–From back cover.

Schooled by Paul Langan

There’s no backing down for Lionel Shepard. With a dream of joining the NBA, all he wants to do at Bluford High is play Basketball. But everyone’s trying to stop him. Bad grades, bad advice from family members and friends. Will he pursue his dream or get caught in a nightmare?

More interesting books for high school students who are learning to read or improving their reading skills. Today we’re looking at Night Fall, a horror series.

At Colony High, we’ve created a section in the book stacks just for these new books. Look under the call number 372.41. (Don’t be shy about asking for help if you need it. That’s what we’re here for!)

Night Fall titles:

Unthinkable by Shirley Duke

Omar Phillips is Bridgewater High’s favorite local teen author. His Facebook fans can’t wait for his next horror story. Lately, though, Omar’s imagination has turned against him, presenting him with horrifying visions of death and destruction. The only way to stop the visions is to write them down, until they start coming true. Sophie Minax, the mysterious Goth girl who’s been following Omar at school, tells him how to end the visions, but the only thing worse than Sophie’s cure may be what happens if he ignores it.

Thaw by Rick Jasper

“A July storm caused a major power outage inBridgewater. Now a research project at the Institute for Cryogenic Experimentation has been ruined and the thawed-out bodies of twenty-seven federal inmates are missing. At first, Dani Kraft didn’t think much of the breaking news. But after her best friend Jake disappears, a mysterious visitor connects the dots for Dani. Jake has been taken in by an infamous cult leader. To get him back, Dani must enter a dangerous, alternate reality where a defrosted cult leader is beginning to act like some kind of god.”–Amazon.com.

The Protectors by Val Karlsson

“Luke’s life has never been ‘normal.’ How could it be, with his mother holding seances and his half-crazy stepfather working asBridgewater’s mortician?”–P. [4] of cover.

The Club by Stephanie Watson

Bored after school, Josh and his friends try out an old game called “Black Magic” that promises the players good fortune at the expense of those who have wronged them. As the club members’ luck starts skyrocketing and horror befalls their enemies, the game stops being a joke. How can they end the power they’ve unleashed? Answers lie in an old diary, but ending the game may be deadlier than any curse.

Skin by Rick Jasper

Nick’s face is breaking out. The symptoms, besides his complexion, include an abiding coldness and nightmares. As his face worsens, a neighbor sends over a priest. The priest remembers a teenager who had a similar attack. He has the teen’s journal. Another teen comes into the clinic with a similar case. Does the resolution lie in the old journal?

Messages from Beyond by Stephanie Watson

Some guy named Ethan Davis has been texting Cassie. He seems to know all about her– but she can’t place him. He’s not in Bridgewater High’s yearbook either. Cassie thinks one of her friends is punking her. But she can’t ignore the strange coincidences– like how Ethan looks just like the guy in her nightmares. Cassie’s search for Ethan leads her to a shocking discovery, and a struggle for her life. Will Cassie be able to break free from her mysterious stalker?”–P. [4] of cover.

Finally!

Some good, interesting books for high school students who are learning to read or improving their reading skills. I’ve mentioned that we’ve been buying these books. Well, now most of them are here. I plan to post about different series. See which series sounds good to you and then come check out a book.

At Colony High, we’ve created a section in the book stacks just for these new books. Look under the call number 372.41. (Don’t be shy about asking for help if you need it. That’s what we’re here for!) You’ll find a few hundred choices.

The first series up is Surviving Southside. Here are five titles:

Shattered Star by Charnan Simon

Cassie is the best singer in Southside High’s Glee Club and dreams of being famous. She skips school to try out for a national talent competition, but her hopes sink when she sees the line. Then a talent agent shows up out of nowhere, flattering her and saying she has “the look” he wants. Soon, she is lying and missing rehearsals to meet with him, and he’s asking her for more each time. How far will Cassie go for her shot at fame?

Recruited by Suzanne Weyn

Kadeem Jones is a star quarterback for Southside High. He is thrilled when college scouts seek him out. His visit toTellerCollegeis amazing, but then NCAA officials accuse Teller’s staff of illegally recruiting top talent. Will Kadeem decide to help their investigation, even though it means the end of the good times? What will it do to his chances of playing college football?

Bad Deal by Susan J. Korman

Fish hates having to take ADHD medication. It helps him concentrate, but it also makes him feel weird. When his crush, Ella, needs a boost to study for tests, Fish offers her one of his pills. Soon, more kids want pills, and Fish is enjoying the profits. To keep from running out, Fish finds a doctor who sells phony prescriptions, but suddenly the doctor is arrested. Fish realizes he needs to tell the truth, but will that cost him his friends?

Benito Runs by Justine Fontes

Benito’s father, Xavier, returns fromIraqafter more than a year suffering from PTSD–post-traumatic stress disorder–and yells constantly. He causes such a scene at a school function that Benny is embarrassed to go back to Southside High. Benny can’t handle seeing his dad so crazy, so he decides to run away. Will Benny find a new life, or will he learn how to deal with his dad–through good times and bad?

Plan B by Charnan Simon

Lucy has her life planned out: she’ll graduate and then join her boyfriend, Luke, at college inAustin. She’ll become a Spanish teacher, and they’ll get married. Deciding there’s no reason to wait, and despite trying to be careful, Lucy gets pregnant. Now, none of Lucy’s options are part of her picture-perfect plan. Together, she and Luke will have to make the most difficult decision of their lives.

Bad, yes. Embarrassing, yes. But what ruins Deanna’s reputation is that Tommy—who, after all, is much closer to adulthood—goes to school and tells everyone, making a joke of Deanna. With her reputation, Deanna’s school and social life are also destroyed. She is tagged as the school slut, and just about every comment directed at her is a nasty joke or sexual innuendo. There’s no escape for her, though she hangs on by writing in a journal.

Fortunately, Deanna has two friends, but the relationship among the three is complicated, and, in anger and jealousy, she even alienates them. Meanwhile, her brother has become a father far too early and is living in the family basement with his girlfriend and their baby daughter. Three years after the event, Deanna’s father is still angry and cannot forgive her. The family is a wreck.

  When Deanna decides to get a job at a pizza place, she finds Tommy working there as well. What could be worse? And yet having to face Tommy forces the two to actually talk about what happened and why. And in that, there is healing.

This is a super-short, super-quick, and super-good read about life-changing events and how to move on into forgiveness. I recommend it to all. But be advised that it has some profanity and explicit discussion of teen sexuality.

Two New Series 

I’m always on the lookout for books that appeal to teens who are English learners. Unfortunately, they aren’t always easy to find. Most books written at a reading level that challenges you and pushes your reading skills are boring—they don’t discuss teen issues.

I found two new book series that I think may work for English learners. The first is called Night Fall. It’s horror fiction. The second is called Surviving Southside. It’s about urban (inner-city) teens at Southside High School. We now have some of the titles in our library and others are on the way. Come on over to the library and check one out—if you like it, check back for new titles. Let me know what you think!

Trapped: How the World Rescued 33 Miners from 2,000 Feet below the Chilean Desert

You’ve heard about the Chilean (and one Bolivian) miners trapped 2,300 feet underground from August 5 until October 13, 2010–more than two months–after 708,000 tons of rock sealed them in complete darkness. But what do you know about how the rescue played out?

I thought I knew this story from the news reports, but Trapped showed me how little I really knew. It moves back and forth between what happened above ground and what happening underground for that two months.

The lives of the men show their real heroism: how they decided they would not resort to cannibalism (they were slowly starving before above-ground contact was made); how they worked and found leaders. Meanwhile, they could hear drills and knew that people were trying to find them, but the maps of the mine were so bad and so far off from reality that rescuers were hitting the wrong places. With each failed attempt, the men had to keep themselves from despair.

The many problems above ground—drills that worked too slowly and that broke against metal underground, wildly inaccurate maps of the mine shafts—show us why it took folks from all over the world to save the men. The stories of NASA scientists, Center Rock (a drilling company), the ‘paloma (dove) shafts, just wide enough to carry food and necessities and working around the clock—all the details—will give you faith in humankind. Knowing what happened affirms the resilience of the human spirit.

This is also a cautionary tale, as noted in the afterword. Though the miners lived because they behaved so well in the first 17 days when they had no contact from above ground and were rescued with the benefit of great technology, a big reason they were trapped is because the San Jose Mine, where they were working, had no escape routes. Mining is always very dangerous, but the mines are required to have two escape routes. In addition, the mine owners never updated their maps of the mine shafts, making rescue very difficult, ‘a shot in the dark.’ The author cautions us to also be people who ‘behave well,’ just as the miners did—and that means valuing miners and being alert to companies that have good mining practices.

This easy reading, tiny book—a little over a hundred pages—has lots of bonus material: diagrams, charts, color photos, a glossary, a timeline, and useful websites. In addition, the couple of pages on “How I wrote this book” discuss “What I learned that could be useful for students writing research reports.” It’s both powerful and succinct. I recommend this book to all our teachers and students, including those who are working on their reading skills. Check it out!

    Want to Go Private?

I want all of you to read this. Really.

Abby is worried about beginning high school because she thinks that life will be even worse than middle school now that there with be more Clique Queens to make her feel bad about herself. Her BFF, Faith, is looking forward to ninth grade as a chance to meet new people who attended the other middle school in town. But when Faith meets Grace and starts hanging out with her—and then finds a love interest with Ted—Abby realizes she was right.

High school sucks.

And home is just as bad. Abby’s dad recently started his own business and he’s never around. Her sister, Lily, is in 7^th grade and lives to irritate Abby and fight with her. What Abby does have is her ‘second life’ on ChezTeen.com. It’s just like Second Life, but for teens only. Avatars get in groups, meet up, hang out, go to concerts. And Abby only talks to people she knows. Until she meets BlueSkyBoi.

BlueSkyBoi has the same favorite music as Abby. He thinks they are soul mates. When he asks Abby if she wants to go private, she decides it can’t hurt anything. After all, she’s not giving him her real name or her address. Plus, it feels great to talk to him, even though he is twenty-seven. He always supports her, agrees wither that Faith is being a jerk and not a very good best friend. He’s sweetly jealous, so that when Abby goes on her first date with a guy in her science class, BlueSkyBoi—whose name is Luke—convinces her that she is his girl.

Want to Go Private? does a great job at showing that academic intelligence (Abby is a straight A student) isn’t the same as emotional intelligence. She’s sweet and a bit nerdy even, but she’s very naïve. It also does a great job at showing how an Internet predator grooms his victims. He doesn’t ask her to do crazy things all of a sudden. Luke builds Abby’s trust over months. Even when he starts to ask her to do weird things (“What is your bra size?”), she knows that she wouldn’t put up with that in class from a boy at school. But in her own bedroom, wearing her pajamas, she feels safe.

How Abby progresses from telling Luke her bra size through the many online sexual behaviors he gets her to do is a gripping story. And when she agrees to meet him and gets into that car, the next page of the book is black. Just black. And the next chapters are narrated by her sister Lily, her BBF Faith and the science class guy, Billy, who’s been crushing on her. What happens to Abby then isn’t the whole story. Luke—and that isn’t his real name—isn’t done with her, and has the opportunity to ruin her life, with all the explicit videos he has of her.

I had a nightmare about this after I read it, something that just doesn’t happen to someone like me, who’s read so many YA books. But it’s better to have nightmares about a character in a book that about a real-life student. So even though there are some explicit scenes of online sexual behavior, I hope you’ll read Want to Go Private? Because you’ll get an idea of how a predator can make someone really smart do something really dumb. And you’ll learn without getting hurt.

   Heat

Michael was born to play baseball. At twelve, he can pitch a fastball at 80 mph. His Bronx Little League All-Star team, the Clippers, is a contender for league champions and hopes to make it all the way to the Little League World Series. But fate is intervening for Michael, in all the wrong ways.

His father had died of a heart attack a few months earlier. As an immigrant from Cuba without a mom, he has only his older brother, Carlos, to depend on. The two are afraid that they will be separated, and so are trying to make it on their own, with a bit of help from a kindly neighbor woman who lives in their apartment building.

While he is still grieving over his father in secret—only Michael’s good friend Manny knows the truth—a rival team, also with hopes of a district championship—accuses Michael of being older than twelve, thus violating Little League rules. Michael has used his baptismal certificate as proof of his age. Locating his birth certificate, back in Cuba, is almost impossible, and Michael can’t play until it’s produced. Through this experience, Michael gets a hard lesson about human nature. The only reason he is accused of being older than twelve is so that inferior teams will have a better chance at the district championship. When he asks himself why a rival team player, Justin, hates him, the reader knows the sad answer: simply because Michael is better at something that Justin does.

I worry that students might dismiss Heat because Michael is only twelve. But his problems are certainly serious; and his brother, Carlos, is sixteen. Several chapters are about Carlos’s heroic efforts and serious mistakes made to keep his brother with him; to provide food and shelter; to make sure that Michael can continue to play baseball, furthering his opportunity to make it to the Little League World Series. Plus, if you like baseball, there’s a lot of exciting description of the action. And one of the big lessons of the book will follow you into adulthood: certain people will try to hurt you when they figure out that you can do something they can’t. You won’t be able to stop them from trying. You’ll just have to take the higher ground.