Guest Reviewer: Perks of Being a Wallflower

Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
Guest Reviewer: Alicia Scully
*****

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.” 

In honor of the upcoming movie, please enjoy Alicia's review of Perks:

Told through letters to an anonymous reader, Charlie describes his life and his experiences. Opens with the start of his freshman year in high school and proceeds to the following summer. Many stereotypical high school events and experiences—including classes, dances, and football games—all seen through the observational perspective of Charlie. His English teacher plays a vital role and mentors him during the book—the book list that Charlie reads is full of similar characters and situations that he is facing. Lots of identity issues are addressed as well as touchy topics like sex, abuse, and substance use. The text is filled with Charlie’s easily identifiable voice, and he calls to the reader as he discovers his place and his function in his various social systems. Has a strong parental presence—a comfortable difference between other adolescent literature. An intense and wonderful read.

Teen Reviewer: A Walk to Remember

A Walk to Remember
By: Nicholas Sparks
Reviewer: Lily Pollard

“Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it.” 

Description from Goodreads:
Every April, when the wind blows from the sea and mingles with the scent of lilacs, Landon Carter remembers his last year at Beaufort High. It was 1958, and Landon had already dated a girl or two. He even swore that he had once been in love. Certainly the last person in town he thought he'd fall for was Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's Baptist minister. A quiet girl who always carried a Bible with her schoolbooks, Jamie seemed content living in a world apart from the other teens. She took care of her widowed father, rescued hurt animals, and helped out at the local orphanage. No boy had ever asked her out. Landon would never have dreamed of it. Then a twist of fate made Jamie his partner for the homecoming dance, and Landon Carter's life would never be the same. Being with Jamie would show him the depths of the human heart and lead him to a decision so stunning it would send him irrevocably on the road to manhood...

Lily's Review:
I will start off by saying this; this is definitely one of my favorite books I have EVER read. It is a great story!  A Walk to Remember is about Jamie Sullivan and Landon Carter. They are both seniors in high school, and a twist of fate makes them partners for the homecoming dance. Their relationship slowly progresses, but it does. Now take my advice, you will start out smiling and happy, but towards the end it gets sad and you may cry.

This book was great. I recommend it to anyone who wants a very simple, but good love story. It held my attention the whole time, and before I knew it, I had finished the book. Like I said, this is probably one of my favorite books ever! It is a very touching story, and anyone who likes love stories should definitely read this book sometime!

Guest Reviewer: iBoy

iBoy
By: Kevin Brooks
Guest Reviewer: Alicia Scully, MPL Youth Services Intern
(4 out of 5 stars)

“She moved closer to me, put her hands to my face, and kissed me softly on the lips.
God, it felt so good.
So perfect, so right...
It felt so good, I nearly fell off the roof.” 

Description from Goodreads:
What can he do with his new powers — and what are they doing to him?

Before the attack, Tom Harvey was just an average teen. But a head-on collision with high technology has turned him into an actualized App. Fragments of a shattered iPhone are embedded in his brain. And they're having an extraordinary effect on his every thought.

Because now Tom knows, sees, and can do more than any normal boy ever could. But with his new powers comes a choice: To avenge Lucy, the girl he loves, will he hunt down the vicious gangsters who hurt her? Will he take the law into his own electric hands and exterminate them from the South London housing projects where, by fear and violence, they rule?

Not even his mental search engine can predict the shocking outcome of iBoy's actions.


Alicia's Review:
Tom is a good kid living in a bad neighborhood, and one day that catches up to him. Someone throws an iPhone off the top of a 30 story building and Tom is hit in the head, an event that causes bits of the iPhone to meld with parts of Tom's mind. Tom can suddenly do everything that an iPhone can do and so much more. With his newfound powers and his need for revenge concerning the gang rape of his lady love, Tom becomes iBoy and begins his path as a vigilante.

The pacing is steady enough, the premise is a cliche with a new spin, and the mixture of technical and colloquial writing fits the plot perfectly. All of those points considered, it was extremely difficult for me to get through, maybe because I wasn't expecting it to be so realistic in terms of the violence. With a plot like it has, I was expecting more camp but it was really well handled. I would say in terms of content and Brooks's ways of addressing difficult content, the book gets 4 stars. It's not something that I would reread often though, so it may actually be lower or closer to 3 in my mind.

Teen Reviewer: Janie Johnson Books 1, 2, 3, and 4

The Face on the Milk Carton (Janie Johnson #1)
Whatever Happened to Janie (Janie Johnson #2)
The Voice on the Radio (Janie Johnson #3)
What Janie Found (Janie Johnson #4)
By: Caroline B. Cooney
Reviewer: Emily Marie Reeves


The Face on the Milk Carton Description from Goodreads:

No one ever really paid close attention to the faces of the missing children on the milk cartons. But as Janie Johnson glanced at the face of the ordinary little girl with her hair in tight pigtails, wearing a dress with a narrow white collar--a three-year-old who had been kidnapped twelve years before from a shopping mall in New Jersey--she felt overcome with shock. She recognized that little girl--it was she. How could it possibly be true?

Janie can't believe that her loving parents kidnapped her, but as she begins to piece things together, nothing makes sense. Something is terribly wrong. Are Mr. and Mrs. Johnson really Janie's parents? And if not, who is Janie Johnson, and what really happened?


Emily's Review:

The Face on the Milk Carton is the first in a soon to be five book series, and has made me absolutely speechless. The book ends way too abruptly. This is one of the best books that I have ever read, I recommend it for everyone. I’m even trying to convince my dad to read it. Do you think that if you came across a picture of yourself at the age of three that you would recognize it? Yes. How about if you did not know that was you? Probably not, but Janie Johnson was able to tell that she was the missing child on the back of her friend’s lunch milk carton. She feels like a bad daughter to the parents she left behind for an ice cream sundae, but does not want to leave the parents she grew up with and loves. If none of this happened to the three year old, Jeanie would have never met her boyfriend.



Whatever Happened to Janie Description from Goodreads:

No one ever paid attention to the faces of missing children on milk cartons. But as Janie Johnson glanced at the face of the little girl who had been taken twelve years ago, she recognized that little girl--it was herself.

The mystery of the kidnapping is unraveled, but the nightmare is not over. The Spring family wants justice, but who is to blame? It's difficult to figure out what's best for everyone.

Janie Johnson or Janie Spring? There's enough love for everyone, but how can the two separate families live happily ever after?


Emily's Review:

In Whatever Happened to Janie, Janie, also refered to as Jennie, goes to stay with her birth family. She does not try as hard as everyone else has been to make this new situation work. Towards the end she decides to go and live with the parents that raised her. Janie Johnson realizes that she truly is Jennie Spring, but does not want to hurt the people she calls Mommy and Daddy anymore than their real daughter did. Janie’s brother and sister, Stephen and Jodie, went to New York to try and find Hannah and make her pay for what she has done to their family. Hannah is the one who took Janie from the mall in New Jersey twelve tears ago and left the little girl with her own parents while she returned to the cult that attracted her back when she was a teenager. My favorite part is when Reeve came to visit Janie and asked her biological father if he could take Janie to his senior prom. My least part of the book is when Janie asks her biological mother if she could go back to the parents that raised her. I totally recommend this book.



The Voice on the Radio Description from Goodreads:

Janie's life finally seems to be settling down. But she really misses Reeve Shields, her boyfriend who is away at college. Reeve is overwhelmed by his new college life, and when he is asked to host a late-night radio show, he cannot turn it down. But he is stressed, and he finds himself spilling Janie's secrets on the air, certain that Janie will never find out. But will Janie have to pay for Reeve's lapse in judgement?


Emily's Review:

In The Voice on the Radio, Reeve becomes the biggest jerk when he finally gets a good spot on his college radio station. The jerk part comes in because he tells Janie’s story without her permission and then does not tell her about it himself. She finds out when she goes to Boston with Jodie and Brian and hears him doing one of his janies, or stories about her. My favorite part of The Voice on the Radio is the when Janie is actually able to call her birth parents mom and dad. She realizes that she can love both sets of parents without hurting anyone. When Janie found out what Reeve was doing on the radio is definitely my least favorite part of the book. The book doesn’t really get exciting until the end, but is still a very good read. I recommend this book to anyone who thinks that it is easy to trust someone because The Voice on the Radio proves that someone you thought that you could trust can still turn on you very easily. Just wait until you find out about Hannah.



What Janie Found Description from Goodreads:

Janie’s two families appear to have made peace. Life seems almost normal. She’s even decided to speak to her former boyfriend, Reeve, again. But then Janie’s Connecticut father suffers a sudden stroke, and this tragedy leaves her mother reeling. Janie must step in to manage family finances and to support her mother emotionally.

While handling her father’s business matters, Janie discovers the one undeniable fact that could destroy both of her beloved families. And she alone must decide what to do.


Emily's Review (spoilers ahead):

What Janie found is the most exciting book in the series so far; there is also an e-book available and still one book to come in January 2013. If I were Janie I would hate my kidnap[per] father even if he was in a hospital bed and about to die. I am so happy that Reeve and Janie get back together. My favorite part of the book is, definitely, when Janie is thinking about what she wants to do to Reeve to let him know that she wants him back. The worst part of What Janie Found is that Janie’s kidnap[per] father is in the hospital, because she can’t ask him any of her questions, and that makes her want to find Hannah and ask her all of her own questions. I cannot believe what Janie’s father did for his own daughter, the kidnapper. I recommend this entire series to everyone and anyone.

Teen Reviewer: Runner

Runner
By: Carl Deuker
Reviewer: Emily Marie Reeves


Description from Goodreads:

When a new job falls his way, Chance jumps at the opportunity, becoming a runner who picks up strange packages on a daily route and delivers them to a shady man at the marina. Chase knows how much he will earn—what he doesn’t know is how much he will pay.

Suspenseful, fast-paced, and timely, this novel avoids easy answers as it examines issues of terrorism and patriotism, fear and courage, and lives of privilege and poverty.


Emily's Review:

There are three parts to Runner and the first part is the slowest part to read; if you can power through that then this book is a good read. Part one is the worst part of the book, and part three is the best. There is some foul language. I think that the best part of the book is when Chance tells Melissa that he will tell her everything about what he has been doing once he gets out, but to stay away until he gets out so she does not get the two of them in trouble. There is a romance going on, but it is not the most important part of Runner. My least favorite part of the book is the ending, just because it is so typical. I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks their life is hard because I do not think anyone’s life could be as hard as Chance’s.

Teen Reviewer: Pretty Things

Pretty Things
By: Sarra Manning
Reviewer: Lily Pollard

Description from Goodreads:

Brie is in love with Lancôme Juicy Tubes, Louis Vuitton accessories, and her gay best friend Charlie, who is in love with 1960s pop art, 1980s teen movies, and serial heartbreaker Walker, who has ever only been in love with his VW Bug, until he meets Daisy . . . who is too busy hating everyone to know what love is. Set in London, this girl-loves-boy-loves-boy-lovesgirl romp is set against a theatrical production of The Taming of the Shrew, and features enough on- and off-stage drama to satisfy teens looking for a beach read—or a read all year round.


Lily's Review:

Pretty Things is about four people-Brie, Charlie, Walker, and Daisy-who are going to be in a play together. These four people alternate who is talking every chapter, and they show that there is always more “under the skin” than just the exterior of a person. This book shows that four totally different people can learn to get to like each other, and also it shows that love and friendship can come when you least expect it.

I liked this book overall. Some of it wasn’t so great, and I didn’t agree with some things, but I did enjoy it. Pretty Things was a quick and easy read and pretty simple to follow. I thought that it kept my attention at most times, and I wanted to keep reading to find out what happened. All in all, I did enjoy this book and would recommend it to other people.

Teen Book Review: Boy Proof

Boy Proof
By: Cecil Castellucci
Reviewer: Emily Marie Reeves

“Is there any other way to be? I mean, this is it. This is my body, my soul; I gotta live with it. I'd better get comfortable. I plan on taking it for a long ride.” 

Description from Goodreads:

What happens when an antisocial cinephile meets up with the worldly new guy at school — a quick-witted artist who's savvy enough to see through her sci-fi disguise?

Meet Egg. Her real name is Victoria Jurgen, but she's renamed herself after the kick-ass heroine of her favorite sci-fi movie, Terminal Earth. Like her namesake, Egg dresses all in white, colors her eyebrows, and shaves her head. She always knows the right answers, she's always in control, and she's far too busy — taking photos for the school paper, meeting with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Club, and hanging out at the creature shop with her dad, the special-effects makeup wizard — to be bothered with friends, much less members of the opposite sex. As far as Egg is concerned, she's boy proof, and she likes it that way. But then Egg meets a boy named Max, a boy who's smart and funny and creative and cool...and happens to like Egg. Could this be the end of the world — at least as Egg knows it?


Emily's Review:

If you think that you are boy proof you should read Boy Proof. It proves that you’re not boy proof, but just that you haven’t found the right person yet. I say this because I feel like I am boy proof. If you’re not that into love stories don’t worry, it’s there but it is not the most important part of the book. The story takes place in Hollywood and follows a high school senior through a journey of making friends. There is some foul language in the book. I can’t think of my favorite part of the book. My least favorite part of Boy Proof is the ending. The way that the book ends, it makes you think that there should be a second one. Boy Proof is a very good and quick read. I read it in about a day. I would definitely recommend this book, especially if you are feeling lonely.

Teen Reviewer: Five Flavors of Dumb

Five Flavors of Dumb
By: Antony John
Reviewer: Joanna Upton  *****

“Don’t worry about wanting to change; start worrying when you don’t feel like changing anymore. And in the meantime, enjoy every version of yourself you ever meet, because not everybody who discovers their true identity likes what they find.” 

Description from Goodreads:

The Challenge: Piper has one month to get the rock band Dumb a paying gig.

The Deal: If she does it, Piper will become the band's manager and get her share of the profits.

The Catch: How can Piper possibly manage one egomaniacal pretty boy, one talentless piece of eye candy, one crush, one silent rocker, and one angry girl? And how can she do it when she's deaf?

Piper can't hear Dumb's music, but with growing self-confidence, a budding romance, and a new understanding of the decision her family made to buy a cochlear implant for her deaf baby sister, she discovers her own inner rock star and what it truly means to be a flavor of Dumb.

Joanna's Review: (Contains mild spoilers)

Piper is my favorite person in the book, because she is just like me in different ways. Her personality, her attitude. I would read it again, because it was a great book. I wish there were more like it in the Eliot Rosewater books. My favorite part of the book is when they play the gig and the audience loved it. All the teens should read Five Flavors of Dumb; if you have a hidden talent, read it. I recommend it. Teens will love this book if they like emotionally great books. My least favorite part of the book is when Josh and Kallie broke up and started to fight and Kallie left. Read this book if you like raw, fresh, funny, and authentic books. I love this book so much I want to read it again. I think this book was awesome. If you read this book, I'm sure you will enjoy it as much as I did. I give this book 5 stars.

Teen Reviewer: What Can't Wait

What Can't Wait
By: Ashley Hope Perez
Reviewer: Virginia Upton  *****

Description from Goodreads:

"Another day finished, gracias a Dios."

Seventeen-year-old Marisa's mother has been saying this for as long as Marisa can remember. Her parents came to Houston from Mexico. They work hard, and they expect Marisa to help her familia. And they expect her to marry a boy from the neighborhood, to settle down, and to have grandbabies. If she wants a job, she could always be an assistant manager at the local grocery store.

At school, it's another story. Marisa's calc teacher expects her to ace the AP test and to get into an engineering program in Austin—a city that seems unimaginably far away. When her home life becomes unbearable, Marisa seeks comfort elsewhere—and suddenly neither her best friend nor boyfriend can get through to her. Caught between the expectations of two different worlds, Marisa isn't sure what she wants—other than a life where she doesn't end each day thanking God it's over. What Can't Wait—the gripping debut novel from Ashley Hope Pérez—tells the story of one girl's survival in a world in which family needs trump individual success, and self-reliance the only key that can unlock the door to the future.

Virginia's Review: (Mild spoilers ahead)

What Can't Wait was a wonderful book. Very uplifting, romantic, and sad at times. My favorite part of the whole book is when Alan forgives his girlfriend for being so rude to him. This book touched my heart. It's a book every teen should read if they are having a relationship problem. It's a book that helps you through rough times. When you're sad it will cheer you up. What Can't Wait is my favorite book out of all the Eliot Rosewater books I have read. I read it in three days! When I finished it I was so sad, I wanted it to keep going. I would recommend all teens read this book. Teens will love this book if they are into romantic novels. I [give] this book 5 stars. TEENS PLEASE READ THIS BOOK! This is an amazing book!!

Teen Reviewer: Speak

Speak
By: Laurie Halse Anderson
Reviewer: Lily Pollard

“You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.”

Description from Goodreads:
Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth.

Lily's Review:
Speak is a novel about a girl that has something terrible happen to her at a party, and she is afraid to speak up about it. In one night, she loses her best friend and everyone begins to hate her. When she enters high school in the fall, no one likes her and she is an outcast. People make fun of her and are very mean to her.

Overall, I liked this book. It teaches you that you should speak up if something happens. You shouldn’t just hold it in yourself. If something happens that changes your outlook on things and could scar you for life, you should definitely tell someone about it, whether it is a parent/guardian or another trusted adult.

All in all, I like this book. It teaches you not to hold things in if you should tell about them, and that you aren’t the only person that it has happened to.

Book Review: Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska  *****

by John Green


While this book wasn't to my taste, I do believe it has quality and literary merit. The writing quality was strong, including the occasional sentence that made me pause to appreciate the words. The characters were well developed, the countdown kept the reader intrigued and pushing through to see what happened on The Day, and the overall plot was poignant and meaningful.

I wasn't particularly fond of the first half of this book. Reading about how these teens were living their lives, or rather, wasting them, bothered me. Yes, they were bonding, and perhaps they were acting as many teens do (I couldn't relate myself, but maybe that's true for others), but it felt so wasteful. And the adult in me, though only a decade or so removed from high school, did think that the smoking, drinking, etc., was inappropriate. That being said, I'm well aware that none of this material would shock the majority of today's teens, let alone influence their behavior.

After finishing the book and ruminating on the plot, I think it may have been intentional on John Green's part to make the Before section aimless - it made the second half and the teens' search for meaning that much more powerful. I think Pudge's statement at the end of the book, in his final paper, really sums up the first and second parts of the book:

"When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are...They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."







**Spoiler Alert - quit reading here if you don't want vague references to what happens in this story!**


The first half of the story, our main characters live like they're invincible, but in the end they get a taste of their own mortality. And for any teenager who has dealt with the loss of one of their friends or acquaintances, this book could potentially help them. So despite my personal feelings about this book, I think Alaska deserves to have a place in any teen's library.

Book Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks   *****

by E. Lockhart


From Goodreads:
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Laundau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.

From Me:
I loved this book! It was clever and fun, and the characters, though few could relate to their wealth and boarding school experiences, were relatable. Most of the story centered around the awkwardness of growing up, young love, and wanting to fit in, allowing the reader to say "this story is about a girl [or boy] like me."

I think Frankie, despite her poor choices in boyfriends, is someone to look up to. She saw everyone following the status quo and she didn't like it, so she did something about it. I can see Frankie breaking all kinds of glass ceilings in her future.

I also loved the descriptions of the panopticon and the neglected positives. I love words and word play so I really enjoyed the neglected positive sections; I'd never heard of the panopticon idea, but it makes complete sense and feels very 1984/Big Brother. But my favorite part is how Frankie takes on the all-male secret society, and with it, she takes on old conventions and perceived gender roles. Frankie rocks!