Thrillers! Exciting books for upper elementary, middle school, and high school.

Shusterman, Neal (2018)  Thunderhead.  New York:  Simon and Schuster

Opening Lines:  “Peach velvet with embroidered baby-blue trim.  Honorable Scythe Brahms loved his robe.  True the velvet became uncomfortably hot in the summer months, but it was something he had grown accustomed to in his sixty-three years as a scythe.”

The story begun in Scythe continues in this long-awaited sequel which has, if anything, more twists and turns than the original.  The characters from Scythe are back.  Citra (Alias Scythe Anastacia) is working with Scythe Curie to attack the flaws of the scythe system from within.  Rowan has become Scythe Lucifer, donning an illegal black robe and gleaning scythes who are abusing their powers – gleaning them in such a way that they cannot be restored.  And the Thunderhead, the artificial intelligence that serves humanity, has taken a young man named Greyson and used him first to save Scythe Curie and Scythe Anastacia from an attempted assassination.  The Thunderhead then  designated Greyson as Unsavory, eventually taking him off the grid. Giving him a new identity, and  using him as an agent, though when his human handler is gleaned, Greyson must decide on his own what is the right thing to do.  The entire book comes to an amazing climax on an artificial island where the Scythes are meeting and where the villain shows his hand.

            This book is breathtakingly thrilling, partly because we are so connected to the characters and partly because of the theme that runs through the entire books (which my student Molly first identified for me) that the protagonists tend to be caught between two mentors and their ideals,  Thunderhead plays with that idea a bit, as Rowan and Greyson are deprived of their mentors and Citra is increasingly learning to think without her mentor’s advice.

            There is nothing in this book that would offend any reasonable person.  Strong middle school readers could certainly read it, but it is probably best for high school students.

            Look, this is a phenomenally good YA book.  If you only buy one YA book this year, this should probably be it.  

Scieszka, Jon, Ed. (2011) Guys Read: Thriller.  New York:  HarperCollins.

Opening Lines  (As this is a collection of short stories, I will give you a collection of opening lines):

“The psychics are having a huge argument,” said Paul’s dad.

“Or what if there was a wish machine on your wall?” Ray said, snatching the bag of generic-brand chips off Benny’s mattress and pushing a grubby hand inside.

There was just one question I had to ask myself.  How could I have ended up dangling from a flagpole, twelve stories above a street in North London, with an armed maniac walking toward me, a rabid dog snapping at my fingertips, and the world’s worst detective clinging to my ankles?

The ghost boy is trying to talk to me.

When you show up at your best friend’s house to walk to school in the morning, the last thing you expect to hear is “Jeremy is missing.”

This entry in the Guys Read series lives up to the high quality of other books in the series.  Here you get a wide variety of different stories that will grab your readers’ attentions.  In M.T. Anderson’s “The Old, Dead  Nuisance”, young Paul has to follow his dad around while his dad produces a reality show about haunted houses. Paul doesn’t believe all the malarkey until one night he meets and old ghost with a secret. In Anthony Horowitz’s “The Double Eagle,” a kid has to stop his inept older brother from being framed for a crime.  And Patrick Carman’s “Ghost Glasses” tells what happens when a kid orders some novelty glasses from the back of an old comic book and finds out they actually work.  And that is only three of the stories.  There are ten of them and not a snoozer in the bunch.

This book would be ideal for fourth grade and up.  Though the series is called Guys Read, there is no reason why girls could not enjoy it as well, though there are precious few girl characters.  I found nothing here that I could imagine anyone objecting to.  This would be great for your classroom library. 

Shusterman, Neal (1997) The Dark Side of Nowhere  New York:  Simon and Schuster.

Opening Lines:  “Ethan died of a burst appendix.  That’s what we were told, and we had no reason to doubt it. “

            Equal parts thriller, science fiction, and horror, this novel form Neal Shusterman introduces us to Jason, a normal kid in a normal sleepy little town.  When a new girl moves to his school and they begin talking, he gradually begins to discover that everything he has been brought up believing may be false.  The inhabitants of the old site of the town maybe didn’t die of a mysterious plague.  There are people hiw age who don’t need special shots every month to keep from getting the plague.  And maybe his parents aren’t the happy couple they seem to be, but possibly something far more sinister and perhaps not from this world. 

            This story suits middle school and high school well as it seems to fit with a time in life when young readers are beginning to question a lot of what they have been taught and eventually have to decide whether they are going to stand up for what they understand to be right.  There is nothing in this book that would cause a reasonable person to challenge it.  That said, there may not be enough here thematically for this to work well as a book to be studied in class.  But as an addition to one’s classroom library, it would be a fine choice. 

Shusterman, Neal (2005) Red Rider’s Hood.  New York:  Dutton.

Opening Lines:  “It’s a jungle out there.  Buildings grow all around you out of the cracking pavement, blocking out the day light, making you forget the sun is out there at all.  Those buildings can’t block out the moonlight, though.  Nothing can block that out.  Trust me, I know.“

This is the first of Shusterman’s dark fusion series that I read and I have to admit, as soon as I figured out that he was trying to create a serious suspense story out of a folk tale, I thought the idea what pretty lame.  But what might seem like a writing exercise turns out to be a pretty exciting story. 

            

So in an this adaptation of the Red Riding Hood Story, Red Rider is a sixteen year old guy with a red Mustang that is the fastest car in his neighborhood.  When some neighborhood kids steal his car and some money he was bringing his grandmother, and is hit on the head, knocking him out, Red stumbles into a much larger conflict.  It turns out that the local gang is a front for a growing nest of werewolves and Red’s Grandma may hold the key to fighting them.  When Red infiltrates the gang, he needs to decide whether he wants to fight to defeat the Wolves, or join them. 

            

This book might be an interesting way for students to study story structure, by contrasting the elements of the original folk tale with what Shusterman does with it.  Other than the horror aspect of the book, there isn’t much here that would cause it to be challenged, so it would be fine for your classroom library or the school library as well.

Stiefvater, Maggie (2016)  The Raven King.  New York:  Scholastic. 

Opening Lines:  “Richard Gansey III had forgotten how many times he had been told he was destined for greatness.”

Every now and then I really like to start a series on the third or fourth books, just to see how well the writer welcomes me in, despite the fact that I do not know the characters and the situation.  I did this with Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle.  The Raven King is the fourth book in the series and it did a credible job of catching me up to the plot. 

Gansey and his friends Ronan, Adam, and Noah all attend an expensive private school.  Gansey has been searching for years for a place where the ley lines of the world’s magnetic field converge.  Blue has grown up in a family full of small time psychics.  When she was in an abandoned church, she heard Gansey’s voice speak to her out of thin air.  Now the friends are getting close to discovering the place where the line between the worlds is thin.  They are also close to discovering the truth about murder, a ghost, family, friendship, obsession, physical abuse, fraud, and evil. 

This is a gripping story.  Like any really good novel, we also learn a lot about the characters, ourselves, and humanity. 

This book is best for high school.  It has some vulgar language in it.  But it would be a good book for your classroom library.  And a good choice for those readers who like realistic fantasy.  

Books to make students chuckle, laugh, or guffaw.

Renner, Benjamin (2017) The Big Bad Fox  New York: First Second.

            Opening lines:  Well, it is a graphic novel, and has more images than words, so here are the opening panels (which are not framed panels but more sort of round blobs of color).  Panel 1, a woods with tall trees and undergrowth and a hold in the side of a slight hill.  Panel 2:  A fox’s head emerges from the burrow.  His eyelids are half open.  He is either sleepy or shifty.  Panel 3, he stretches and says “Gnnn…”  Panel 4 his body slumps and he breathes heavily, as if stretching has worn him out. 

            The fox’s life is hard enough to start with.  His attempts to steal a chicken or two for dinner are continually foiled by the farm’s guard dog or the chickens themselves, who have started taking self-defense classes.  Then the huge wolf in the woods, who the fox wants to be like, threatens and bullies him into stealing some eggs and raising the chicks so they can have chickens to eat.  When the little chicks imprint upon the fox, deciding that he is their mom, the fox’s life becomes exponentially more complicated.  Equal parts slapstick, comedy of errors, cringe humor and  touching story, this book is silly enough to make third graders laugh out loud, and serious enough to give middle school students something to think about.  Highly suitable fr your classroom library, this book could also become part of a 5^th or 6^th grade’s language arts curriculum.  It is a good , funny story with some interesting themes. 

Scieszka, Jon, Ed. (2010) Guys Read:  Funny Business. New York:  HarperCollins

Opening Lines:  (Since these are short stories, I’ll treat you to a series of opeing lines form different stories)

            --Ernest was a nerd, but it was fourth grade: we are all nerds.

            --Between peeling off his nightshirt and pulling on his school uniform, Will examined himself from head to hairiline.

            --I have four brothers.  That’s five boys altogether all living in a small house, which is a recipe for major property damage at the very least.

            --Dwight Howtzler is an idiot.

--One night in the fall of fifth grade, my dad finally got fed up with me and decided it was time to make me a man.

--My younger brother, Patrick, is a normal, functioning adult.

--My gramps, Papa Red, has been living with us for a year now and is straight-up nuts.

--This all started because I wouldn’t take out the trash.

When I was looking up opening lines for the above section, I started rereading the opening page of one of these stories and ended up rereading the whole thing.  Because although this collection is meant to group together funny stories, they are also stories that are interesting, gripping, well0-written, sometimes exhilarating, and almost always delightful.  Adam Rex’s story “Will” is about a kid going to a school for superheroes even though he doesn’t appear to have any special talents or powers, and of course, he is the one who must face the inevitable peril.   Kate DiCmillo and Jon Sciszka’s “Your Question for Author Here” gives us the letters of a kid who is forced to write to an author for an assignment, and the clever, sarcastic, manipulative, and ultimately encouraging responses from that author.  Paul Fieg’s “My Parents Gave my Bedroom to a Biker” is self-explanatory, but no less funny for it.  I laughed out loud at several points in reading this book, but found myself grinning almost constantly. 

Good-humored readers from fourth grade and up will enjoy this, girls as well as boys.  I didn’t notice anything in here likely to draw any challenges from parents.  It would probably work best as a classroom library sort of book.  There are themes here to be sure, but books whose main focus is humor do not tend to help up well to classroom study.  Buy this one. 

Yorinks, Arthur; Lamb, Braden; Paroline, Shelli (2017) Making Scents.  New York: First Second.

            Opening Lines:  The first panel shows a boy’s hand writing on notebook paper the words, “First I was born…”  The inset panel shows a man carrying a baby into the woods.  On the next page, in four panels, the man leaves the child in a hollow in the base of a tree, then walks away.

            Mickey’s mom and dad raise bloodhounds and provide them to police and other people who need to hunt for someone or something.  Mickey is raised alongside their dogs, who thinks of as brothers and sisters, and is taught to use his nose much as the bloodhounds do.  When he is old enough for school, he is at first ridiculed for his tendency to go around on all fours and use his nose to find things.  His parents advocate for him and soon he is showing off his talents in an all-school assembly.  Even as he is gaining the respect of his peers, however, they are killed in a car crash, and soon Mickey is sent away from his dog brothers and sisters to his dog-hating aunt and uncle who live in the city.  They hope to teach him to behave as an ordinary child. 

            This graphic novel is illustrated in a kind of 1950s style that reminds me of Margaret Bloy Graham’s illustrations of picture books like Harry, The Dirty Dog, or P.D. Eastham’s illustrations of Are You My Mother? and the like..  Though some of the story is serious, Mickey’s dog habits in the context of a very conventional school are funny and should cause second and third grad readers and up to find humor in them.  This is a fun and sometimes silly book that is unlikely to cause any challenges.  Good for your classroom library and a special hit with kids who are dog lovers. 

Lawrence, Mike (2017) Star Scouts  New York:  First Second.

Opening Lines: 

The first panel is a two-page spread of a spaceship in orbit of a planet.  A narration box says “QDS Pumpernickel,  Deli class destroyer.  Low Zirdon orbit.”  One inset panel shows a close up of the ship with a single speech balloon coming from what looks to be the bridge. “Mabel!  You’re going to be late!”  The other inset panel is a still closer view.  Two speech balloons.  The first asks, “Have you finished your scout homework yet?”  The second responds, “Almost done!  Be there in a minute!”

            In this colorfully rendered graphic novels, Mabel is a space alien who accidentally teleports Avani, an earth girl who is having a hard time in a new school, up to her spaceship (Mabel was trying for a newt, but accidentally nudged the controls).  They become friends, and then Mabel asks Avani if she wants to join her Star Scouts Troop.  The next thing Avani knows, she and the other scouts are embroiled in a competition to figure out which troop is the best at a variety of space-based events.   What follows resembles a Disney kids comedy with hijinks and goofiness galore, and, of course, in the end, the plucky youngsters show they can compete with the rest of them through a combination of teamwork and good sportsmanship. 

This one is best for younger elementary readers, maybe second through fourth or fifth.  It would be a good one for a classroom library.  Nothing offensive here. 

Renner, Benjamin (2017) The Big Bad Fox  New York: First Second.

            Opening lines:  Well, it is a graphic noel, and has more images than words, so here are the opening panels (which are not framed panels but more sort of round blobs of color).  Panel 1, a woods with tall trees and undergrowth and a hold in the side of a slight hill.  Panel 2:  A fox’s head emerges from the burrow.  His eyelids are half open.  He is either sleepy or shifty.  Panel 3, he stretches and says “Gnnn…”  Panel 4 his body slumps and he breathes heavily, as if stretching has worn him out. 

            The fox’s life is hard enough to start with.  His attempts to steal a chicken or two for dinner are continually foiled by the farm’s guard dog or the chickens themselves, who have started taking self-defense classes.  Then the huge wolf in the woods, who the fox wants to be like, threatens and bullies him into stealing some eggs and raising the chicks so they can have chickens to eat.  When the little chicks imprint upon the fox, deciding that he is their mom, the fox’s life becomes exponentially more complicated.  Equal parts slapstick, comedy of errors, cringe humor and  touching story, this book is silly enough to make third graders laugh out loud, and serious enough to give middle school students something to think about.  Highly suitable fr your classroom library, this book could also become part of a 5^th or 6^th grade’s language arts curriculum.  It is a good , funny story with some interesting themes. 

Scieszka, Jon, Ed. (2010) Guys Read:  Funny Business. New York:  HarperCollins

Opening Lines:  (Since these are short stories, I’ll treat you to a series of opeing lines form different stories)

            --Ernest was a nerd, but it was fourth grade: we are all nerds.

            --Between peeling off his nightshirt and pulling on his school uniform, Will examined himself from head to hairiline.

            --I have four brothers.  That’s five boys altogether all living in a small house, which is a recipe for major property damage at the very least.

            --Dwight Howtzler is an idiot.

--One night in the fall of fifth grade, my dad finally got fed up with me and decided it was time to make me a man.

--My younger brother, Patrick, is a normal, functioning adult.

--My gramps, Papa Red, has been living with us for a year now and is straight-up nuts.

--This all started because I wouldn’t take out the trash.

When I was looking up opening lines for the above section, I started rereading the opening page of one of these stories and ended up rereading the whole thing.  Because although this collection is meant to group together funny stories, they are also stories that are interesting, gripping, well0-written, sometimes exhilarating, and almost always delightful.  Adam Rex’s story “Will” is about a kid going to a school for superheroes even though he doesn’t appear to have any special talents or powers, and of course, he is the one who must face the inevitable peril.   Kate DiCmillo and Jon Sciszka’s “Your Question for Author Here” gives us the letters of a kid who is forced to write to an author for an assignment, and the clever, sarcastic, manipulative, and ultimately encouraging responses from that author.  Paul Fieg’s “My Parents Gave my Bedroom to a Biker” is self-explanatory, but no less funny for it.  I laughed out loud at several points in reading this book, but found myself grinning almost constantly. 

Good-humored readers from fourth grade and up will enjoy this, girls as well as boys.  I didn’t notice anything in here likely to draw any challenges from parents.  It would probably work best as a classroom library sort of book.  There are themes here to be sure, but books whose main focus is humor do not tend to help up well to classroom study.  Buy this one. 

Yorinks, Arthur; Lamb, Braden; Paroline, Shelli (2017) Making Scents.  New York: First Second.

            Opening Lines:  The first panel shows a boy’s hand writing on notebook paper the words, “First I was born…”  The inset panel shows a man carrying a baby into the woods.  On the next page, in four panels, the man leaves the child in a hollow in the base of a tree, then walks away.

            Mickey’s mom and dad raise bloodhounds and provide them to police and other people who need to hunt for someone or something.  Mickey is raised alongside their dogs, who thinks of as brothers and sisters, and is taught to use his nose much as the bloodhounds do.  When he is old enough for school, he is at first ridiculed for his tendency to go around on all fours and use his nose to find things.  His parents advocate for him and soon he is showing off his talents in an all-school assembly.  Even as he is gaining the respect of his peers, however, they are killed in a car crash, and soon Mickey is sent away from his dog brothers and sisters to his dog-hating aunt and uncle who live in the city.  They hope to teach him to behave as an ordinary child. 

            This graphic novel is illustrated in a kind of 1950s style that reminds me of Margaret Bloy Graham’s illustrations of picture books like Harry, The Dirty Dog, or P.D. Eastham’s illustrations of Are You My Mother? and the like..  Though some of the story is serious, Mickey’s dog habits in the context of a very conventional school are funny and should cause second and third grad readers and up to find humor in them.  This is a fun and sometimes silly book that is unlikely to cause any challenges.  Good for your classroom library and a special hit with kids who are dog lovers. 

Lawrence, Mike (2017) Star Scouts  New York:  First Second.

Opening Lines: 

The first panel is a two-page spread of a spaceship in orbit of a planet.  A narration box says “QDS Pumpernickel,  Deli class destroyer.  Low Zirdon orbit.”  One inset panel shows a close up of the ship with a single speech balloon coming from what looks to be the bridge. “Mabel!  You’re going to be late!”  The other inset panel is a still closer view.  Two speech balloons.  The first asks, “Have you finished your scout homework yet?”  The second responds, “Almost done!  Be there in a minute!”

            In this colorfully rendered graphic novels, Mabel is a space alien who accidentally teleports Avani, an earth girl who is having a hard time in a new school, up to her spaceship (Mabel was trying for a newt, but accidentally nudged the controls).  They become friends, and then Mabel asks Avani if she wants to join her Star Scouts Troop.  The next thing Avani knows, she and the other scouts are embroiled in a competition to figure out which troop is the best at a variety of space-based events.   What follows resembles a Disney kids comedy with hijinks and goofiness galore, and, of course, in the end, the plucky youngsters show they can compete with the rest of them through a combination of teamwork and good sportsmanship. 

This one is best for younger elementary readers, maybe second through fourth or fifth.  It would be a good one for a classroom library.  Nothing offensive here. 

Riordan, Rick (2015)  Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer  Los Angeles:  Disney Hyperion.

Opening Lines:  “Yeah, I know.  You guys are going to read about how I died in agony, and you’re going to be like, ‘Wow!  That sounds cool, Magnus.  Can I die in agony too?’

            No.  Just no.”

            This is the first book in Rick Riordan’s Norse mythology series.  And he somehow manages to write about the Norse gods in a way that is faithful to the original source material (Come on, am I the only one who has read Snorri Sturluson’s Edda ) bu is also funny most of the time.  The main character, Magnus, is living on the streets of Boston when the book opens.  Though he is a street kid, he has a pretty good sense of humor.  But when he gets attacked by a fire demon and finds out that two of his street friends are actually and elf and a dwarf and then gets killed and wakes up in a luxury hotel that is Valhalla, he does so with irreverent humor.  Don’t get me wrong, he is a likable character and as the story goes on, he reveals himself to be loyal, compassionate, strong of heart, and occasionally funny.  There were parts in this book where I laughed out loud.  The context between Blitz and the master forger is one example. 

            While Magnus is the main character, a secondary character named Samirah al-Abbas is a high school student and a Valkyrie (one of Odin’s Choosers of the Dead).  The dynamic is similar to the Percy Jackson books.  Like Annabeth, she is not on every page, but when she is, she is amazing and dynamic and fun to read about.  This may be enough to draw female fans of Annabeth into the series as well. 

            I did not notice anything in this book that would cause anyone to challenges it (other than the fact that it is fantasy literature.) It is perhaps best for fifth grade and up (at 497 pages, it is a big book, which could be rather daunting to less-accomplished readers.)  This book is funny and exciting.  Visit your independent bookstore and buy it. 

Excellent Adventure-based Graphic Novels: Delilah Dirk, The Nameless City, Pandemonium, and Spill Zone

Cliff, Tony (2016) Delilah Dirk and the King's Shilling.  New York:  First Second.



First Lines:  "My name is Erdemoglu Selim.  I was once a lieutenant in the Turkish Janissary Army.  I abandoned that life, however, for this one.  The sort of life where I had been tasked with creating a distraction."

This is the second book in a delightful series.  In this one, Delilah (adventurer, skilled swordswoman, righter-of-wrongs) discovers a British officer spying for the French and must go to London to expose him.  While there she returns to her childhood home and, as Alexandra Nichols, must deal with her mother who wants her to resume her identity as an English gentlewoman.  There are themes of identity and expectation, but what will grab the attention of your readers is the rollicking adventure storyline and the clear and exciting way that Tony Cliff shows fight sequences and depicts intrigue so that the reader is rarely confused.

This could be ideal for fourth-graders and up.  There is almost nothing that is offensive, except a reference on page 64, where a character identifies someone who is acting foolish with a term normally reserved for donkeys and posteriors.  This book would be an excellent addition to your classroom library.




Hicks, Faith Erin(2016) The Nameless City  New York:  First Second



Opening lines:  "...on the 34th day of our journey down the River of Lives, we came to the great City, Daidu.  But something was amiss, for the City was not called Daidu by those we spoke to at the gates."

Kaidu is the son of Adren, the general of the conquering armies that have taken control of the Nameless City.  In the City he meets a street urchin named Rat.  She shows him how to run across the rooftops.  As a city person, she hates the conquering Dao armies.  Kaidu has seen the scorn the soldiers have for the people of the city.  Kaidu and Rat develop an unlikely friendship and together help to convince the various leaders of the city to meet for peace talks.

That summary doesn't do justice to what is an amazing experience.  Hicks has built a fascinating world and the illustrations invite us into that world.  The details are magnificent, the characters interesting, and the story believable. I can imagine walking in her city.

There is some violence in this story, but nothing excessive.  This would be excellent as a classroom library book for about fourth grade and older.  It might also be worth undertaking as a language arts text.  Excellent stuff.





Hicks, Faith Erin (2017) The Nameless City:  The Stone Heart.  New York:  First Second.



Opening Lines:  "On our eighth day in the Nameless City, my travelling companion happened upon some of his people, far from their homelands.  They had travelled miles to buy and sell in the City.  It was a common story, repeated many we spoke to.  The Nameless City is different from many cities we passed through in our journey down the River of Life.  The City does not have a single population.  Rather it is filled with many different people from many different nations.  I had to ask:  Who does the city belong to?  Who are its rightful people?"

The story of the Nameless City continues in this second volume.  We learn that Rat's parents were killed by the Dao, Kaidu's people.  We also learn that Kaidu's dad, the general, is working on a peace plan in which the city would be governed by a city council, with every tribe having a seat, to break the cycle of invasion and subjugation.  As the peace plan gets closer though, it becomes clear that the enemies of peace -- those who wish to hold on to power, are willing to go to great lengths to ensure that the peace plan is never realized -- and those great lengths will change everything for Rat and Kaidu and present them with their greatest challenge ever.  This is a wonderful story of sudden twists and turns punctuated by moments of great beauty.

You need to read this, seriously.  It is one of the finest graphic novels stories I have read in a long time.  Good for fourth or fifth grade and older.  Great for your classroom library.  Especially good for English or History classes.  (Obviously this is a work of fiction -- but it raises some interesting questions of tribal conflict and democratic governments -- when it isn't moving at breakneck speed toward the next plot twist.)  I loved this book.





Wooding, Chris; Diaz, Cassandra (2012)  Pandemonium.  New York: Scholastic.


Opening Lines:  "Let's play skullball!  And it's a great catch by Seifer Tombchewer, captain of the home team!"

Okay, I'll admit, when I saw the cover and read the first couple of lines, I figured this was going to be another run-of-the -mill manga-style vampire story.  Turns out, every assumption I made was wrong.  The story begins when Siefer (pictured on the cover), son of the chief of a little town in the middle of nowhere is kidnapped and taken to the great city.  It turns out his is a dead ringer for the prince of the realm, who is missing.  Siefer's job is to act as a decoy and rule in his stead until the Prince is found and the culprits captured.  But Siefer knows nothing of how to govern, and nothing of magic, which the prince is known for.  throw in the fact that the Prince is engaged to be married and his fiancee is coming for a vist soon, and add a girl is age who comes to the castle to plead her case and ends up teaching him how to do magic and you have a story that is not only engaging, but actually quite funny at times.

This is the first book in a series, and like the first Harry Potter book, there is not a ton here in terms of teachable themes, but it is a book that your students will enjoy.  I am going to guess middle school and up with this one, mostly because the romantic intrigues might fly over the heads of younger kids.  Well worth getting a hold of.




Westerfeld, Scott; Puvilland, Alex (2017)  Spill Zone.  New York:  First Second



Opening Lines:  "Whenever I go in planning to shoot, I always come out with more pictures of the playground.  A hundred years ago, Victorians thought that cameras captured glimpses of the spirit world.  They thought the fugitive wisps of light in their photos meant something.  But frankly, they just had shitty cameras back then.  It doesn't matter what I shoot with, digital, infrared, even old school chemical film, nothing ever shows up on the swing.  People think there is something hidden in the Spill, fairies in those wisps of light.  They're wrong.  The spill zone shows everything.  My guess is Hell does too. "

Addison lives with her little sister, Lexi ever since the Spill that claimed her parents' lives.  No one quite knows what the Spill was -- nanotech gone bad, aliens, extra-dimensional invaders, all they know is that within the Spill site, things get really weird.  Addie makes her living sneaking into the Spill Zone and taking pictures of the weird and frightening creatures there.  When a customer offers her a fortune -- enough to get her and Lexi away from the Spill Zone forever -- to retrieve an artifact from a hospital within the Zone, Addie agrees.  But the law keeps getting closer to figuring out that she is the one sneaking in there, and the artifact has some disturbing properties on its own.  And of course, there are the creatures within the Zone.  For Addie to get in and out one more time will not be easy.

Westerfeld and Puvilland have crafted a convincing and frightening world and a gripping and entertaining story. There isn't much thematically here for a literature class, but it would be a good addition to a high school classroom library.   Lexi has a doll who has been animated by the Spill that is rather disconcerting, and the rest of the story is also frightening from time to time.  There is also some sparing use of vulgar words, but there is nothing here any worse than a typical Steven King novel.

It was a good story.  I am looking forward to the sequel.  If you like your adventure stories with a touch of horror, you should pick this one up.

Five Excellent Books that Can Help you Get Students Excited about Science.

Holm, Jennifer L. (2014) The Fourteenth Goldfish  New York:  Yearling.

Opening Lines:  “When I was in preschool, I had a teacher named Starlily.  She wore rainbow tie-died dresses and was always bringing in cookies that were made with granola and flax and had no taste.”

Okay, so the story is maybe a bit far-fetched.  Ellie is a sixth-grader who gets a call to pick up her grandfather from the police.  She knows her grandfather is a scientist/genetic inventor who experiments with jellyfish.  She eventually finds out that he has invented a genetic formula that has regressed his body to that of a sixth grader.  He has retained his crankiness, old man fashion sense, and passion for science.  At first Ellie finds him annoying and embarrassing, but eventually he ignites an interest in science in her, which eventually grows to a passion, and she helps him to consider some of the ethical implications of his research.  Throw in a boy classmate who joins them, mostly to spend time with Ellie, which leads to a budding first romance and you have got a story that will grab middle grade students and may even get them to love science (real science – which doesn’t necessarily translate to what we teach in school I am afraid.) 

Nothing objectionable here that I noticed.  Should be great for fourth through seventh grades or so.  

Heiligman, Deborah (2009) Charles and Emma:  The Darwin’s Leap of Faith. New York:  Henry Holt and Company

Opening Lines:  “In the summer of 1838, in his rented rooms on Great Marlborough Street, London, Charles Darwin drew a line down the middle of a piece of scrap paper.  He had been back in England for almost two years, after a monumental voyage around the world.  He was in his late twenties.  It was time to decide.  Across the top of the left-hand side he wrote Marry.  On the right he wrote Not Marry.  And in the middle: This is the question.”

            In the world we live in, Charles Darwin is the father of evolutionary theory which some people hold equal to atheism.  In the world and time that Charles Darwin lived in, however, things were not so clear cut.  Like everyone else in his time, Darwin was raised attending church and living in a society rooted in Christian ethics and understandings.  When he began to think about evolution, he questioned and doubted the Christian understanding of how the world began and how God maintains it.  However, this belief system was not easily dismissed by Darwin.  One reason he struggled with belief in God his whole life and never fully settled the question was his wife Mary. 

            Yet this is not a book with an axe to grind.  It is a carefully researched and well- written book about a remarkably strong marriage and the evolving thought of a very thoughtful couple. I did not know that Darwin studied theology at University and intended to become a country parson before his interest in science took over.   In 1836, for example, Darwin published a letter in a South African newspaper arguing for increased funding for missionaries.  Two years later he notes in his journal that while he remains a strong believer, he is beginning to question the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.  Before he married Emma, Darwin asked his father if he should discuss his doubts with his fiancé.  Darwin’s father counselled him against such an action.  Darwin talked to her about it anyway.  When Emma’ sister Fanny died, Emma became more devout.  As they grew older together, the death of several of their children and Charles’s own illness continued to drive Emma deeper into belief and caused Charles to question more deeply – but until his death, he continually was searching for ways that he could share the depth of Emma’s belief. 

            Heiligman doesn’t slouch in describing the development of Charles’s understanding of the the way the animals of the world interact and change over time.  And in the end, the book does not try to argue either side of this debate, but perhaps to argue that the debate itself is an unfair reading of what Darwin himself was thinking.  It may help students who struggle with this question themselves to understand that it is not always necessary to have a clear answer to all such mysteries.

            This book is ideal for high school students.  There is nothing objectionable here, though teachers should recognize that this is a sensitive issue for some parents.  

Koch, Falynn (2017) Science Comics: Bats: Learning to Fly.  New York:  First Second.

Opening Lines:  Hoo!/ Ugh./ I hate to admit it… but I think I’m lost.  Little brown bat.  Myotis lucifugus./ I’m glad y’all could make it out for this special nighttime hike.  The national park only does this a few times each year.

            This graphic novel is one of the latest in a series.  Some of the earlier books in the series seemed to be struggling to figure out how the graphic novel format could be effectively utilized to explain science.  With this book, the series seems to have found its fee.  There is a single narrative through-line about a little brown bat and a teenaged girl who initially is not so interested in what the ranger has to day, but when the bat gets close to the group and one of the panicked humans swats it, the girl decides to help the bat in any way she can.

But woven through the narrative is plenty of explanation and exposition about nearly every aspect of a bat’s life.  There is plenty here to interest students from third grade up.  This is an excellent book for your classroom library.  It would work as an in-class text as well, though I am not aware of any elementary curriculum that divest that deeply into the biology of a single creature.  

Loux, Matthew (2017) The Time Museum  New York: First Second.

Opening Lines:  Image of time travelers working on building a machine outside of tier time travelling vessel/ Image of a triceratops herd stampeding.  Time traveler:  I wonder if they know somehow…/ Man in sunglasses and trenchcoat:  Unless you wish to remain and ask, I suggest you finish your work!

            Delia is a science nerd.  Her thorough report on the life cycle of the dung beetle puts her class to sleep, including the teacher.  When he best friend deserts her for a cooler friend at the beginning of the summer and she finds out she and her family are going to visit her eccentric uncle, she takes it in stride.  When it turns out that her uncle s the curator of the Earth Time Museum, that he is himself a time traveler form the future, and that he is offering her a chance to do a summer internship with the museum, she is overjoyed.  When she finds out that she will have to compete with other science students of the position, and that most of them are from the future and seem to know much more than she does, she is close to despairing.  The contests begin and she soon finds herself making decisions that may save the museum or doom it.

            This isn’t hard science and, in fact, the reader will learn little about science at all from this graphic novel, but a consistent theme throughout the book is that scientific thinking, passion for science,  and problem-solving ability is more important than memorized facts, a concept that might be very encouraging to some young science students.

            There is nothing in this graphic novel that reasonable parents would find objectionable.  It would be best for fourth grade and up. It is a lot of fun.

Benjamin, Ali (2015)  The Thing about Jellyfish:  New York:  Little Brown.

            Opening lines: “A jellyfish, if you watch it long enough, begins to look like a heart beating.  It doesn’t matter what kind:  The Blood-red Atolla with its flashing siren lights, the frilly flower hat variety, or the near transparent moon jelly, Aurelia aurita.  It’s their pulse, the way they contract swiftly, then release.  Like a ghost heart—a heart you can see right through, right into some other world where everything you ever lost has gone to hide.”

            Suzy Swanson’s friend Franny Jackson drowned a few months ago.  Suzy is trying to piece her life together.  Jellyfish may hold the key she thinks.  That is really all I can tell you.  You are just going to have to read it. 

            This book is a kind of exploration of how a kid looks and the world and science.  It is also kind of a mystery story … and kind of a treatise on friendship … and kind of a moving narrative about grief. It is a nerd story in the best sense of the term.  It is about a kid who is different, persistent, and who cares about things that really matter.

This is a really good one.  You should read it.  I t is about grief and so I suppose a parent might object to it on the grounds that it is morbid – but I have not heard of any such objections.  It would be best for fifth grade and up  Check it out. 

Top Five Books of 2017

2017 was a great year for some really exciting books, but because of a back injury toward the end of the year, I have a huge pile of books I have read but have not been able to review yet.  I will be getting to those in the next couple of weeks.  For now, though, here are the top five books I reviewed in 2017:  (Remember these are books I read in 2017 --but not all were published in that year.)

1.
Anderson, M.T.,Offerman, Andrea (2017) Yvain:  The Knight of the Lion.  Somerville, MA: Candlewick.



For English teachers, this is an excellent graphic novel to introduce anything that touches on King Arthur.  Though Arthur only makes a cameo or two in the book, it captures the excitement of a knight with a pet lion fighting against evil magic, a dragon, and enemies -- but also concerns itself with the relationship between Sir Yvain and the queen whose husband he killed in battle.  It is a relationship with intense hate and, eventually, deep love as well.  Ideal for late middle school and high school.




2.
Pratchett, Terry (2015)  The Shepherd's Crown  New York: Harper.



Terry Pratchett's fantasy series are not exactly Young Adult fiction.  They are written for an open audience that might include everyone from middle school through adulthood.  My friend Kris introduced me to the Tiffany Aching series and I continue to love them.

Tiffany Aching serves two villages as their wise woman/witch, even though she herself is very young.  Though she faces remarkable challenges, she alwasy seems to come out on top, partly because she has been adopted by a group of utterly unpredictable and savagely loyal allies, the Wee Free men -- eight inch tall, hard-drinking, tough-as-nails-and-about-as-bright celtic creatures.  The story is great, the writing is exceptional, and these are excellent books.

Some parents might objcet to the existnce of witches in this book -- but the witches Pratchett depicts are more on the order of wise woment in the village than they are the horrid, evil,toad-sacrificing women from other corners of the children's ltierature world.  Worth reading.



3.
Shusterman, Neal (2016) Scythe  New York:  Simon and Schuster.



This is my favorite book that I read this year.  Schusterman is excellent at world-building and has created a utopian future where a benign computer called the Thunderhead protects humans and regenerates them through healing nanites such that they need never die.  Unfortuantly, since the planet cannot sustain a growing population, the Thunderhead creates an independent group of humans, the Scythes, to randomly glean people and keep the population under control.  When a group of scythes starts flaunting the rules and gleaning people for the joy of killing them and watching them panic, two teenaged apprentice sythes find themselves on opposite sides of escalating conflict.  Masterfully written and utterly gripping,-- this is the sort of book that you (and your students) can't wait to loan out.  Upper middle school and high school.  Nothing here any reasonable person would object to.  Good stuff.



4.
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series



I reread it this year.  Harry and his friends still completely captivate me and have me on the edge of my seat.  This is a world worth revisiting.

For first time readers, it is worth noting that while the first couple of books are ideal for a forth or fifth grade audience, later books become much more dark, scary, and sometime violent.  In our family, we read them all out loud to our kids to slow things down. I recomment this approach.




Busby, Cylin; Busby, John (2008) The Year we Disappeared  New York:  Bloomsbury.




This also was not written specifically as a YA book, but it is an amazing true story that high school students would find utterly captivating.  John Busby, a police officer in a Massachusetts seaside town, was driving to work one night when another car pulled alongside him and fired a shotgun through his window, blowing off his lower jaw.  The book tells the story of how he evaded the other car, got help, eventually recovered, determined who had shot at him and that they were still after him, and decided to take his family into hiding. 

High school students would love this book.  It will grab and hold their attention throughout.  Obviously it is violent and sometiems scary -- but ultimately the message of Busvy's recovery is that he has to let go of hate.