Gentle Reads Summer 2008

(These are books that Maria Levetzow recommends for younger teens, which generally have no swearing, sex, drug use, or graphic violence. If these don’t fit your definition of a “gentle read”, please contact us and we’ll help you find other titles.)

Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
YA FIC ABDE
For a Christian, wearing a cross all the time isn’t a big deal. For a Muslim in the post 9/11 world, making a point of your religion is, at best, problematic. But Amal has decided that it’s time to wear a veil, a hijab, full-time, regardless of what the snooty people at her exclusive private school think about it.

Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham
YA FIC BING
Jane thought it was just another day at the beach with her mom and brother. Until she went swimming, and her whole life changed in an instant. Now she has the rest of the summer to mourn her lost career as an artist and to dread the first day of school where everyone will be pointing at her and whispering, “There’s the shark girl.”

Dragon’s Keep by Janet Lee Carey
YA SF/FAN CARE
The prophecy foretells the birth of a princess that will bring peace to her land and restore the throne to her banished royal family. Rosalind is the princess that Merlin foretold, but her flaw, being born with a dragon claw, will stop anyone from accepting her as anything other than a witch.

Revolution Is Not A Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine
YA FIC COMP
Ling lives with her physician father and mother, right outside the hospital where they both work. She doesn’t really understand Mao’s Cultural Revolution, but goes along with much of it, until her father is taken and other loved ones disappear.

The Land of the Silver Apples by Nancy Farmer
YA SF/FAN FARM
Jack has to save Lucy, once again, after she’s this time taken by the Lady of the Lake. But does Lucy want to be rescued?

The Falconer’s Knot by Mary Hoffman
YA FIC HOFF
Silvano has a good life - until he’s accused of a murder that he didn’t commit. Until his name can be cleared, he goes into hiding in a monastery. Chiara’s family has no money, which means no dowry to use to arrange a marriage. So she goes into a convent. Instead of being mired in a boring life, they get involved in solving a series of murders that take place at the formerly peaceful monastery.

Lemonade Mouth by Mark Peter Hughes
YA FIC HUGH
Meet five outcasts in Opoquonsett High School ’s freshman class: Wen, Stella, Charlie, Olivia, and Mo. Discover how these cultural players become the phenomenal band, Lemonade Mouth.

Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks
YA SF/FAN JINK
Cadel Piggott is a genius. And it’s gotten him into trouble, since he uses his genius to hack into computer systems and so forth. So now he’s off to see a counselor, Dr. Roth. Dr. Roth not only understands him, he trusts Cadel with computers. In fact, he does everything he can to nurture Cadel’s evil genius.

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
YA SF/FAN MARI
Five sisters go through the secret passage every month at the full moon to dance with the residents of the Other Kingdom. Jenna knows that her sisters will be safe so long as she is with them, although she doesn’t know why. But even she questions this when the feared Night People come to the dance.

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
YA SF/FAN MIEV
Zanna and Deeba have seen some strange things; a fox watching intently Zanna, a cloud that looked just like her. But nothing prepares them for their entrance into a secret place under their city, where Zanna is hailed as the hero who will save Un Lun Dun.

Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett
YA SF/FAN PRAT
Johnny ends up an accidental time traveler, and he may or may not be in a position to warn him home town of a Nazi air raid. But if the damage of the air raid is averted, will Johnny and his friends still exist in the future?

Peak by Roland Smith
YA FIC SMIT
Peak is arrested after climbing a skyscraper. Since everyone wants the whole situation to go away, that’s what they arrange. Peak’s father, a famous mountain climber, takes him to Tibet to be the youngest climber to reach the peak of Mt. Everest.

Blackbringer by Laine Taylor
YA SF/FAN TAYL
Magpie Windwitch, granddaughter of the West Wind, travels the globe seeking out faerie knowledge that would be lost without her, and trapping demons whom humans have been too stupid to leave in their bottles. Then she gets on the trail of a demon that is powerful enough to destroy one of the Djinn who created the world Magpie doesn’t know if she’s powerful enough to capture this demon - but she does know that if she doesn’t, no one else will.

The Swan Maiden by Heather Tomlinson
YA SF/FAN TOML
Doucette is being trained to run a family household. She is most adamantly NOT supposed to be a swan maiden like her sisters. She does not have a swan skin that allows her to turn into a swan and fly, and she cannot study magic at her aunt’s magnificent home every summer. Until the day that she finds her swan skin, hidden under her parents’ bed. Her dreams of being a swan maiden have come true, but she knows she’ll never trust her parents again.

Add comment May 15th, 2008

Spy Fiction

Spies Like Us: spy fiction for Teens

compiled 8-1-06

For Freedom : the story of a French spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
YA FIC BRAD
Despite the horrors of World War II, a French teenager pursues her dream of becoming an opera singer, which takes her to places where she gains information about what the Nazis are doing–information that the French Resistance needs.

Virtual Vandals by Tom Clancy
YA FIC CLAN
At a holographic baseball game, Matt Hunter and several other Net Force Explorers are thrilled to see Babe Ruth swing for the fences. But when Ruth does his famous routine of pointing to the stands, four people dressed in 30’s style outfits stand up and open fire with Tommy guns! Even virtual bullets can kill you. Matt and his friends know that these “virtual vandals” must be stopped. First in the Net Force Explorers series.

Midnight Rider by Joan Hiatt Harlow
YA FIC HARL
In Boston in 1775, orphaned fourteen-year-old Hannah is indentured to the family of a British general and begins attending secret meetings disguised as a boy, then passing messages and warnings to the revolutionaries using her beloved horse Promise.

SilverFin : a James Bond adventure by Charlie Higson
YA FIC HIGS
This prequel to the adventures of James Bond, 007, introduces us to the young James when he’s just started boarding school in England and is about to become involved in his first adventure. First in the Young Bond series.

Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz
YA FIC HORO
After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle’s dangerous work for Britain’s intelligence agency, MI6. First in the Alex Rider series.

Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society by Adeline Yen Mah
YA FIC MAH
During the Japanese occupation of parts of China, twelve-year-old Ye Xian is thrown out of her father’s and stepmother’s home, joins a martial arts group, and tries to help her aunt and the Americans in their struggle against the Japanese invaders.

Traitor by Andy McNab and Robert Rigby
YA FIC MCNA
A boy who believes his grandfather to be a traitor, a spy who turned against England and then disappeared, tracks down his grandfather and finds out the truth.

Peter Raven, Under Fire by Michael Molloy
YA FIC MOLL
Peter Raven is a midshipman in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and must help Commodore Beaumont, a spy, foil a French plot to take over the Americas.

The Recruit by Robert Muchamore
YA FIC MUCH
James is recruited into CHERUB, a secret division of MI5 which consists of teenage spies. He successfully completes his training and goes on his first mission. First in the CHERUB, a division of MI5 series.

Kill Game by Francine Pascal
YA FIC PASC
Gaia Moore, from Pascal’s Fearless series, is out of college and training for the FBI. But the FBI has strict codes and Gaia’s not a team player. So when it comes to hunting a serial killer, cracking the case may mean breaking the rules.

Spy vs. Spy by Antonio Prohias
YA GRAPHIC NOVEL PR
As seen in “Mad Magazine”, the spies–one in black, one in white–are forever upping each other on a diabolical dance of deceit and double-crossing.

Girl in Blue by Ann Rinaldi
YA FIC RINA
To escape an abusive father and an arranged marriage, fourteen-year-old Sarah, dressed as a boy, leaves her Michigan home to enlist in the Union Army, and becomes a soldier on the battlefields of Virginia as well as a Union spy working in the house of Confederate sympathizer Rose O’Neal Greenhow in Washington, D.C.

The Secret of Sarah Revere by Ann Rinaldi
YA FIC RINA
Paul Revere’s daughter describes her father’s “rides” and the intelligence network of the patriot community prior to the American Revolution.

Live and Let Shop by Michael P. Spradlin
YA FIC SPRA
Beverly Hills teenager Rachel Buchanan gets in trouble with the law and winds up at mysterious Blackthorn Academy in Pennsylvania, where she uncovers secrets about the school and becomes entangled in a case of international espionage. First in the Spy Goddess series.

The Counterfeit Princess by Jane Resh Thomas
YA FIC THOM
Vowing revenge when her parents are executed in 1553 by the Duke of Northumberland, teenaged Iris becomes a messenger, spy, and stand-in for Princess Elizabeth during the volatile political times surrounding Edward VI’s death.

A Winter of Spies by Gerard Whelan
YA FIC WHEL
In 1920 Dublin, eleven-year-old Sarah Conway learns that Ireland’s struggle for independence, led by Michael Collins, is waged not only with guns but also with spies, lies, and secrets.

The Gadget by Paul Zindel
YA FIC ZIND
In 1945, having joined his father at Los Alamos, where he and other scientists are working on a secret project to end World War II, thirteen-year-old Stephen becomes caught in a web of secrecy and intrigue.

Add comment March 3rd, 2008