Get A Room!

… is what I need to do for our Mock Printz discussion and election.  So… who is planning on participating?  And what day of the week and time of the day works best for you?  I’m thinking of a weekend or evening to make it more accessible to our school librarian friends.  Also, if you’re planning on attending and also going to ALA Midwinter, please let me know so I don’t schedule for that weekend.

Favorites Thus Far

Everyone out there on the internets! Chime in!  What are your Printz favorites so far?  What books would you call the best books you’ve read this year?

Mine are (in no particular order):

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King
Nothing by Janne Teller
Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett

Keep in mind that I still have a stack yet to get through.  Still, I feel pretty strongly about these three and can say with confidence that (of the 100 or so books I’ve read so far this year) they are the most impressive of the bunch.

-Katie

Reading List 2010 #2

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett

The 10 p.m. Question by Kate De Goldi

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Illyria by Elizabeth Hand

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Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Vera’s spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she’s kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.

So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?

Title: Please Ignore Vera Dietz
Author: A.S. King
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (October 12, 2010)
Pages: 336

Annexed

Everyone knows about Anne Frank and her life hidden in the secret annex – but what about the boy who was also trapped there with her? In this powerful and gripping novel, Sharon Dogar explores what this might have been like from Peter’s point of view. What was it like to be forced into hiding with Anne Frank, first to hate her and then to find yourself falling in love with her? Especially with your parents and her parents all watching almost everything you do together. To know you’re being written about in Anne’s diary, day after day? What’s it like to start questioning your religion, wondering why simply being Jewish inspires such hatred and persecution? Or to just sit and wait and watch while others die, and wish you were fighting. As Peter and Anne become closer and closer in their confined quarters, how can they make sense of what they see happening around them?

Anne’s diary ends on August 4, 1944, but Peter’s story takes us on, beyond their betrayal and into the Nazi death camps. He details with accuracy, clarity and compassion the reality of day to day survival in Auschwitz – and ultimately the horrific fates of the Annex’s occupants.

Title: Annexed
Author: Sharon Dogar
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (October 4, 2010)
Pages: 352

Dark Water

Fifteen-year-old Pearl DeWitt and her mother live in Fallbrook, California, where it’s sunny 340 days of the year, and where her uncle owns a grove of 900 avocado trees. Uncle Hoyt hires migrant workers regularly, but Pearl doesn’t pay much attention to them . . . until Amiel. From the moment she sees him, Pearl is drawn to this boy who keeps to himself, fears being caught by la migra, and is mysteriously unable to talk. And after coming across Amiel’s makeshift hut near Agua Prieta Creek, Pearl falls into a precarious friendship—and a forbidden romance.

Then the wildfires strike. Fallbrook—the town of marigolds and palms, blood oranges and sweet limes—is threatened by the Agua Prieta fire, and a mandatory evacuation order is issued. But Pearl knows that Amiel is in the direct path of the fire, with no one to warn him, no way to get out. Slipping away from safety and her family, Pearl moves toward the dark creek, where the smoke has become air, the air smoke.

Title: Dark Water
Author: Laura McNeal
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (September 14, 2010)
Pages: 304

The 10 p.m. Question

Twelve-year-old Frankie Parsons is a talented kid with a quirky family, a best friend named Gigs, and a voice of anxiety constantly nibbling in his head: Could that kidney-shaped spot on his chest be a galloping cancer? Are the smoke alarm batteries flat? Has his cat, The Fat Controller, given them all worms? Only Ma, who never leaves home, takes Frankie’s worries seriously. But then, it is Ma who is the cause of the most troubling question of all, the one Frankie can never bring himself to ask. When a new girl arrives at school — a daring free spirit with unavoidable questions of her own — Frankie’s carefully guarded world begins to unravel, leading him to a painful confrontation with the ultimate 10 p.m. question.

Title: The 10 p.m. Question
Author: Kate De Goldi
Publisher: Candlewick (September 28, 2010)
Pages: 256

Illyria

Madeleine and Rogan are first cousins, best friends, twinned souls, each other’s first love. Even within their large, disorderly family—all descendants of a famous actress—their intensity and passion for theater sets them apart. It makes them a little dangerous. When they are cast in their school’s production of Twelfth Night, they are forced to face their separate talents and futures, and their future together.

Title: Illyria
Author: Elizabeth Hand
Publisher: Viking Juvenile (May 13, 2010)
Pages: 144

Butterfly

Plum Coyle is on the edge of adolescence. Her fourteenth birthday is approaching, when her old life and her old body will fall away, and she will become graceful, powerful, and at ease. The strength of the objects she stores in a briefcase under her bed —a crystal lamb, a yoyo, an antique watch, a coin —will make sure of it. Over the next couple of weeks, Plum’s life will change. Her beautiful neighbor Maureen will begin to show Plum how she might fly. The older brothers she adores will court catastrophe in worlds that she barely knows exist. And her friends, her worst enemies, will tease and test, smelling weakness. They will try to lead her on and take her down.

Title: Butterfly
Author: Sonya Hartnett
Publisher: Candlewick (August 24, 2010)
Pages: 240

The Cardturner

“How are we supposed to be partners? He can’t see the cards and I don’t know the rules!”

The summer after junior year of high school looks bleak for Alton Richards. His girlfriend has dumped him to hook up with his best friend. He has no money and no job. His parents insist that he drive his great-uncle Lester to his bridge club four times a week and be his cardturner—whatever that means. Alton’s uncle is old, blind, very sick, and very rich.

But Alton’s parents aren’t the only ones trying to worm their way into Lester Trapp’s good graces. They’re in competition with his longtime housekeeper, his alluring young nurse, and the crazy Castaneda family, who seem to have a mysterious influence over him.

Alton soon finds himself intrigued by his uncle, by the game of bridge, and especially by the pretty and shy Toni Castaneda. As the summer goes on, he struggles to figure out what it all means, and ultimately to figure out the meaning of his own life.

Title: The Cardturner
Author: Louis Sachar
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers (May 11, 2010)
Pages: 352