Family

Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour

Posted on October 1, 2013 by webmaster

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Amy and Roger's Epic Detour
by Morgan Matson

Amy Curry thinks her life sucks. Her mom decides to move from California to Connecticut to start anew–just in time for Amy’s senior year. Her dad recently died in a car accident. So Amy embarks on a road trip to escape from it all, driving cross-country from the home she’s always known toward her new life.

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Joining Amy on the road trip is Roger, the son of Amy’s mother’s old friend. Amy hasn’t seen him in years, and she is less than thrilled to be driving across the country with a guy she barely knows. So she is surprised to find that she is developing a crush on him. At the same time, she is coming to terms with her father’s death and how to put her own life back together after the accident.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
850	Middle School	368	Adventure	2011	1416990666

Matched

Posted on October 1, 2013 by webmaster

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Matched
by Ally Condie

Cassia Reyes is a model student, daughter, and citizen. How could she not be when the Society has everything planned and functioning perfectly? All of her needs are met: food, shelter, education, career training, and even her future husband are selected by officials who know what is best for each individual by studying statistical data and probable odds.

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She even knows when she will die, on her 80th birthday, just as the Society dictates. At her Match Banquet she is paired with Xander, her best friend and certainly her soul mate. But when a computer error shows her the face of Ky, an Aberration, instead of Xander, cracks begin to appear in the Society’s facade of perfection. A series of events also shakes her dedication to Xander and puts her future in jeopardy.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
680L	Middle School	400	Thriller/Suspense	2010	014241977X

Hatchet

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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The Hatchet
by Gary Paulsen

Brian Robeson, 13, is the only passenger on a small plane flying him to visit his father in the Canadian wilderness when the pilot has a heart attack and dies. The plane drifts off course and finally crashes into a small lake.

Miraculously Brian is able to swim free of the plane, arriving on a sandy tree-lined shore with only his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother had given him as a present.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
1060	Middle School	192	Triller/Suspense	1997	1416925082

Stitches

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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Stitches: A Memoir
by David Small

The story starts when the narrator is six years old and follows him into adulthood, with most of the story spent during his early adolescence. The youngest member of a silent and unhappy family, David is subjected to repeated x-rays to monitor sinus problems. When he develops cancer as a result of this procedure, he is operated on without being told what is wrong with him. The operation results in the loss of his voice, cutting him off even further from the world around him.

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Small’s black and white pen and ink drawings are endlessly perceptive as they portray the layering of dream and imagination onto the real-life experiences of the young boy. Small’s intuitive morphing of images, as with the terrible post-surgery scar on the main character’s throat that becomes a dark staircase climbed by his mother, provide deep emotional echoes. Some understanding is gained as family secrets are unearthed, but for the most part David fends for himself in a family that is uncommunicative to a truly ghastly degree.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
750L	Middle School	329	Autobiography	2010	0393338967

Henry & Mudge

Posted on September 30, 2013 by webmaster

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Henry & Mudge Collection
by Cynthia Rylant

Will this lovable duo ever run out of opportunities for good times and good feelings?

This fun series of a boy and his best friend will amaze even the youngest of readers.

This series is a perfect marriage of pictures and words.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
400	Elementary School	30	Adventure	2005	0545048087

Kite Runner

Posted on September 29, 2013 by webmaster

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The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini

Amir is the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant are best friends. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted.

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Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
840	Middle School	32	Adventure	2004	1594480001

If I Stay

Posted on September 27, 2013 by webmaster

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If I Stay
by Gayle Foreman

The last normal moment that Mia, a talented cellist, can remember is being in the car with her family. Then she is standing outside her body beside their mangled Buick and her parents’ corpses, watching herself and her little brother being tended by paramedics. As she ponders her state (Am I dead? I actually have to ask myself this), Mia is whisked away to a hospital, where, her body in a coma, she reflects on the past and tries to decide whether to fight to live. Via Mia’s thoughts and flashbacks explores her life, her passion for classical music and her strong relationships with her family, friends and boyfriend, Adam.

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Mia’s singular perspective also allows for powerful portraits of her friends and family as they cope: Please don’t die. If you die, there’s going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school, prays Mia’s friend Kim. I know you’d hate that kind of thing.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
830	High School	272	Drama	2010	014241543

Nineteen Minutes

Posted on September 24, 2013 by webmaster

Nineteen Minutes
by Jodi Picoult

These are the words that seventeen-year-old Peter Houghton says when he is found after a school shooting spree huddling with a gun in his hand by Detective Patrick Ducharme. An outcast who had been bullied since kindergarten, Peter kills ten, including a teacher, and injures many more.

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At first glance, it looks like a straightforward act of revenge, but things are revealed to be more complex. One of his victims is Matt Royston, the boyfriend of his former childhood friend, Josie Cormier, and others are members of the in-crowd, but others have seemingly no relation. In the days before the trial, and in the days leading up to the shooting, we are given the backstory, told mostly from Josie’s, Peter’s, and their mothers’ viewpoint. We learn of the incessant teasing this boy received, adults’ unsuccessful attempts to help him fit in, and of the stormy relationship between Josie and Matt.

During the trial, we hear from the victims who survived and the devastation the crime has wrought on their lives. In the end, the reader may still be undecided whether Peter is primarily a victim, perpetrator, loyal friend, or all three, but that is the point.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
890L	Young Adult	460	Thriller/Suspense	2007	0743496736

Suite Scarlett

Posted on September 21, 2013 by webmaster

Suite Scarlett
by Maureen Johnson

The Hopewell Hotel, 75 years ago a stylish Upper East Side haunt, has fallen on hard times. Its proprietors, the Martin family, have let the last remaining employee go, and now it is up to the four children, Spencer, Lola, Scarlett, and Marlene, to keep things afloat. Enter one Mrs. Amy Amberson, a flamboyant, mysterious guest, back in New York after a long absence, with some clandestine motives. Mrs. Amberson is to occupy the Empire Suite, just today entrusted to Scarlett as a ‘present’ on her fifteenth birthday (a family tradition), for the entire summer, and keeping her happy will test Scarlett’s ingenious mettle.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
690L	Middle School	368	Adventure	2009	0545096324

House on Mango Street

Posted on September 21, 2013 by webmaster

The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Sisneros

This book is a whole story but, instead of having chapters with episodes, it contains “vignettes” which are short descriptive literary sketches. Each vignette contains an important part of the story. The whole story describes the thoughts, feelings, and memories of Esperanza, a Hispanic girl living in the poverty corner of the city, who dreams of escaping her world. As she grows up and starts to leave her childhood, she learns about the fears and dangers of the world she never knew of before.

Becoming an adult turns out to be a hard challenge.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
870	High School	160	Autobiography	2009	067943335