Relationships

Highly Illogical Behavior

Posted on July 5, 2018 by webmaster

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Highly Illogical Behavior
by John Corey Whaley

Sixteen-year-old Solomon has agoraphobia. He hasn't left his house in 3 years. Ambitious Lisa is desperate to get into a top-tier psychology program. And so when Lisa learns about Solomon, she decides to befriend him, cure him, and then write about it for her college application. To earn Solomon's trust, she introduces him to her boyfriend Clark, and starts to reveal her own secrets. But what started as an experiment leads to a real friendship, with all three growing close. But when the truth comes out, what erupts could destroy them all.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
840L	Middle School	256	Growing Up	2017	0147515203

Salt to The Sea

Posted on January 25, 2018 by webmaster

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Salt to the Sea
by Ruta Sepetys

A fictionalized World War II story based on a true tragedy. Four different teens grapple with the bitter cold, the ever-present danger of falling bombs, and their own dark secrets. There’s Joana, a pretty and empathetic Lithuanian nurse who harbors a heavy guilt; Florian, a mysterious young man struggling to hide his true identity; Amelia, a pregnant Polish girl; and Alfred, a sociopathic Nazi sailor with an inferiority complex.

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The small band of refugees slowly making their way through the frozen and battle-scarred Prussian countryside, Joana, Florian, and Amelia are determined to get aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German military ship evacuating civilians and wounded soldiers at the tail end of the war. Alfred, meanwhile, a low-ranking officer stationed aboard the ship, avoids work by hiding in the toilets, composing imaginary and boastful letters to a girl back home.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
840L	Middle School	448	Historic Fiction	2017	0142423629

Of Mice and Men

Posted on September 23, 2013 by webmaster

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Of Mice and Men

by John Steinbeck

This is a story of the strange friendship between a strong man and a giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant man-child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find – in a ranch – what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them.

How to Access the Lesson:

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Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
630L	High School	112	Historical Fiction	2002	0142000671

Thirteen Reasons Why

Posted on September 18, 2013 by webmaster

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Thirteen Reasons Why
by Jay Asher

When Clay Jensen finds a package on his front porch, he’s excited. A package, for him? With no return address? What could it possibly be? What Clay finds is a shoebox full of cassette tapes, each marked as “Cassette 1: Side A,” “Cassette 1: Side B,” etc. Of course he rushes to the old radio/cassette player in his dad’s garage to check out these mysterious tapes.And soon wishes, wholeheartedly, that he’d never picked up that stupid package from his front porch.

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What he hears when he inserts that first tape is the voice of Hannah Baker. Hannah, the girl he’d crushed on for longer than he could remember. The girl he went to school with. The girl he worked at the movie theater with. The girl who had changed, drastically, in the last several months. Hannah Baker, the girl who committed suicide.

Clay soon realizes that these tapes aren’t just a suicide note, aren’t, really, even a clear-cut rendition of why she did what she did. Instead, these are thirteen reasons — thirteen people, to be exact — who created a snowball-effect of events that led Hannah to believe that suicide was her only option.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
550L	High School	304	Realistic Fiction	2008	1595141715

Last Exit to Normal

Posted on September 18, 2013 by webmaster

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Last Exit to Normal
by Michael Harmon

Life was going along just fine for Ben Campbell until he hit fourteen. That was the year his father announced that he was gay and his mother left. His dad’s boyfriend moved in, and Ben started counseling — and also misbehaving.

Now, after three years of run-ins with the law, Ben’s dad has decided the only way to save Ben is to leave Spokane. At age seventeen, city boy Ben finds himself living in Rough Butte, Montana. Edward, who Ben calls “Momdad”, has agreed to take them back to the hometown he left when he was Ben’s age. In Rough Butte, Ben is surrounded by homophobic cowboys, Edward’s acid-tongued mother, Miss Mae, and an abusive neighbor with a strange young son.

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Used to doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants, quickly ends for Ben as Miss Mae schools him in acceptable country behavior. She expects respect and hard work, and she doesn’t hesitate to use her wooden spoon as a weapon to encourage it. Ben reluctantly falls in line and even finds it rewarding at times. His father and Edward seem pleased for the most part, and his improved attitude and behavior are useful in his quest to attract the attention of the beautiful girl living just four doors down the street.

There are still frustrations for Ben. Completely forgiving his father for trashing his life back in Spokane is proving harder than he expected. Rough patches between father and son keep tensions high, and to complicate matters, Ben becomes convinced that the young neighbor boy is the victim of dangerous abuse. Ben’s efforts to seek justice for the boy create a whole new set of problems.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
620L	Middle School	288	Drama	2009	0440239949

Hunger Games

Posted on September 17, 2013 by webmaster

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The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins

In a not-too-distant future, the United States of America has collapsed, weakened by drought, fire, famine, and war, to be replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal intimidation of the subjugated districts, the televised games are broadcasted throughout Panem as the 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors, literally, with all citizens required to watch.

When 16-year-old Katniss’s young sister, Prim, is selected as the mining district’s female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart, Peeta, the son of the town baker who seems to have all the fighting skills of a lump of bread dough, will be pitted against bigger, stronger representatives who have trained for this their whole lives.

How to Access the Lesson:

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Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
810L	High School	384	Fantasy	2008	0439023481

Who am I Without Him

Posted on September 16, 2013 by webmaster

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Who Am I Without Him
by Sharon G. Flake

In the game of love, young men and women weigh what they need from the opposite sex against what they need to find in themselves. This popular short-story collection, including two never-before-published entries, gives teens a chance to witness the outcomes of twelve unique trysts.

As relationships go either right or wrong, with surprising, often funny, always on-point results, mindful readers will appreciate the warning signs and perhaps save themselves from the same fate as these fictional protagonists.

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You’ll find yourself consumed by fast-paced, intelligent writing that “just gets it” in Who I Am Without Him — a question you might ultimately choose to examine before diving headlong into the dangerous waters of romance.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
670	High School	160	Drama	2005	0786815043

Twilight

Posted on September 15, 2013 by webmaster

Twilight
by Stephanie Meyer

Isabella Swan’s move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Isabella’s life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Isabella, the person Edward holds most dear. The lovers find themselves balanced precariously on the point of a knife–between desire and danger.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
720	High School	544	Fantasy	2006	0316015849

My Sister’s Keeper

Posted on September 15, 2013 by webmaster

My Sister’s Keeper
by Jodi Picoult

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate — a life and a role that she has never challenged…until now.

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Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister — and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
840L	High School	423	Realistic Fiction	2004	0743454529

Son of the Mob

Posted on September 15, 2013 by webmaster

Son of the Mob
by Gordon Korman

Vince Luca, 17, has a problem. His wealthy family runs the, uh, vending machine business in New York, and Vince is determined not to be part of it. Especially after a hot date is ruined when he finds that his older brother Tommy has conducted some business with Jimmy the Rat and hidden the messy and temporarily unconscious body in the trunk of Vince’s car.

His dad, the King of the Mob, is reasonable, sensible, lots of fun, gives great presents to his kids–and his name strikes the hearts of other mobsters to stone.

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Although Vince keeps a low profile at school, his family connection brings him unwanted advantages, like the birthday Porsche that gets him arrested on stolen vehicle charges, or the football game in which he makes touchdown after touchdown because word has gotten around and nobody is willing to tackle him. Even private conversations at home have to be carried on in the basement because the FBI has bugged the house and an agent is always listening.

Vince’s life is inextricably tangled up with the family business, no matter how hard he tries to stay out of it. How can he show them he’s serious? Then he meets Kendra, and when she innocently reveals that her father’s an FBI agent–that FBI agent–it’s a match made in heaven. He thinks.

Lexile Level	Content Rating	Number of Pages	Genre	Date Published	ISBN Number
690L	Middle School	262	Thriller/Suspense	2002	0786807695