airball: my life in briefs by l.d. harkrader
fun sports book with lots of basketball play. the 7th grade boys b-ball coach decides to motivate his players by making them play in their underwear. in today’s sensitive society, this book could be seen to have some elements of sexual sketchiness. it’s not sexual abuse and it’s not sexual harrassment, but…. if you can get past the premise, it’s a pretty good book with lots of solid basketball content.
american chillers: #7–wisconsin werewolves by johnathan rand
you might say “oh, abcgirl, this doesn’t look like your regular reading!” and you’d be right. this was a book recommended to me by a young patron when i asked for nominations for this year’s favoreads. ok, really he recommended the entire series, but this is the one i chose to read. geez. it’s really, really quite bad. every chapter has at least one sentence all in italics to heighten the suspense level and everything suspenseful turns out to be a false alarm except for one instance–where the librarian turns into a werewolf. um, yeah. i hate to be snooty about favoreads, but there’s got to be better horror writing for this age group out there … somewhere!
the radioactive boy scout: the true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor by ken silverstein
another book in the running for favoreads–this time in the non-fiction/high interest category. but this book is not really appropriate for the age group i’m aiming at. plus, i’m not sure i’d blanket-recommend this book ever. it seems like if it fell into the wrong hands it might be … a little too inspiring. it’s all about this misfit guy who has a fascination with chemistry and power and blowing things up who develops an avid interest in radioactive materials after reading a kids book from the 60’s about how great nuclear energy is. of course, the book from the 60’s doesn’t really emphasize the extreme dangers of radioactive materials, so he does most of his experiments in a wooden shed in the backyard of his inattentive mother and step-father’s house. until the fbi comes to visit in haz-mat suits and dismantles the whole shed and hauls it away to a toxic dump site. and the kid isn’t really ever punished. i mean, his dad makes him enlist in the military, but the book doesn’t really focus strongly enough on the negative impact that his dangerous activities could have had. don’t get me wrong–the author spends a lot of time talking about chernobyl and three mile island and how dangerous and unhealthy radioactive materials are but…. there was a bit too much glamorization of what the “boy scout” actually was able to acheive using pretty much household ingredients to make me comfortable. although it was fascinating reading.
american born chinese by gene luen yang
this graphic novel won the printz award this year (an award for teen books in general, not specifically for graphic novels). it’s really well written. and i’m not sure it would have been as powerful in any other format. there are three storylines that intertwine and come together at the end to make a powerful statement about growing up chinese-american and the prejudices that surround that. because it’s a graphic novel, it’s a quick read, but it’s got a lot of depth.
