Unwind

Check out this cool movie trailer. My blog entry is coming soon!

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Dirty Little Secrets

Five Flavors of Dumb

Piper doesn't know much about music-- she can't even hear music since she is deaf, but when Dumb, a band from her high school, performs on the front steps of her school she finds herself captivated.  Piper becomes the manager of Dumb and her life changes in many ways.

This is a truly great book.  Check out the trailer below for a more info.  I highly recommend this book and predict it will circulate well at my school.

The Trouble with Half a Moon by Danette Vigilante

Imagine playing with your younger brother and having an accident that leads to his death? Delilah, or Dellie as everyone calls her, doesn't have to imagine this because it happened to her. Dellie feels a crushing guilt for what happed to her brother, Louis, wihle also feeling suffocated by her parents desire to keep her with them and safe at all times.

One day Dellie meets a young, hungry boy named Corey who just moved in on the first floor of her apartment complex. Corey lives with his abusive mother and is badly in need of food and attention. Dellie knows she has to help him even if it means getting in touble with her parents.

The Trouble with Half a Moon is a sweet novel that deals with Dellie's coming of age issues with boys, friends, her parents and the unresolved feelings she has about her brother's death and her relationship with Corey. 

While I liked this novel I did feel like the pace was a little slow. I will recommend this book to my student though- especially students wanting a good realistic fiction story.

Empty by Suzanne Weyn

Imagine paying $80 for a gallon of gas. What would you do if the grocery stores had no food on the shelf because it was too expensive for the trucks to resupply the stores. What would you do if you could not cook any of your food because all your appliances use electricity and the power is off-- with no promise of when, or if, it will come back on.

Set 10 years in the future this is a story with a message- to think about energy sources and policies. The world's oil supply is almost depleted Life as Gwen, Tom and Nikki now it is literally over.

Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen

"I sat there and looked at my mother, at the ease in her face as she told me how I felt, what I thought, everything. Like I was a puzzke, one she'd created, and she knew the solution every time." (p. 170)

Best friends/First love/Mother daughter relationships/Life changing choices/Growing up

This book touches on so many issues in a well written great story. Halley is the quiet one who always turns to Scarlett, her best friend, for the answers. Suddenly the roles are reversed and Scarlett needs Halley after her boyfriend Michael is killed in a motorcycle accident. It is bad enough that Michael died but then Scarlett discovers that she is pregnant. What is she going to do now? As Halley helps Scarlett naviagte the twists and turns of being a pregnant teenager she is going through some major changes of her own. She starts to date Macon, a wild guy that her parents do not approve of. Read the book to find out what happens to Halley, Macon, Scarlett and her baby.

Check out the book trailer found on You Tube: