Simon is a dog without a family. He survives with his friends Cliff the raccoon and Reynard the deer. Something has happened to the world, humans are gone, cities and towns burned to husks. The animals have taken over and their mission is to scrounge for food in order to survive. One day they meet Barnaby, another dog who has lost his family. Barnaby tells them there's another town nearby with humans in it. Simon becomes interested, hopeful that he'll find his family. Together the four animals set off to find the new town. Barnaby turns out to be a controlling jerk, however and isolates Simon from the other animals. When they come across an angry bear and a team of vicious coyotes, the trio's friendship is stressed to its limits. Garbage Night is reminiscent of Sweet Tooth, another post-apocalyptic scenario involving animals. Garbage Night appears on the surface much less dark and disturbing than Sweet Tooth but it's a series that has the potential to go down that route. The three animals' rapport is fun and interesting and I was genuinely concerned for their well-being as the story moved along. I wasn't aware of this series before but I'm glad I've come across it because I know a lot of students who enjoy things like Fallout, Fortnite and other similar games and this kind of scenario would be perfect for them, especially reluctant readers. Highly recommended for ages 11 and up!
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It's 1982. Mary is an orphan at Thornhill Institute for Children. She has selective mutism and spends all of her time in her room, writing in her diary and reading The Secret Garden. She's also hiding. Hiding from a ferocious bully who makes her life at Thornhill a living hell. To cope, Mary spends even more time in her room making dolls. The dolls represent the friends she wished she had and also the people that she doesn't particularly like. As more and more children find homes, Mary finds herself alone with the bully, who embarks upon a psychological torture that will bring Mary to the brink. It's 2016. Ella's new home overlooks the ruins of Thornhill. She's intrigued by its dilapidated appearance and overgrown lawns. Lonely and bored, she decides to sneak under the "No Trespassing" signs and find out everything she can about this mysterious building. Creepy and taught with a building foreboding, Thornhill is a must read for any horror or mystery fan. Mary's section is told through diary entries while Ella's is told entirely through illustrations. Each section is broken by black pages which only adds to the dark, empty feeling you get when you entre an abandoned building with a dark past. I recommend Thornhill for ages 12 and up! Jennifer and Maisie are best friends. After bonding at the all-female roller derby tryouts, dubbed the Fresh Meat Orientation, they become inseparable. However, when they are both drafted to different teams and forced to compete against each other and bond with different teammates, their friendship is tested to its limits. This first in a series of four volumes is a hilarious, honest and interesting look at modern friendships, trust and of course the incredible world of roller derby. I flew through this book in record time, I loved all of the characters, each one has tremendous depth. Slam! is a real punch to the guts, in a good way. I can't wait to get this into the hands of our students, they're going to devour this story. I recommend it to ages 14 and up! I was very excited to receive Hilda and the Troll as part of BookTrust's School Library Pack. If you are a school in the UK you should definitely be taking advantage of this great offer of free books! Hilda is addicted to adventure, so when she sets off to draw interesting rock formations around her home, she's thrilled to see a mountain troll. Although it looks like a strange rock, Hilda knows better, and ties a bell around it's long rock-noes. After some more sketching, she nods off, only to wake up in a vicious snow storm. Even stranger, the mountain troll is gone. As she wades her way through the snow, she meets a lost giant and a strange yet accommodating wooden man. Can she find her way home? And what's she going to do about that mountain troll on the loose? Filled with warm humour and beautiful illustrations, this series of graphic novels is perfect for reluctant and struggling readers. I can't wait to promote this to students in the Library as I know it will be a huge hit. If you haven't checked out the Hilda series it's a perfect read for anyone looking for a quick escape into a beautiful land. Shannon's best friend Adrienne has just joined The Group. The Group is led by Jen, the most popular girl in the class. Getting into The Group is hard, and once you're in the group, you never quite know where you stand. Shannon never really figures out if she's in The Group or not. All she knows is that she's losing her best friend to the others. To make matters worse, her older sister is mean to her, to the point of physical and emotional bullying. All of this triggers a form of anxiety and OCD within Shannon that manifests itself as stomach aches and counting objects over and over again. Shannon has to learn the hard way that being in The Group might not be the most important thing in the world, even if it feels like it is. I loved this story. In elementary school I constantly felt like I was missing out on all of the cool things the other clicks were doing. It takes many years to realise that you are never late to the party, there is no party. Everyone feels as alone and isolated and confused as you do at some point in their life. I think this is an important story that I want to bring to the students at the school I work at. There are so many students that must feel like their being left out, that they aren't cool enough, that they aren't good looking enough to be with the popular kids. It takes a book like this to tell them that it doesn't really matter, that you should make your own group and do the things that you enjoy doing. Highly recommend this for anyone who has ever felt left out or sad about not having enough friends. Sunny Lewin doesn't want to go to Florida for the summer. She was supposed to go on another holiday with her parents but all of that was cancelled after an unfortunate incident. When she gets to Florida to stay with her grandfather, she realises that his neighbourhood is filled with old people who do nothing but argue, go to supper at 4:30 in the afternoon and golf. It's a good thing she meets Buzz, the son of the groundskeeper where her grandfather lives. Buzz introduces Sunny to comic books, the alligator at the golf course and a way to make money all summer long by finding lost cats and golf balls that can be sold back. The golf balls, not the cats. Throughout the summer, the incident that sent her down to Florida in the first place is Sunny's secret, but as the tension mounts inside her, she realises that she can't keep it a secret much longer. Books by Raina Telegemeier are always a favourite at my school so I know this book will be on high demand. Funny, sad and very accessible, I know some really reluctant readers that will love this story. I loved Fantasy Sports, I'd never heard of it before in my life and decided to buy it for the library based solely on the cover. I'm glad I did. It's like Big Trouble in Little China if Kurt Russell had to play a game of basketball to defeat Lo Pan. Wiz and Mug are an unlikely pair. Wiz is a small, snarky, intelligent wizard with a lot to prove. She's working for Mug, a Zangief-esque brute who thinks with his fists before his head. As treasure hunters, they're always looking for a good haul. One fateful afternoon they stumble across a tomb containing an ancient puzzle, breaking through it, they enter an ancient arena ruled by a demon with the greatest basketball skills anyone has ever seen. If Mug and Wiz are going to leave the arena with their skin still attached to their bones, they're gonna have to beat the demon in the greatest basketball rivalry since the 1984 Lakers & Celtics. This book's the most fun you'll have in the library all day long, I can't wait to get it into the hands of the students. I'd recommend it for Years 8 and up. Catrina and her family are moving from the hot, desert-like conditions of Southern California to a location further north. Catrina's sister, Maya, is ill and the northern climate is thought to be better for her. Catrina doesn't want to go, she misses her friends, she misses her old place. She tries her best not to complain, but she's a teen and that's what teens do. One their first night, Catrina and Maya decide to explore the town a little. They find a seemingly abandoned arcade. It's dark, creepy, and a awesome at the same time. It's here that they discover one of their neighbours, and he drops a bombshell on them. The town they just moved to is haunted. Younger Maya is thrilled to learn this. Catrina? Not so much. Is this a hoax, or is there something true in the chilling words of their neighbour? Filled with humour and heart, Ghosts is a story about facing your fears and coming to terms with change. I think anyone aged 9-90 would love this story. I read it quickly, and then went back to admire the beautiful illustrations. Raina's stories are always a huge hit in the high school library that I work at. I try hard to put her books in the hands of students that I feel are reluctant readers or give me the dreaded "I hate reading" song and dance. It's also a great book to promote for Halloween, so if you're in the position of recommending books to students, don't forget this! "Are you crying?" my wife asked me as I put down El Deafo, I was less than halfway through it. "No," I said, "it's just dusty in here or something." It was a lie, of course. El Deafo is really amazing and it will affect you greatly, unless you've got a heart made of a burned out hornet's nest, that is. Here's the deal: Cece is your average child growing up in what can be surmised as 1970s United States. Then, at the age of four, she contracts meningitis and loses her hearing permanently. She's provided with a device called a Sonic Ear, something that allows her to hear what her teacher is saying. Cece is understandably self-conscious of the device, as it's the 1970s and pretty much everything was made to resemble a Cadillac. On top of this, Cece's family moves to a small town, meaning she has to start over, making new friends and trying not to go crazy as her classmates and teachers treat her trick gloves. When I was a kid I used to watch a film called "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. I was much too young to be watching it but hey, I was a latch-key kid and once I figured out how to use the remotes on the satellite dish it was game over. Anyway, there's a scene in that film that has stuck with me for over 25 years. Gene Wilder plays a deaf man, and he's being interrogated by a cop. The cop is being very condescending, and speaking to Wilder in a slow, almost childish tone. Wilder responds to this by mimicking the cop's tone. The cop then turns to Richard Pryor and says "Why is he speaking to me like that?" Pryor says, "Because he's deaf, not stupid." When Cece has to deal with people like the cop in that movie, she reverts to her superhero alter-ego, El Deafo, a person who says what she feels and stands up for herself in all situations. Through it all, Cece describes her struggles with sign language, reading lips, understanding what is going on her favourite tv shows and surviving school like everyone else. There is a through-line, though, one that we all face: The quest to find a good friend, someone who will accept us for who we are. This is what Cece seems to struggle with more than anything in this story, choosing someone she really digs and wants to hang out. Some of her friends are too bossy, to obsessed with her hearing aids, too manipulative, and so on. El Deafo is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel, for whatever reason Bell decided to make her characters into rabbits. We don't need to know why, it's just the way it is and after a while you become so familiar with them that you wouldn't have it any other way. Bell's ability to pour what is undoubtedly a very personal story onto the page in such an effortless, engaging way is the sign of an amazing artist and I was ecstatic to get in the Library and shove it in the hands of students I knew would love it before the term ended for the summer. I can't wait to continue doing so in September. Robots that come to life is a story that's been around since Asimov wrote about them in the '30s, and before that too, probably, I'm no historian. That doesn't mean that every once in a while a story about androids and their human masters can't come along and take you on a really cool ride. Enter Alex + Ada, a story that demands your attention and keeps it to the very last page. It's the near future, flying robots make your breakfast and you do all of your shopping, net browsing and socializing via a chip that you have implanted into the side of your head. It's like having Amazon.com as your sub-conscious, fun! Our titular character Alex is depressed, he's still not over the girl that left him and he's not satisfied in his job. His grandmother wants to cheer him up by purchasing an android for him. Now, when I say android, I'm not talking about something that looks like Johnny Five, these things are the real deal. They look just like you or I, the only way to tell them apart from humans is the logo they have tattooed on their wrist which they are legally obligated to keep exposed at all times. Alex refuses his grandmother's offer, and she buys him one anyway. This is where things start to get really interesting. At first, Alex decides to return her, eventually he caves and keeps her. The problem is, Alex doesn't want an android that only likes the things that he likes and agrees with everything he does. He wants one that will speak her mind and make decisions for herself. Alex decides to try to "Awaken" Ada, a highly illegal activity that overrides the company hardware, making her a sentiment being. What follows is an interesting journey into seedy online chat rooms, motels and FBI surveillance as Alex & Ada get caught up in the world of those that have been "Awakened." I liked both how the story flowed and how sparse and crisp the artwork was. I also liked how this series did not start with any kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare where androids wake up and crush their human overlords. There are hints of this, yes, but the overall thread is one of romance and just trying to survive the information overload that exists in the modern age. There is also a lot of humour yet a lot of serious issues taking place in this series and I can't wait for the next one. |
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