"In the winter you come to the pit to warm your feet in the tar. You stand long enough to sink as far as your ankles - the littler you are, the longer you can stand. . . But in summer, like this day, you keep away from the tar . . . Ikky was tal

Dial/Penguin, New York: 2008 ISBN 978-0-8037-3227-8 $16.99 408 pp Three juniors assigned to write about their "most excellent" year all choose the freshman year they became friends in this coming out/coming of age story that blends bas

This was one of those books that I could not put down, and that finishing was more difficult than usual. Octavia Butler is one of my favorite writers, who passed away last year, the same year that Fledgling was published. When I finished reading Fled

Best friends Lissa Dragomir and Rose Hathaway are on the run from their boarding school St. Vladimir's Academy, hiding from the well-meaning but misguided Guardians of the school and the evil vampires the Strigoi.  Lissa is a Moroi princess,

 ****Inspired by Leonardo's Notebooks, author Grey creates a portrait of the famous painter and inventor as imaginitively seen through the eyes of his faithful young servant Giacomo. Much of the plot concerns the completion of the fresco, th

   When a tracker marks her as a fledgling vampire, Zoey Redbird is afraid her life is over.  It could be if her body rejects the Change.  As a vampire fledgling, she must attend the House of Night, a boarding school where she wil

  No spoilers here . . . Book 7 starts with some shocking events.  Harry learns more about Dumbledore's history.  Things get a little less exciting by page 300 (or maybe I was just getting tired because it was 6:30 in the morning a

*****Lauren is a perfect but stagnant seed of a girl, content but not really happy. The story of her attraction to the new boy at school, who turns out to the son of one of her father's previous girlfriends, unfurls like a rose   

The Celebutantes: On The Avenue by Antonio Pagliarulo

MT Anderson's Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, has won a Printz Honor Award as well as the  National Book Award for Young People's literature, and quite deservedly so. TMany librarians and educators question if teens iwll volunta

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