Keeper by Kathi Appelt

Poor, poor Keeper! It's supposed to be a wonderful day: the blue moon will come out tonight, Dogie is going to ask Signe to marry him, Signe will make her blue moon gumbo, and Mr. Beauchamp's magic flowers are going to bloom! But when ten crabs spoke to Keeper, the whole day just went disastrously wrong. Going off the stories Signe told Keeper about her mother, Keeper ventures off with her dog named B.D. (Best Dog) and her seagull friend, Captain, to go find her mermaid mother at the sandbar. What will happen to Keeper, Captain, and B.D. on this crazy trip? Will Keeper ever find her mother and fix everything that went wrong, or will she find out everything is not what it seems?

Keeper, by Kathi Appelt, was a truly enchanting story. This book reminds me of me, of something I might do if told certain things. A strength of Keeper is always keeping the reader puzzled. It had me guessing what would happen next, and then amazed me by doing something totally different. One weakness it had was the skipping between characters. Most of the time I'm pretty good about realizing who is talking in the story or whose point of view the story is coming from, but in this book's case I was constantly confused about what was going on in the different story settings. I would recommend this book to kids who love mermaids and to kids between the ages of eight and twelve.

Reviewer Age:12
Reviewer City, State and Country: Fresno, California USA

The Squad: Perfect Cover by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

This book is about Toby Kline. Who is that you might ask? She is a girl who does what she wants; from hacking computers to being a black belt karate student..she is the very last person you would ever expect to find on the cheerleading squad. Not only would they not want her in the squad, but she would not want to be close to them either. That is until she is invited to join the cheerleading squad for her high school. This is when Toby finds out that the cheerleaders of her school double as secret agents. Is Toby willing to become something she always hated in order to become an agent?

I do not think that the book was all that great. I was expecting the author to be more descriptive. Though the author was not descriptive, she was very good at talking as if she was a teen. This book is more of a leisurely read. The words the book used were very easy to read and understand. I would not recommend this book for others because it does not do a very good job in drawing a person's attention. If I had to recommend this book to anyone, I would for middle school cheerleaders because I think they would be able to relate well with the characters.

Reviewer Age:15
Reviewer City, State and Country: Newville, Pennsylvania, United States

Jekel Loves Hyde by Beth Fantaskey

Jekel Loves Hyde by Beth Fantaskey is a novel about love, chemistry, and what lies in within a person. Of course no one can overlook the combination of Jekel and Hyde. But when good girl Jill and loner fighter Tristen join forces to uncover secrets in both of their lives, unexpected things start to occur. Jill's father is murdered right before the start of the book, and the secrets of his life, and death, force Jill to dig into his final months, and her family's past. Tristen, on the other hand, has dark secrets of his own that he is trying to hide, and an evil side he is trying to defeat. When Jekel and Hyde come together to win a chemistry competition, and base their project on the work of Dr. Jekyll, you know the results will be explosive. But through their project they discover things they never expected, and both of their lives are changed forever.

Going into this book, I expected a lot. Something based off of Jekyll and Hyde had to be amazing, which is partly why I chose the book. Unfortunately, I was let down. The book started off being amazing, and I could not put it down. But the more I read, the less fascinating it became. A minor issue I had was the awkward formalness of every conversation the high school students had. It was also really jumpy at some points. It alternated chapters between Jill and Tristen, but I was often left confused and wondering, usually for so long that at one point I could barely keep track of all that was happening. The author seemed to stuff five or six different plots into this one book, leaving it confusing, with twists and turns, some stories starting while others come to abrupt halts. It was just far too much, and I felt a little overwhelmed. It was a good idea for a story, but I was ultimately let down by it.

Reviewer Age:15
Reviewer City, State and Country: Minnetonka, Minnesota United States

Kiss in the Dark by Lauren Hendersen

Scarlett Wakefield thinks she will finally be able to put
Dan McAndrew's murder behind her and start fresh at
Wakefield Hall Collegiate that her grandmother runs and
will soon be hers. Everything is going her way with a new
boyfriend, new best friend, and nobody who knows about
what happened with McAndrew. But that is all ruined when
Plum Saybourne is transferred to Wakefield from Scarlett's
old school, and establishes her reign in no time.
Scarlett can handle Plum just fine until she targets
Taylor, her best friend, and Jase, her boyfriend. And
things can only get worse when Jase's dad is found dead on
campus. Could Jase be involved with the murder? Or is
Scarlett just bad luck like everybody says?

This book is incredible! It's kind of a cliff hanger ending, but not
the kind that stops in the middle of an exiting part, and
it's not the first book in this series, but everything is
really well explained. You could easily read just this
book and be satisfied, but yet there is a bit of mystery
that intrigues me to read the others in this series. You
can really get into the characters, and unless you are a
Nancy Drew prodigy, the ending isn't what you would
expect. Scarlett goes through a lot of different suspects
and with each one you thing Oh yea, they definitely did
it! but they didn't. So it was really interesting in
that way. I would say this book is like a Sarah Dessen
mystery book.

Reviewer Age:16
Reviewer City, State and Country: Gearhart, Oregon United States

Split by Swati Avasthi

In Split by Swati Avasthi, a sixteen year old boy named Jace is kicked out of his home by his abusive father leaving his mother alone with his father. He is forced to move in with his estranged brother Christian whom he hasn't seen or talked to in years. After moving in with Christian, Jace starts with a clean slate where no one knows his past. He comes to realize its not as easy as it looks and his past starts to haunt him. Jace has to come to terms with his father's faults so he can see it was never his own fault.

Split is one of those books with characters that you feel sorry for in the beginning but eventually fall in love with by the end. This book should be read by as many people as possible. It is an open window to domestic violence in the homes of those we are told to trust. While some of the passages were graphic, this was one of the better books that I have read in a long time. I was glad to see that after everything Christian and Jace were able to stay together and finally have a happy ending. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a good read with a little angst mixed in. Great Story!

Reviewer Age:18
Reviewer City, State and Country: Mantua, NJ USA

Fire Will Fall by Carol Plum-Ucci

Scott, Cora, Rain, and Owen are typical teenagers, at least they were until two months ago when a terrorist group, called ShadowStrike, poisoned the water of their town. They now have a level four disease and are living in the kellerton mansion, trying to deal with their scary symptoms and haunting personal lives. They all hope for a cure, but even more they hope they can trust the people in care for their life.


Tyler Ping and Shahzad Hamdani are internet spies, they've taken on the illegal job of tracking members of ShadowStrike online. Only problem is no one will listen to them when they find out that ShadowStrike might not be as far away as everyone seem to believes. And their coming back.
 
Fire Will Fall by Carol Plum-Ucci was a great sequel to Streams of Babel. I had not read the first one before this, but I still understood. Each page was filled with thought-provoking words, weaved in with suspense. Each chapter was terrifyingly realistic, every page raised goosebumps on my arms. It was entertaining yet filled with horror. I would think I had everything figured out, and then Plum-Ucci would throw in a horrifying twist. There was action, mystery, and even romance. I was engrossed with the book the whole time I was reading it. I would extremely recommend this book to a mature reader. A lot of the language, and sexual content was mature. I didn't approve of it, even though it did make the situation more believable.
 
Violence, sexual content, and mature language.
 
Reviewer Age:14
Reviewer City, State and Country: Springtown, Texas United States

Phliberty-Jibbits by William Moore

This story, Phliberty-Jibbits, by William Moore is about a young girl named Ima Jean Snodgrass, who finds a little shop called Phliberty-Jibbits . Ima Jean makes new friends and learns anything is possible. Phliberty, who is the owner of the shop, goes on a daring rescue to find Jibbits. Ima Jean goes with him and tries to survive a lot of obstacles, and will Ima Jean rescue Jibbits and save Phliberty from losing the shop?


William Moore writes an adventure story filled with different feelings, like sad, excited, surprised and disappointed. This story was definitely a page turner and I could picture the setting when I close my eyes. Moore taught me a lesson that anything was possible. The author gave a lot of details and did a pretty good job wrapping up subplots. I would recommend this book to anyone who believes anything is possible and likes adventure.

Reviewer Age:9
Reviewer City, State and Country: Elkton, Maryland United States of America

Arson by Estevan Vega

    Have you ever dreamed of spontaneously combusting? If you have, Arson, by Estevan Vegas, is the book for you. Arson is a boy in his late teens who hides the terrible power of creating fire with his mind. His gift, or curse, killed his mother, and his grandmother, whom Arson is living with, hates him for it. The story begins when Emery, a girl that will not appear in public without her mask, moves in next door, and changes Arson's view of life.

    I would recommend this book to readers that like to go against the grain, as the book is not written in a straightforward manner, nor is it written with the same style as most other authors. Almost everything that happened was a surprise, and while some events were more logical than others, this helped keep the book interesting. Without the shockers every few pages, however, this book would have been quite boring. By not telling the story in its entirety, and leaving ends not tied up, I felt like a heavy fog had been placed in my head,rendering me unable to fully comprehend the plot and make connections to the text. The information Vegas gave was often not complete and out of order- which is an interesting style, but one that prevented my total enjoyment of the book.

    Having said my piece on Vegas' style, I want to congratulate him on excellent character development. Arson's grandmother was especially real to me, as was Emery, because they had such real feelings of loss and shame.

    Another admirable part of "Arson" was the setting development. By the time the book ended, I felt like I had lived in Arson's town my whole life. Arson and Emery, along with the other characters, visit so many important parts of the town and these places are described with a poetic detail that makes visualizing the scenes incredibly easy.
 
    I gave Arson a content rating of 2 because there was some inappropriate "stuff" that should be looked at by an adult before allowing young children/ teens to read the book.
 
Reviewer Age:14
Reviewer City, State and Country: Lederach, PA USA

The Letter Writer

The Letter Writer by Ann Rinaldi is a historical fiction novel. It takes place pre-Civil War, in 1831. The main character, eleven-year-old Harriet, writes letters for her blind stepmother. She feels left out with her strict stepbrother in charge and knowing she will never meet her real parents. This story takes you through the events and Harriet's decisions leading to and after the Nat Turner Slave Rebellion.

The Letter Writer is as good as the rest of Ann Rinaldi's books. It may start slow, but it is necessary to describe Harriet's life and "set the stage". The climax, although a bit gory, is as exciting as any novel. It was educational and taught me about the Nat Turner Slave Rebellion, while I had fun reading it. I could imagine the setting and relationship between Harriet and her "girl", Violet. The plot was believable. Overall, the book was educational, well-written, and interesting, but lost my attention at points.

Reviewer Age:14
Reviewer City, State and Country: Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

It starts out with the main character, Tommy, talking. He's explaining about how this freaky kid named Dwight, who goes to his school, can do origami. So one day Dwight makes an Origami Yoda. Not with directions off the internet, no he made up the pattern. Also when something exciting is happening Origami Yoda gives advise through Dwight. The thing is, it's really good advise. But Dwight is too stupid to have such good ideas. Isn't he? So Tommy sets out to find out; is Dwight actually smart or if the force is with us?

I thought that this book was a serious yet humorous story about a boy and his "quest" for the truth. If you read quickly it's a short read but something to occupy your time. If you are a slower reader then this will be a good book for you too. It's short as well as easy. It's got fun little doodles on some of the pages which just adds to the humor.


Reviewer Age:14
Reviewer City, State and Country: Sandy, Oregon USA