Jane Eyre

I was getting ready for my reading list presentations next week, and I realized I never did a blog post for Jane Eyre!  I love this book!  It's one of my all time favorites, and I read it for the first time when I was fourteen, so I thought it would be a great fit for my 8th graders.

Jane is orphaned as a young child and sent to live with her aunt and uncle.  Her uncle loves her, but his death leaves her in clutches of her cruel aunt and cousins.  This terrible beginning only gets worse when Jane is sent to a spare boarding school with harsh masters.

She eventually becomes a teacher and leaves to be a governess for Adele, the ward of Mr. Rochester.  This is when things really start to get interesting!  Mr. Rochester is gruff and several years older than Jane, but it isn't love before the two develop a mutual affection.  Jane knows nothing can come of it because she is poor and plain, but Mr. Rochester is the love of her life.

Meanwhile, strange things are happening in the house, and no one will tell Jane the truth about these dangerous events.  Will Jane find love and contentment, or will she be thwarted by fate?  Read this gothic romance to find out!

I hope you love Charlotte Bronte's classic novel as much as I do!

2014-2015 Reading Lists

Individual book reviews are also tagged by grade level and year, so you can search for reviews.  For example, if you want to see my reviews for all the 6th grade books, just click on 6th Reading List 2014-2015 in the labels on the right side of the screen.  Happy reading! :)

Summer of the Mariposas

Odilia and her sisters are left to run wild after their father abandons them.  Their Mama is stuck in a fog of depression and constant working to pay the bills, and the cinco hermanitas spend the summer days swimming in the river.

Everything changes the day they find the dead man floating in the river.  They are afraid to call the authorities because they know if he is an illegal his family may never find out what happened to him.  So they decide to steal the junky car their father left behind and take the man home to his family in Mexico.

Odilia is opposed to the plan at first, but when La Llorona appears to her to tell this is a quest she and her sisters must complete together, she reluctantly decides to go.  After all, their abuelita doesn't live far from the man's home, and it's been years since they've seen her.

On the way the sisters will have to face dangers both normal and paranormal.  They will have to evade border guards, a witch, the lechuzas (owl creatures with human heads), and even the chupacabras!  Will the cinco hermanitas be able to complete their quest?

Guadalupe Garcia McCall wrote this book because of a conversation she had with her students one day while teaching The Odyssey.  One of the girls in her class asked why all the stories where about old white guys, so she decided to write her own version of the story using sisters and Mexican folklore.

Foul Trouble

Terrell Jamerson is the number one high school basketball player in the country, and everyone knows it.  His life is a constant stream of people trying to get on his good side in the hopes of getting a piece of the pie when Terrell goes pro.  The NCAA rules don't really seem to matter to any of these guys.  Shoe companies, agents, even some guys Terrell thought were friends all want in on the action.

His best friend and teammate Danny Wilcox hates those guys; he calls them the super friends.  He tells Terrell that if he gives in to the pressure those guys will own him.  Danny's dad, who also happens to be their coach, agrees.

This book follows Terrell and Danny as they try to navigate the murky waters of college recruitment through the summer and their senior year in high school.  The longer Terrell waits to make his decision, the sweeter the deals will get.  What will Terrell decide?  John Feinstein will have you on the edge of your seat waiting for Terrell's decision in his latest book!

The Rithmatist

Joel has wanted to be a rithmatist his whole life, but it just wasn't meant to be.  At least he has free tuition at Armedius Academy where he can snatch every crumb of knowledge about the rithmatic arts as possible.

The rithmatists have an important job, defending the United Isles from the wild Chalklings at Nebrask.  Chalkings are two dimensional creatures drawn with chalk.  When a rithmatist does the drawing, these creatures can come to life.  At Nebrask the tower is full of wild chalklings whose origins are unknown.  These creatures are in a constant battle to escape and devour anyone they come across.  The Rithmatist use defensive lines and circles to keep them contained.

Now the rithmatists seem to be under attack.  Several students have been kidnapped in rithmatc battles.  The chalk lines are there as evidence, but there are also strange markings no one has seen before.  Joel's job as a summer research assistant for a professor of rithmatics puts him right in the middle of the investigation and in the sights of a kidnapper who is more dangerous than anyone suspects.

Read this exciting opening book of a new series by Brandon Sanderson!

Steelheart

What if heroes with super powers like the guys in the comic books suddenly became real?  Sounds pretty awesome, right?  But what if there are no heroes, only villains?

This is the nightmare for David and everyone else after Calamity appeared in the sky.  At first some were hopeful like David's dad.  He believed that in a world with super villains there would have to be super heroes as well.  All that changed the day Steelheart murdered David's dad and pretty much everyone else in the bank where they were trying to take out a loan.  David was the only survivor of that horrifying day, and he's pretty sure Steelheart would kill him, too, if he knew David existed.

That day David vowed to avenge his father's death, but how do you kill someone who is invincible?  Bullets bounce right off him.  Knives shatter without even scratching his skin.  But David know Steelheart has a weakness; all epics do, and David has seen a glimpse of Steelheart's.  He just hasn't figured out quite what it is yet.

Steelheart has one other power.  He can turn any inanimate material into steel which is what he does to the entire city of Chicago--steel buildings, steel trees, steel streets, steel corpses of everyone he killed that day.  To make matters worse, Steelheart teamed up with Nightwielder, an epic who can block out the sun.  Now Chicago is Newcago, a city ruled by a tyrant and plunged into perpetual darkness.

Now that he's seventeen, David has been living under Steelheart's rule in Newcago for years, but he's not giving up his desire for revenge.  When a rebel group shows up in town, he may get his chance.

Read Brandon Sanderson's new book that's a twist on the super hero genre.  This was a great read with a great twist at the end that I did not figure out.  You will love it!

The Eye of Minds

Michael is a gamer who spends more time on the VirtNet than he does in reality.  He's never even met his best friends, Sarah and Bryson in the real world.  He's pretty content with his life of gaming and hanging out until one day he witnesses a girl committing suicide.  Usually when you die in a game, your body just wakes up, but Tanya ripped out her core before she jumped.  With her connection to her real body severed, virtual death is the same as real death.  Michael can't understand why she would do it, and all she will tell him before she goes is a name:  Kaine.

Now Michael and his friends are on a mission to find Kaine, a gamer with the skills to trap people in the VirtNet and manipulate the raw code to create his own reality.  They may not be able to die in the VirtNet, but they can certainly feel pain, and the trio of friends will have to face dangerous and bloody situations as they track Kaine.

The deeper they travel, the more they question the real purpose of their mission, and Michael has the distinct feeling that everyone is holding back key information that could mean the difference between life and death.

This was a great thrill ride!  The ending was a little rushed, but that will just leave you hungry for the sequel.

Read James Dashner's exciting new book, and then read The Maze Runner before the movie comes out later this year!

School Spirits

Izzy Brannick is trained to fight monsters.  That's all her family has done for centuries, but it's a dangerous job, and there are only a few Brannicks left.  Really it's just Izzy and her mom since her older sister Fin went missing on a job a few months ago.

Izzy's been distracted since Fin disappeared, so her mom decides they are going to go on an extended job in Ideal, Mississippi, to get rid of a little ghost problem.  It should be an easy job.  All Izzy has to do is salt the ghost's grave and problem solved.

But things are quite that easy.  Izzy will have to enroll in the local high school to investigate the haunting, and she may be fifteen, but she's never been to school or had any real friends before.  Her missing sister, and a teenage warlock whose been trapped in a mirror for a couple of centuries are the only "friends" she has.

Izzy quickly befriends the kids in the Paranormal Management club at school thinking they can help her with background research, but she quickly discovers she actually likes them, and this tough monster hunter is faced with the idea of having real friends and maybe even a crush.  But they don't know the truth about Izzy or that she'll be leaving as soon as the job's finished.

This "routine" job takes a twist for the weird, and Izzy may need all the help she can get to banish an angry ghost bent on getting revenge for a one hundred year old crime.

This series opener by Rachel Hawkins is fun, flirty, and dangerous!

Perfect Ruin

Morgan has lived all her life on Internment, a floating city from which no one can escape.  There are those who've tried--jumpers who are left permanently damaged by the attempt, like her older brother Lex.   Even though Morgan sometimes dreams of the ground and what life might be like there, she feels safe on Internment.  But the discovery of a murdered girl will change the way she sees her city forever, and when the king announces the girl's betrothed as her killer, Morgan is horrified.

The people of Internment are matched from birth to each other.  The city is small and can't support unlimited population growth, so new children can only be born when adults die.  And two children, a boy and a girl, are always approved together.  This way they can grow and learn as a pair, creating a bond that will eventually result in marriage.  Morgan is lucky; she loves Basil.  Not everyone is so perfectly matched, but Morgan is horrified by the thought that one part of a betrothed couple could murder the other.

The more she considers this, the more she begins to really examine her world and doubt the things around her.  Her secret fear is that she too will become irrational and try to jump or something equally horrifying.  Would Basil still love her if he knew the truth?

The more Morgan questions, the more the world around seems to unravel.  Internment is hiding more secrets than Morgan ever considered, and she may be in more danger than she ever thought possible.  

Lauren DeStefano's first book in the new Internment Chronicles series is lush, romantic, and dangerous with a cliff-hanger ending that will leave you hungry for the next installment!

Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, America's First Black Paratroopers

 Tanya Lee Stone's new book is the true story of America's first black paratroopers and an important step in the process of integrating our armed forces.

During WWII African American soldiers where not allowed to have the same positions as white soldiers.  They were mostly relegated to service positions which was frustrating because they wanted to do their part in the war just like anyone else.

Sgt. Walter Morris soon noticed that his African American soldiers where suffering under the strain of boring work as guards at Fort Benning, so he can up with a plan.  He would wait until all the white trainees had left for the day, and then have his soldiers go through the same training.  Even though they had no hope this practice would lead to promotion, this active training definitely improved morale.

It wasn't long until someone noticed, and Sgt. Morris's soldiers soon became the first official black paratrooper trainees.  The training was difficult, and even after they had proved themselves time and again, these soldiers where faced with hate and racism in the army and out of it.

This is a great book about a time when our nation was struggling to find its way.  We were fighting hatred and discrimination in Europe, but many people were blind to the racism in our own backyard.  You'll enjoy this book filled with photographs and personal stories from some of the original Nickles.

For Darkness Shows the Stars

Elliot North is only seventeen, but she feels responsible for the welfare of her family's estate and all the workers under her care.  Her father and older sister are more concerned with views of the ocean than they are with feeding the people through the winter.

After her father plows under a field of wheat to build a racetrack, Elliot begins to panic.  It seems like a miracle when the Cloud Fleet wants to rent out her grandfather's house and shipyards to build a new ship that can allow them to sail even further than before.  Elliot thinks all her problems are solved until she sees Caption Malakai Wentworth, a former laborer on the North estate and now a decorated Captain in the Cloud Fleet.  Their past is more complicated than just that of servant and master; childhood friendship blossomed into love, but has now settled into resentment over the past four years of Kai's absence.

More than just the estate is at stake as Elliot battles her own feelings and Kai's coldness.  Loosely based on Jane Austen's Persuasion, Diana Perfreund's novel is a heartbreaking love story set in a post-apocalyptic science fiction landscape.

Long Lankin

There's a secret buried in Bryers Guerdon.  It's been haunting this village for more than 400 years, taking children, destroying lives.  It's been asleep for decades, but now it's hunger has been awakened, and Long Lankin is hunting.

It's 1958, and Cora and Mimi have been sent to live with their Great Aunt Ida in the tiny village of Bryers Guerdon.  It's clear Auntie Ida doesn't want them.  Her reaction to their arrival is almost violent, and the girls are terrified by her ancient crumbling home with its locked doors and nailed shut windows.  But there is no where else to go.

Auntie Ida warns them against going out on the marshes, and especially to never go into All Hallows, the ancient nearly abandoned church and cemetery.  But local boys Pete and Roger tell the girls they go there all the time, even though they've been warned not to.  What could it hurt?
There are strange markings inside the church, and four-year-old Mimi wants to leave.   The older children enjoy the thrill of exploring the spooky old building and grounds until Cora thinks she sees someone watching.

Have the children unwittingly unleashed an ancient terror on the village?  No one wants to talk about it, but Cora knows something is wrong.  A monster is stalking the village, and the dead have returned to the world of the living.  Long Lankin is looking for another victim.

This slow boil of a horror story is truly creepy!  I couldn't put it down, and I couldn't go to sleep.  Pay attention, this is the kind of subtle thriller that is all in the details, and a true connoisseur of dark fantasy and classic horror will recognize the warning signs and sense the approach of the beast.  Read Lindsey Barraclough's debut novel if you aren't too afraid.

Bomb

This is the amazing true story of the birth of the atomic bomb that began in 1939 with the discovery that uranium plus radioactivity equals fission.  This discovery was made in Germany as WWII was was simmering, and scientists were desperate to convince Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States, of the danger of this discovery.  It would take the urging of one of the most famous scientists in history, Albert Einstein, to convince him of America's need to begin a nuclear program.

With that decision, a team of scientists, headed by Robert Oppenheimer, was assembled to begin testing and development.  It would be a process filled with trial and error until eventual success.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union (now Russia) was an American ally during WWII, but relations between America and Russia had never been friendly.  Once the war was over, Roosevelt knew we would be enemies again.  Therefore, America, Russia, and Germany began a secret race to develop the atomic bomb.

It wasn't a fair race.  All the sides had spies and saboteurs, and it was clear to the Allied Powers that Germany could not be allowed to develop the bomb.  At this time, Russian spies known as KGB agents were working to collect Communist sympathizers in the US to help develop their own weapon.

This book is a story of spies and science, elation and horror.  Steve Sheinkin's new book is a fast-paced must read thriller.

Far Far Away

I am cheating a little because we don't actually have this book in the library yet.  It is on it's way, I promise!  Despite this, I had to write my review while it is still fresh in my mind because I loved this book!  It is the perfect blend of realism, fairy tale, mystery, and horror.  In fact, I'm not quite sure what section to put it in.  I should just make a section called "Awesome Books That Defy Categorization."

Jeremy Johnson Johnson hears voices, one voice in particular.  It's Jacob Grimm.  Yes, that Jacob Grimm, collector of fairy tales.  Jacob is stuck as a ghost because he has left something, he doesn't know what, undone.  He wondered the earth searching in vain for his brother Wilhelm  until he heard about the boy who could hear ghosts.  Since that time, he has been Jeremy's best friend in the small town of Never Better.

Jacob hopes that protecting Jeremy from a mysterious person known as The Finder of Occasions will help him pass on.  The only problem?  He doesn't know who this person is, only that he is a threat to Jeremy.

Aside from his friendship with a ghost, Jeremy leads a fairly lonely existence.  When his mother left years ago, his father hid away from the world in a deep depression, and Jeremy was left to fend for himself.  Now in addition to the looming specter of the Finder of Occasions, the Johnson home is in foreclosure, and Jeremy may soon be homeless.

Jeremy's life will take a turn for the interesting one day when flame-haired beauty, Ginger Boultinghouse, takes an interest in him.  Ginger starts to break loner Jeremy out of shell.  Even as Jeremy starts to feel real happiness, danger creeps ever closer.

You must read Tom McNeal's new book.  It is just so wonderful and charming and complex and steeped in the ancient world of fairy tales.

Road Trip

At first Ben is pretty excited to go on an impromptu road trip with his dad to rescue a border collie pup.  His dad's border collie, Atticus, is coming along for the ride, and this new dog will be Ben's.  Everything changes when Ben's dad tells him a secret he's quit his job and that they can no longer afford the hockey camp Ben was supposed to attend later in the summer.

Now Ben is furious and unwilling to talk to his dad at all, so he calls his friend, Theo, to join them.  This is just the beginning of a crazy trip that will eventually involve an old school bus, a cranky mechanic, a fed up waitress, and the highway patrolman with the department record for writing speeding tickets!

This trip was supposed to be about rescuing a dog, but it looks like there are some people who need rescuing, too!  If Atticus, the dog, has anything to say about it, everyone will get exactly was they deserve!  Join Ben, his dad, and their collection of strays in this crazy road trip.

Read Gary Paulsen's latest book written with his son Jim Paulsen.

My Family for the War

Ziska Mangold is not really Jewish.  Yes, her ancestors were, but her grandparents converted to Christianity years ago, so she has grown up as a Christian.  None of this matters when things start to get bad in Germany.  She faces the same persecution as the orthodox Jews in the neighborhood.

By the time things become dire for Ziska's family, it's almost impossible to leave the country.  She doesn't understand why the Nazis won't let the Jews leave if they hate them so much.  This is when Ziska's mother learns about the kindertransport.  Jewish children are loaded on trains and sent to live with foster families in England for the duration of the war.

Ziska is horrified that her mother wants to send her away.  How can she be safe and happy if her family has abandoned her?

My Family for the War is Ziska's story of growing up and coming to terms with a new life and family forced on her by Hitler and the Nazi party.  She will discover new struggles and fears in this life, but she will also find friendship and love.  As painful as her struggles can sometimes be, the happy times are bittersweet as she remembers those she left behind in Nazi occupied Europe.

Anne C. Voorhoeve's novel gives the reader a window into life for Jews in England during the war and the far reaching and painful effects of conflict.

To learn more about the kindertransports, watch this video:

Bad Girls

From Delilah to Bonnie Parker, this book is a collection of mini biographies about bad girls throughout history.  Each lady has a two or three page biography with an illustration followed by an argument between our two our two authors about how bad that lady actually was.  These discussions are presented in graphic novel format as an ongoing discussion between the mother/daughter author team.

There is nothing really in depth about the women in the book, but it's strength is really in encouraging readers to view the women in their historical context and to reserve judgement.

This quick and fun read by Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple should encourage readers to find out more about the women so they can get the facts and draw their own conclusions.

Etiquette & Espionage

Sophronia has always been more interested in taking things apart and climbing trees than proper dress and conversation, so she is horrified when she learns her mother is sending her to Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But it doesn't take long for for her to realize this is no ordinary finishing school.  for one thing, the school is tethered to a series of balloons floating around the moors.  One of her teachers is a hot werewolf, and another is a fashion obsessed vampire.  She is learning to be a lady, but she is also learning self-defense, knife skills, and intelligence gathering.  Graduates learn to finish in more ways than one.  To top it all off, she seems to have made an enemy on her first day there.

With a mysterious prototype missing and the school menaced by flywaymen, Sophronia isn't waiting around for someone else to have all the adventures and solve this mystery!

Set in a steampunk Victorian England, this novel is full of mystery, adventure, evil plots, and even a few mechanimals.  Read Gail Carriger's debut novel for young adults and join in the fun!  Plus, how awesome is that cover!  I knew I had to read it as soon as I saw it!