April 2005 Book Picks 
All titles are available in the High School library.
See Mrs. Smith if you need help!

	Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis "Luther T. Farrell. From the outside, narrator Luther's life might seem enviable. He drives a luxury vehicle, using a "for-real, honest-to-God, straight from the Secretary of State phony driver's license" that says he's 18. His education fund is worth $92,510 and he's a top student on his way to becoming the winner of the Whittier Middle School science fair for the third consecutive year. The down side: Luther is constantly kept under the thumb of his hyperstrict mother, "the Sarge," a woman who has lied, cheated and extorted her way to "own[ing] half the ghetto." When not in school, Luther is put in charge of doing the Sarge's dirty work, cleaning out the rat-infested apartments of evicted tenants and taking care of the elderly residents at the adult rehabilitation center owned by his mother. Happiness and independence seem out of Luther's reach until he devises a way to "buck" the Sarge the same way she has "bucked" the system."  -- Publisher's Weekly, July 19, 2004
	Godless by Pete Hautman "Agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason's mother is a hypochondriac, his father is religious, and best friend Shin is a snail-collecting freak. Bored in his parent-mandated Catholic teen group, Jason creates Chutengodianism: the Church of the Ten-legged God, worshipers of the town water tower. Jason is Founder and Head Kahuna of his joke religion, Shin is First Keeper of the Sacred Text, and friends Dan and Magda are recruited as disciples. Amusing at first, their mini-cult goes sour when Jason invites thuggish Henry-who knows how to climb the water tower-to join the Chutengodians. Shin sulks, and Henry leads a dangerous midnight swim in the water tower that results in injury, police discovery, and punishment. Now Jason is grounded for life, Dan and Magda won't speak to him, and Henry and his bullying cohorts have co-opted Chutengodianism and made it crass. Worse, Shin seems dangerously unhinged-is he taking Chutengodianism seriously? " -- The Kirus Review, May, 2004
	The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason "When four Princeton seniors begin the Easter weekend, they are more concerned with their plans for the next year and an upcoming dance than with a 500-year-old literary mystery. But by the end of the holiday, two people are dead, two of the students are injured, and one has disappeared. These events are blended with Renaissance history, code breaking, acrostics, sleuthing, and personal discovery. Tom Sullivan, the narrator, tells of his late father's and then a roommate's obsession with the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a 15th-century "novel" that has long puzzled scholars. Paul has built his senior thesis on an unpopular theory posited by Tom's father-that the author was an upper-class Roman rather than a monk-and has come close to proving it.  This novel will appeal to readers of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday, 2003) but it supplies a lot more food for thought." -- School Library Journal, October 1, 2004
	Run, Boy, Run by Uri Orlev "Based on true-life experiences, this survival story about a Jewish boy in Warsaw during World War II reverberates with courage and determination. It begins when Srulik is eight years old. As he emerges from a garbage can after foraging for scraps to eat, he discovers that his mother has disappeared. He is alone in a world filled with danger. He begins his struggle to survive without any drama, just an unspoken decision that he will do whatever is necessary. This is his single-minded focus; he expends little energy bemoaning his fate. He acts on his father's advice not to let others know that he is Jewish as he is taken in by families, works on farms, hides out in the forest, and narrowly escapes discovery. Even after he is wounded and loses an arm, he perseveres and teaches himself to do things that normally require two arms. The story is totally engrossing as it vividly describes the hardships faced by so many youngsters during the war. "  School Library Journal, November 1, 2003
	Bottled Up by Jayne Murray "Pip, who's usually stoned, goes into counseling to avoid getting expelled and thereby incurring even more of his father's wrath.  Pip struggles with his family's secrets but starts to fall apart under the pressure. A helpful counselor, the boys in his group counseling sessions, and a new teacher provide some support, but it's concern for his younger brother that gives Pip the courage to try, with mixed success, to give up drugs. Painfully believable scenes reveal his father's drinking and violence, his mother's addiction to Valium, and Pip's own escape from his miserable home life through marijuana and alcohol." -- Kirkus Review, June 1,2003