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Summer Reading Suggestions 2005
Happy Reading, Enjoy Your Summer!
Girls in Pants by Ann Brashears
"It's the summer before the Septembers go to college, a summer in which old and new boyfriends appear, families grow and change, crises occur and are resolved, and the pants continue their designated rounds. Despite their diverse schedules, the four friends who appeared in the previous Traveling Pants books reunite one final weekend before they go off to four different colleges. Readers of the other books won't be disappointed with these new adventures: Carmen's mother is pregnant; Bee is back at soccer camp with her old crush, Eric; Tibby's sister falls from her second-story window; and Lena's parents refuse to pay for art school."
-- Booklist, December, 2004 |
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Fat Boy Swim by Catherine Forde
"Obese 14-year-old Jim Kelly feels that he's "suffocating under his own sticky weight,"and his schoolmates' dramatic bullying doesn't help. His only confidence comes from his extraordinary cooking skills, which he keeps secret from everyone except his family. Then a new, soccer coach, whom Jim privately names G. I. Joe, badgers Jim to gain control of his health. Finally relenting, Jim asks Joe to teach him to swim, and his surprising ability in the pool and his growing friendship with Joe reveal astonishing family secrets." -- Booklist, September, 2004 |
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
“It takes me a long time to get used to people I do not know. For example, when there is a new member of staff at school I do not talk to them for weeks and weeks. I just watch them until I know that they are safe. Then I ask them questions about themselves, like whether they have pets and what is their favorite color and what they know about the Apollo space missions and I get them to draw a plan of their house and I ask them what kind of car they drive, so I get to know them. Than I don’t mind if I am in the same room as them and don’t have to watch them all of the time.”
Christopher is a fifteen-year-old mathematical genius who discovers the lifeless body of his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, in the garden. Curious as to how this crime came to be, Christopher decides to do some detective work and uncovers more than he bargained for. His sleuthing leads him to discover a family secret that will lead him on a journey to London alone. For a boy with autism, this proves to be an overwhelming task. Christopher’s voice throughout his story is both refreshing and humbling. It is a great insight to a disorder that is very difficult to understand. |
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The Beast by Walter Dean Myers
"Returning home to Harlem for Christmas after his first semester away at a posh Connecticut prep school, Anthony Witherspoon ("Spoon") finds that everything -- his parents, his girlfriend Gabi, his neighborhood -- seems different. "Five months was not that long, but it was long enough to shift perspective, I thought, to discover new shadings, and to question old ones." While the difference is largely one of perception, Gabi has changed, and although Spoon briefly suspects a new boyfriend, he soon learns that she has begun using heroin."
-- The Horn Book
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Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin
"The Uplands are bleak and poor, separated into domains of the great lineages, each one defined by its gift. Gry's family gift is the ability to call animals to the hunt, and Orrec's family gift is the undoing-the ability to dissolve stone, or bone. Orrec tells his story as well as his family's: how his father raided the lowlands for his beloved wife; how Orrec was born, and grew up with Gry, the daughter of his father's best friend; how Orrec's gift never developed normally, but came late, and wild, so his eyes had to be sealed lest he do great harm; how his mother failed, and died. Orrec's journey of self-discovery is, when reduced, the familiar tale of the adolescent seeking to define himself rather than taking the definitions offered by circumstance, but the telling is so compelling that the ending almost takes the reader by surprise." --The Kirkus Review, August 1,2004 |
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