Summer 2006 Reviews

A Summer of Kings by Han Nolan is a truely memorable, inspirational, and fantastic story. The story is set in the summer of 1963 during the Civil Rights Movement. The main character is Esther Young, a rich white girl in New York. For the first time she's had in awhile, she's looking for a real summer without tutors, an adventure, and he arrives in the form of 18-year-old King-Roy Johnson, a black boy from the South on the run from an accused murder. Esther is just looking for romance, but what she gets is a lot more. Her family, a family of geniuses and much talent, like putting her down because she's not like them. But through King-Roy, her best friend Pip, and the teachings of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., she learns to be the change that everyone needs. While King-Roy becomes angrier and becomes deeply involved in the Islam Nation, hating the "blue-eyed white devil", Esther finds solace and comforts in the nonviolent practices of Ghandi and MLK. In the end, she changes her friends' and family's outlook on herself so that they, too, end up seeing her for who she is: a girl on a mission to change the world for better.

A Summer of Kings was an amazing book. It pulled together history, a girl with no identity of her own, an angry boy hurt by nonviolence and furious with the "white devil", and a whole wacky assortment of "superior" people living under on large roof. I loved the book because it was real. The whole time I was reading it, I had to keep reminding myself that Esther and King-Roy weren't real, but there were many out there exactly like them.

I would recommend this book to any student in high school, but mostly, to any one interested in the civil rights movement and the people who were never named, but kept the movement going.

~ Ashley Schmidt, grade 10, Youngstown Early College

To Top

Now Staring Vivien Leigh Reid: A Diva in Training

Sandy Rideout and Yvonne Collins

St. Martin's Press

Vivien Leigh Reid, lives in Seattle with her father and grandmother. Her mother moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. Now Vivien, who prefers to drop her first name and calls herself Leigh, is spending another summer with her mother. Last year she was with her mom Annika while she was filming a movie in Ireland. That’s where Leigh met Rory, her boyfriend. This summer Leigh has been enrolled in an acting class to help her decide if acting is for her. While in this class her mothers former director suggest that Leigh go on a few auditions. He sends her to a show called Diamond Heights, soap like teen drama with a five star Diva as the main character named Sasha. After Leigh gets the part she changes who she is and how she acts, she even changes the color of her hair. When Rory comes to visit Leigh realizes that they have both changed, she has also met someone new, Gray.

As the story continues the reader is told about all the ways Leigh has changed, how she has turned into a total DIVA. Causing Rory to break up with her, all the friends she has made leave her side and her character on Diamond Heights is killed off.

The plot in this book is more suggested to those in the grades between 6 and 8. A lot of the contexts is for a younger demographic. The writing style is a little jumpy with the characters text messaging, emails, letters, and imaginative scenes. Now starring I am sure would make more sense if you read the first book in this series Introducing Vivien Leigh Reid Daughter of a Diva.

~ Sarah Bauer, grade 11, Trumbull Career and Technical Center

To Top

The Road of the Dead

Kevin Brooks

Scholastic, Inc.

Two brothers leave their home in London, to bring home the body of their sister, whom had been savagely raped and killed in a far off village.

All Cole and Ruben wanted was to get her home so she could be properly laid to rest. It wasn’t going to be easy. They were up against the police and some creepy village people.

Cole didn’t know how complicated this was going to get, but Ruben did. He knew before they left home. Ruben can see and feel things, sometimes as they happen to someone else. He saw and felt his sister die. He saw The Dead Man do it. He was scared. It didn’t all make sense yet, but he would “get it” soon.

Ruben is worried about his brother Cole, he knows what Cole is thinking and feeling. He also knows Cole has a gun!

This book starts a little slow, you have to stick with it as it explains the characters. Then things start jumping. You cant put the book down! I would say 14 and older would enjoy this book. Both Male and Female

~ Michael Frondorf, grade 12, Trumbull Career & Technical Center

To Top

Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne

Barry Jonsberg

Random House Children's Books

The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne is a good book. It’s about two teenagers who try to prove their new English teacher is a drug dealer. The book is told in first person by Calma, a teenage girl in Miss Payne’s English class. Calma’s best friend scares all of the other substitutes off, but is unable to get rid of Miss Payne. He decides to trash her house. Once he gets in there he sees clues that may prove she’s a drug dealer. He and Calma try to prove this throughout the rest of the book. I wouldn’t recommend this book to a younger audience. It has strong themes that include but are not limited to sexual content, violence, language, and illegal actions.

~ Shannon Fuller, grade 12, Trumbull Career and Technical Center

To Top

Confessions of a Boyfriend Stealer: A Blog

Robynn Clairday

Random House Children's Books

This book is set up as an online blog with message boards where people could post back and forth. I enjoyed this book because it seemed like real high school, not fake “Sweet Valley High”. The ‘Terribles’ are three best friends and they’re the “it” girls. Two are very popular and one is like the “pitty pledge”. She is like a late bloomer so to speak. She doesn’t use men like the other two; until the two are on vacation. She ends up with the boy her best friend is dating, and when she admits it, they laugh in her face. This book is awesome. Read it!

~ Ashley Senko, grade 12, Trumbull Career and Technical Center

To Top

In High Places

Harry Turtledove

Tor Books

The setting of the novel takes place in the twenty-first century Kingdom of Versailles, the roads are terrible and Paris is a dirty, little town. Serfdom and slavery are both common, and no one thinks that’s wrong.

Teenage Khadija, daughter of a prosperous family of Moorish business travelers, is unfazed. That’s because she is really Annette Klein from twenty-first century California, and her whole family are secret agents of Cross Time Traffic, trading for commodities to send back to our own timeline. Now it’s time for Annette and her family to go home for the start of another school year, so they join a packed train bound for their home base in Marseilles, where the cross-time portal is hidden.

The bandits attack while they’re crossing the Pyrenees. Annette/Khadija is separated from her parents and knocked out, and wakes up to find herself a captive in a caravan of slaves being taken to the markets in the south. She is in a tight spot. . .

I thought the story was very interesting and amusing. I know that the setting took place in 2096, but the way the author made it sound it felt as though it was made in some medieval time man, many years ago. It has an eerie feeling throughout the story, and there is a lot of suspense towards the ending of the story that even shocked me as the reader. All in all, I thought the story was really good and the author put a lot of thought into writing it and getting the readers’ attention.

~ Josh Gemik, grade 11, Trumbull Career and Technical Center

To Top

Things Left Unsaid: A Novel in Poems

Stephanie Hemphill

Hyperion Books for Children

Sarah is an average teenage girl who likes boys, shopping and hanging out with her friends. But soon Sarah gets bored and needs to find something new, which she finds with a classmate named Robin. Sarah and Robin first talk at a party where they destroy the hostess’s lawn with Tiki torches and vomit. Sarah and Robin are inseparable for a very long time. After Robins suicide attempt Sarah realizes how much she misses her old friends. Slowly Sarah discovers how much fun life can be without Robin and without drinking.

This book is somewhat of a harder read and is a novel in poetry stanza. There are some alcohol and drug references in this book so if you aren’t interested in all that this isn’t the book for you. How the character Sarah is feeling is the most expressed in this book because it is from her point of view.

~ Sarah Bauer, grade 12, Trumbull Career and Technical Center

To Top

What Mr. Mattero Did

Priscilla Cummings

Penguin Young Readers Group

The book takes place at a middle school. The main characters of the story are Clair, Melody, and Mr. Mattero. In the book, Mr. Mattero is being faced with sexual harassment charges from three girls that were in his music class. Clair and her two friends were tired of going to music class so they went to the principle and told her that Mr. Mattero touched them sexually. The girls are now being separated from each other and their music teacher is kicked out of school with pay until after the trial. Things have got so bad that the police and FBI have got involved. Melody, Mr. Mattero’s daughter, is now trying to figure out what these girls claim her father did is true or not. It’s a very sad and heart breaking book about friends and family falling apart over lies. I would recommend this book to middle school students and high school students. It’s a very great book and it can make you think twice before you do something. Plus let you realize the consequences before it happens.

~ Raquel Chadman, grade 12, Trumbull Career and Technical Center

To Top

Rewind: Sometimes Love Only Makes Sense Backwards

Laura Dower

Scholastic, Inc.

The book Rewind’s setting takes place at their high school. The main characters are Cady, Lucas, and Hope. Each chapter goes back and forth between the three characters telling their side of the story. The book starts from when they are at prom back to when Lucas first moved to this new school at the beginning of the year. The story is about young girl (Cady) falling for this new guy (Lucas). He seemed interested at first and then they just became friends. Lucas was secretly seeing Hope, but that was only because she wouldn’t allow him to tell anyone they were dating. But at prom Lucas did something that he shouldn’t of done and now he is in trouble. The book goes back in time and shows how everything leads up to this event. In the book the characters are very likeable but there are some parts you just want to jump in the book and just ask them why did they do that? The book Rewind is a very good book. It has a lot of lessons to learn from and the things they get into just keeps you glued to the book all night. I would recommend this book to high school students. Cause the characters are seniors and also there is some sexual activities, some vulgar language, and teen parties.

~ Raquel Chadman, grade 12, Trumbull Career and Technical Center

To Top

The Girl who Invented Romance

Caroline B. Cooney

Bantam Doubleday Dell Books For Young Readers

I’m not really sure I liked this book, it seemed slightly immature to me. The girl, is down and out because she is a little behind in the dating department. She decides to invent a game about dating and love, part of the rules is you eventually have to talk to the boy you end up with. It’s a test of guts. The game is included with the book and kind of made the book come to life. Other than that, I did not like this book at all.

~ Ashley Senko, grade 12, Trumbull Career and Technical Center

To Top

Introducing . . . Sasha Abramowitz

Sue Halpern

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Sasha Marie Curie Abramowitz wanted a normal life, but how could her life be normal with a middle name like Marie Curie, and a brother with Tourette's Syndrome. Sasha and her parents lived in a college dorm, considering her parents were both science professors at Krieger College. Her parents specialized on how the brain functions, and the different parts of the brain. However, Sasha's brother, Danny, went to a private school for children with "problems," as Sasha calls it. Danny has trouble concentrating on certain things, and he has trouble listening. He enjoys baseball and card tricks, but when he becomes frustrated or angry he cusses uncontrollably, Tourette's Syndrome. Sasha wants a normal brother, and a normal family. Not a family where both of her parents study the brain and where her father is also an English professor, but believes he's a poet. Although, Sahsa is always proud to report that her best friend, Carla Smith, is normal. When Sasha grows up she wants to be a writer and a pastry chef, but those aren't the plans that Carla has for them.

Every week Carla has a different idea that she wants to follow through with, to either make money or help others. One was the A. Hardy Detectives, which posed a problem. There is a baseball player that goes to Krieger College whose name is Andrew Hardy, but he isn't a detective, he does card tricks to earn money. When Andrew called Sasha and asked her about the detective business, the A. Hardy Detectives were out of business. Carla didn't mind though, she had started something else known as Red with a boy named Pinky Summers. Sasha didn't care, because she had something else on her mind, Danny. Every month Sasha and her parents went up to visit Danny at his school, and every time the counselors said that they would like to send Danny home for a few months because he was behaving so well. Well, this time, Danny was coming home for good, because one of the old custodians set a part of the school on fire and did considerable damage to the school so every child was sent home. Sasha couldn't bare the fact of that there was no room in the dorm for her brother, let alone the fact that he was coming home, and staying home. At one of the baseball games, the Krieger Cats were in for the scare of their life, their best player, Andrew Hardy, was hurt by a baseball. His parents flew in from Arizona and requested that he stay with the Abramowitz's which was fine, only there was no room with Danny coming home.

I really enjoyed this book because every person has a view of what "normal" is and Sasha wanted a normal family, with a normal brother, in a normal house, and normal jobs. However, she didn't get what she asked for, and learned to live with her life. I would recommend this book for middle school students because they seem to go through a lot of hard times that they feel that no one else understands. sometimes they just need someone to connect to and I believe Sasha Marie Curie Abramowitz is the perfect person.

~ Ashley Aldan, grade 8, Boardman Center Middle School

To Top

Indigo Blue

Cathy Cassidy

Penguin Young Reader Group

Indigo thought her life would get better before it got worse, but it doesn't happen that way. Mum moves Indie and her baby sister Misti out of the nice comfortable house with Max, into the flat from hell. Max was mum's boyfriend and Misti's dad, only he was abusive. For a few months, mum and Max had been fighting, and Max was physically abusing mum. Every morning she would have new black and blue marks all over her. Mum slept down stairs, but she really wasn't sleeping all that much. She had made up her mind to leave Max, so she was secretly packing and bring the stuff to the new home. The three moved blocks away from Max hoping that he would never find them. Indie still went to school, but now it was a longer walk and she had to leave earlier, which she didn't mind. However, in order to get the new flat in order, Indie missed a week or so from school and was welcomed back by an odd surprise. Her best mate Jo ignores her when she arrives back at school and has given up her seat to another girl, Aisha Patel. Aisha wants to be friends with Indigo and Jo, but Indigo is fuming. How could Jo do such a thing? Well, she did and after that, Jo and Indigo fight about the most random things and eventually their friendship ends. Indigo doesn't care though, she has a new friend, a true friend, Aisha.

Indigo's grade is doing a play, Oliver, and the main part Oliver has to be shared between Aisha and Indigo, but they don't care. They become better friends and help each other memorize their lines. Everything is going fine, mum has a job, and a new friend who lives in the attic of the house which they live in, and best of all no Max. That soon changes. One day after school Indigo leaves school a little late, and there's Max across the street waving. Max goes over and talks to Indigo and offers her a ride home, she declines, and sets off for home by herself. Only she isn't by herself, Max is following her in his big blue van, and she knows it. Indigo tell mum who assures her that everything will be fine, but its not. One night Max shows up at the flat and demands that mum go out to dinner with him to talk things out. Mum accepts the invitation, but never comes home. Near the middle of the night, two police officers show up at the flat and bring Indigo and Misti to the hospital. Max and mum never made it to dinner, Max purposely crashed the van in an attempt to kill mum. Max was put in jail and Indigo never did play Oliver n the play. Indigo's family went and lived with her grandmother and were given a second chance for a new beginning.

I really enjoyed this book because it shows that people need to follow what they believe in and not try and live in the past. People these days are so insecure about themselves and their future that they never get, never have an adventure, they find a happy memory and try and go back and relive it. It will never happen. I'm glad that Indigo's mum picked up all of their belongings and got up and moved to the flat from hell, it's better than being abused every night. At least they got a second chance. I would recommend this book for middle school students. On the cover of this book it says for ages ten and up. I would not recommend a ten year old to read this book because there are certain events that take place in this book that a ten year old would not understand.

~ Ashley Aldan, grade 8, Boardman Center Middle School

To Top

Girl, (Nearly) 16: Absolute Torture

Sue Limb

Random House Children's Books

Jess had the perfect summer planned. She was going to spend the whole summer with Fred, her boyfriend that her mom didn't know about because her mom would flip, literally. During the first week of summer, her mom had news, they were going to spend the summer at Jess's dad's house. Jess had to tell Fred, she couldn't bare the pain by herself. It was too much. When Fred found out he was heart broken, but he said he would keep in touch with her through text messaging. So the journey began without Fred and through haunted houses and boring old cemeteries until Jess finally reached her destination, her dad's house. The whole time Jess was away from Fred she was afraid that he was cheating on her with her best, but unbelievably beautiful friend Flora. Jess's mum decided to stop a town away from her dad's town to explore a little. Jess was allowed to go off on her own, so she went to her dad's house a day early. At dad's house there was a man named Phil, who is friends with Jess's dad and his girlfriend dumped him and he needed a place to stay. Then Fred called and said he needed Jess to do him a favor, so she did it. However, it wasn't a favor at all, Fred had come to see her, and was by the beach near her dad's house. Jess was amazed, shocked, not to mention excited. Jess made up a plan to tell her dad about Fred, and see if he could stay in his house too. Jess left Fred at the beach and went home and dropped a bombshell on her dad, but she got one back, her dad was gay.

I really enjoyed this book because it showed that divorces don't have to be as bad as most people see them as. In the book Jess was so delighted to hear that her dad was gay because it explained so many things, such as why her parents got divorced in the first place. I would recommend this book for middle school students because they would have a better understanding on dating issues since there's always so much drama when someone is going out with someone else. They always think their boyfriend of girlfriend is cheating on them.

~ Ashley Aldan, grade 8, Boardman Center Middle School

To Top

Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn

Sarah Miller

St. Martin's Press

What if you could see the thoughts of the guy you liked? What if you could see his every thought or feel his every feeling? Well for one girl she can. This mystery girl is Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn.

Gideon Rayburn is a boy who has flunked his way into Midvale Academy. The instant he gets there his roommates, Nicholas and Cullen welcome him to the Prep school by throwing out all his music and placing a big bet on when he is going to lose his virginity. Gideon is torn between the cute and feisty Molly McGarry and the most beautiful girl he has ever laid eyes on, Pilar Benitez- Jones.

This book was very interesting to read. The characters were mostly likable and it was very well detailed. I think it was a great book to read and that mostly high school juniors and seniors would get into this novel. Also if you like this book then you should check out these books too: The Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar and The A-List series by Zoey Dean.

~ Lauren Moss, grade 10, Youngstown Early College

To Top

The Road of the Dead

Kevin Brooks

Scholastic, Inc.

Ruben knew something bad happened to his sister Rachel. He is almost certain that she's dead. It's only a matter of time before he and his family find out it's true. Ruben and his brother Cole set out to find her killer and retrieve her body. On their journey they come across Abbie, with whom Rachel was staying with. Ruben senses that Abbie knows something and she's not telling the whole truth. They later discover the unsettling, yet true story about Rachel's murder. The path they took was not an easy one. Both Ruben and Cole risked their lives to bring justice for their sister. With a little help they solve the mystery and take the journey back home, as two very different young men.

I found the book to be quite compelling. Told through Ruben's accounts, the story of triumph and pain was unimaginable, but well-written. I enjoyed the book from start to finish. The suspense kept me reading page after page of this heart-felt novel. I would recommend the book to mature high school readers. Overall, The Road of the Dead is a very good book.

~ Darla Conti, grade 10, Struthers High School

To Top