Summary: In the summer of 1976, ten-year-old Eli Book’s excitement over Bicentennial celebrations is tempered by his father’s flashbacks to the Vietnam War and other family problems, as well as concern about his tough but troubled best friend, Edie.
Candlewick
Summary: In this dark, erotically charged, beautifully crafted novel, John Marsden brings one of Shakespeare’s most riveting characters to full-blooded life in a narrative of intense psychological complexity.
Candlewick
Summary: High school artist Ovid’s journal recasts his classmates’ lives and loves as modern-day Roman mythology, while slowly revealing his own struggles with parents who need him to be the perfect son in the wake of his meth-addicted sister’s disappearance.
Candlewick
Summary: Fleeing across icy mountains from a pack of terrifying dog-men sent to hunt them down, four teenagers escape from their prison-like boarding schools to take up the fight against the tyrannical government that murdered their parents fifteen years earlier.
Candlewick
Summary: Take an administrative snafu, a bad breakup, and what shall heretofore be known as “The Hot-Tub Incident,” and you have got two unprepared sophomores on a semester abroad. For American party girl Tasha, an escape to Oxford may be a chance to ditch her fame as a tabloid temptress, but wading deep in feminist theory is not her idea of a break. Meanwhile, the British half of the exchange, studious Emily, nurses an aching heart amid the bikinis and beer pong of U.C. Santa Barbara. Soon desperation has the girls texting each other tips on fitting in, finding love, and figuring out who they really are.
297 pages, Candlewick Press
Summary: After learning that she is the sole heir to the Ruan throne, orphaned Zira, trained in weaponry and martial arts as a warrior priestess, must unravel the secrets of her identity, decide her people’s fate, and accept her feelings for a man who should be her enemy.
Candlewick Press
Summary: When Miranda’s guardian angel Zachary recklessly saves her from falling into an open grave and dying, the result is that she turns into a vampire and he is left to try to reinstate his reputation by finally doing the right thing.
Candlewick Press
Summary: Pursued by power-hungry Prentiss and mad minister Aaron, young Todd and Viola set out across New World searching for answers about his colony’s true past and seeking a way to warn the ship bringing hopeful settlers from Old World. 479 p., Candlewick Press.
Before we start discussing books published in 2008 for our 2009 Mock Printz Awards, we wanted to talk about our favorites from last year one more time. And here they are. (If you’re wondering why we’re reading 2008 books for a 2009 award, it’s because the ALA’s Printz Award is announced the January following the year the books considered are written. The award is named after the year it is announced, not the year the book is written. Tricky, huh.)
Our Mock Printz Winner
Unwind by Neal Shusterman. 335 p., Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Find it at WCPL
Our Mock Printz Honor Books
Right Behind You by Gail Giles. 292 p., Little, Brown. Find it at WCPL
Thirteen Reasons Why: A Novel by Jay Asher. 288 p., Razorbill. Find it at WCPL
Zane’s Trace by Allan Wolf. 177 p., Candlewick Press. Find it at WCPL
