For Guys
Wallace Wallace, accidental football hero, is on detention because his teacher doesn’t like his review of “Old Shep, My Pal.” Detention happens to take place during play rehearsals for a play based on the very same book, because the teacher is also the director of the play. Wallace Wallace, who cannot tell a lie, starts making suggestions to improve the play. Meanwhile, someone is trying to sabotage the play, and a lot of people think it’s Wallace Wallace....
by Frank Cottrell Boyce Nothing happens in the town of Manod. In fact, it’s so boring, the town newspaper only comes out once a month. Dylan Hughes keeps the log book for his family’s petrol (gas) business, the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel, but things are about to change for him and his family. Mysterious white vans have begun passing the Oasis on their way to the abandoned slate quarry on the mountain, and Dylan wants to know what’s going on. This book could be a bit challenging to American readers because of British terminology and some Welsh words, but it’s...
This was to be my next book for review here, but my 10-year-old literary advisor has taken off with it, so I won’t get it back for a couple of days. From what I was able to get from the cover, it’s about a boy growing up in a town where everyone has super powers. Everyone, that is, except for the boy....
Nancy Farmer’s The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm is a thriller set in Zimbabwe in 2194. A high-powered government official’s over-protected children go on an adventure and end up deeper than they thought. When they disappear, their parents hire a misfit detective agency that always seems to be about half a step behind the kids. This is an interesting look at a potential future where plastic is a highly-prized commodity, but old spirits still do battle. It’s a very exciting book, but at some points, I started to get tired of all the scrapes the kids got into. However,...
by Neil Gaiman There is another city in the tunnels under London. Richard Mayhew stumbles into it by chance and finds himself in a world stranger and more dangerous than he imagined. This book wasn’t written specifically for teens, but as the author of the Sandman series, Gaiman is popular with teens....
When school weirdo Christopher Creed disappears without a trace, he leaves behind a note mentioning several students by name. Privileged, happy Torey Adams is on the list. As Torey tries to figure out why Creed mentioned him and where Creed disappeared to, he starts to see a side of life he never imagined existed. He starts to notice the hypocrisy of his friends and wonder why he didn’t treat Creed better. Author Carol Plum-Ucci does a very good job capturing a teenage boy’s thoughts in her first novel. Although they’re probably going to make a movie out of this one,...
Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher is about the Cutter High School Mermen, an unlikely swim team of misfits trying to earn their letters. The team is put together by The Tao Jones, better known as TJ, one of the three mixed-race people in his town, and coached by a teacher who started the team to avoid having to be the assistant wrestling coach. Along with being an unlikely group of athletes, the swimmers don’t even have a pool of their own. They swim in a too-small pool at a local rec center. They also face the harassment of a town...