Romance and Friendship Books for Valentine’s Day

Check out some good books about love and friendship

Fifteen by Beverly Cleary
Jane gets asked out by Stan, the most popular boy at school. Is she ready for all this? This book may have been written in 1956 but it is still a fun read today.

Just As Long As We're Together by Judy Blume
At first Stephanie loves seventh grade. She has a new cool friend from California and things seem better than ever. Then she finds out her parents are getting divorced and she has a huge fight with her old best friend. How will she handle this?

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
Leo’s world changes the day Stargirl Caraway comes into his life. Leo falls in love with this unconventional girl and she changes his life forever.

Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
New Yorker Mia Thermopolis had no idea that she was a princess. With the help of her grand-mere she just might be prepared to take the throne one day.

Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly
Angie Morrow and Jack Duluth date the summer after they have finished high school. Angie is scheduled to go to college in the fall and Jack back to Oklahoma. This love story is a told very honestly and though it was written over 60 years ago, the story holds up today.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
Four friends spend their first summer away from each other. They keep in touch through letters and by sending a pair of magical pants between the group of friends in the mail.

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
Vivian, the teenage werewolf, is not usually attracted to human boys, but with Aiden Teague things are different. She decides to reveal her werewolf identity to Aiden. He reacts in horror. She is also expected to date Gabriel the leader of her wolf pack. Vivian is much more confident and self assured than Bella but this novel might be loved by readers of Twilight.

Book Review-What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones

Sophie is almost 15 and, among other things, is having a hard time figuring out the difference between love and lust. She thinks about Dylan, her current boyfriend, and wonders how she really feels about him. She remembers the hurt she felt when her old boyfriend Lou broke up with her at the end of 8th grade. Then there is the masked boy at the school dance who Sophie dances with until the song ends and he disappears.

“It’s like my mind and my body and my heart just don’t seem to be able to agree on anything.”

Sophie has other things on her mind too, like why her father works so much and why her parents are so angry at each other. She fights with her parents sometimes, like the evening of the dance when her mother came to pick her up and Sophie was wearing the tight dress she went behind her mother’s back and purchased.

Be careful with this book, you just might want to read it in one sitting. It’s free verse poetry style make this book a quick read. But be sure you don’t judge a book by its cover.

The book cover on the left looks like the one I read, but the What My Mother Doesn’t Know also comes in a more reader friendly cover. They are both the same book.

Katie CCL

The Catcher in the Rye Author J.D. Salinger Dies

J.D. Salinger author of The Catcher in the Rye died today at the age of 91. Find out more in this article on the Today show website: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35127071/ns/today-today_books/?GT1=43001

Michael L. Printz Award Announced

On Monday, January 18th, 2010 The Michael L. Printz Award for literary excellence in young adult literature was announced. See this link to find out more about this year’s winner and winners from previous years: www.ala.org/yalsa/printz!

Current Winner
Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob's (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

2010 Printz Honor Books

The committee also named four Printz Honor Books:

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman

Once Charles Darwin sets his rational mind to marry the religious Emma Wedgeworth, they both must take a leap of faith in order to build a life together.

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a monstrumologist, races against time to save his town (and himself) from the anthropophagi, a pod of monstrous creatures who prey on humans.

Punkzilla by Adam Rapp
Fourteen-year-old runaway Jamie, homeless and strung out, embarks on a harrowing journey to reach his dying brother.

Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973
by John Barnes
Karl Shoemaker wants to begin his senior year with a new identity separate from his counseling group, his alcoholic mother and the legacy of his dead father.

Book Review: Hole In My Life by Jack Gantos

I am a fan big fan of true stories. I have always been a fan of non-fiction but I read fiction too, so think this is why biographies and autobiographies resonate with me so much. I am a big fan of Hole In My Life by Jack Gantos. Jack Gantos is a well known writer of children’s and young adult books including the Joey Pigza books and the Rotten Ralph books. He developed master’s degree programs in writing children’s literature. He is a very successful person. However, when he was a young man he went to jail for a year and a half for a drug trafficking related offense. This is the story of how he got into trouble, his trial and time in jail, and how he eventually got out of jail and went to college.

As the book begins, we meet Jack as a young man living in Florida who has dreams of going to college to become a writer. During his junior year of high school things go bad for his family’s business and his family moves to San Juan, Puerto Rico. He cannot attend school there because he cannot speak Spanish so he goes to work as an electrician and lives on his own in the hotel he works in. He develops a drinking problem. He moves back to Florida to finish high school. Then he joins his family who is now living in St. Croix. This is where he gets mixed up with some drug dealers who are looking to transport drugs into New York harbor.

Much of the story is centered on the time he spent on the drug boat. I was riveted by this book. I listened to the audiobook and could not stop listening. The audiobook is read by Jack Gantos himself.

Hole in My Life has received these acclamations: an American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults; American Library Association Notable Children's Books; American Library Association Popular Paperbacks for Young Readers; Michael L. Printz Award - Honor; Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year; Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library; Parents' Choice Award Winner; Booklist Editors' Choice; Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Award; Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List; School Library Journal Best Books of the Year; Robert F. Sibert Award - Honor; Massachusetts Children's Book Award.