LAST NIGHT I SANG
TO THE MONSTER

by Benjamin Alire Saenz

 Zach spends his days at the rehab center running from the monster in his head.  He can't allow himself to think about the monster or to fight the monster because it would hurt too much.  Above all else, Zach is afraid of pain, and has become a drug addict and an alcoholic to help himself  ignore the pain of his life.  Zach doesn't remember why he's in the rehab center.  He doesn't know what happened to him before he came, and he doesn't know who's paying for his stay there. He just knows he needs to stay.  One of Zach's roommates is Rafael, a man old enough to be his father.  Rafael has been a depressed alcoholic for terrible reasons of his own for many years.  But now he's detemined to do the work necessary to heal his heart and life.  Along the way, he helps Zach by sharing his art and his journal and his quiet wisdom.  And Adam, one of Zach's therapists, has an amazing ability to ask just the right question at just the right time to push Zach along on his own journey of healing. 
       A beautiful piece of writing, in spite of the raw language, Last Night I Sang to the Monster is an intense story of love and redemption.  For me, the tears flowed!  On this year's Tayshas list.     ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

Hawkes

Harbor

S.E. Hinton

Those who have read and loved such S.E. Hinton classics as The Outsiders and Tex may have wondered if she has written anything new recently. The answer to that question is yes! After a 15-year hiatus, Hinton has come out with a new novel, but if readers are looking for another teen novel like The Outsiders, Hawkes Harbor will come as something of a shock. This dark, adult novel of Jamie Sommers, an orphan abused as a child, and terrified as an adult by an awakened vampire to the point of madness, moves too slowly to really capture, and for me, at least, was too crude and violent to engage. I wanted to stop reading every page. The plot seems inconsistent. Near the end of the book, the cruel vampire, Grenville Hawkes, is cured of his vampirism, and suddenly gains concern for the man he violently controlled for years. While I like happy endings as much as anyone, this resolution just didn't seem to fit the tension-filled beginning of this novel. S.E. Hinton's new book will not be available in the high school library, and I would be hard-pressed to recommend it to our students. There are plenty of better vampire books out there. Leave this one on the shelf. ~review by Dail Sams