Hero
by Mike Lupica

Mike Lupica is known for his outstanding sports novels for young adults.  With Hero he takes on a whole new genre--superheroes.  Zach Harriman and his parents live in an amazing apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City.  Zach can look across the street to Central Park, a place he loves better than any other.  Zach's dad is some sort of top secret trouble-shooter for the U.S. government, and answers to the President.  Very cool, except he's always gone, and Zach can't help being resentful.  Then, one day Zach just knows that his dad is dead, and he runs all the way home from school to learn that his father has died in a plane crash.  Zach knows something isn't right, because his dad was the best pilot on the planet.  Something is definitely suspicious.  
      Zach knows he won't be able to move on until he visits the site of his father's plane crash.  With the help of his best friend, Kate, he makes plans to take a bus out to the crash site.  Once there, strange things begin happening, including the appearance of an old man named Mr. Herbert, who seems to know all about Zach and his dad.  And he tells Zach that he has the magic, just like his father did.   At that moment, Mr. Herbert walks away fast, with Zach following.  And then, all of sudden, Zach finds himself back in New York City, though seconds before he had been three hours away.  So begins Zach's discovery of the magic within him.  He begins to exhibit more and more powers, and he just knows when he needs to leave the apartment for an encounter with the "bads."  He learns that he can trust very few people, even the ones he thought he knew the best.  Hero is a classic tale of good against evil, which just cries out for a sequel as Zach becomes more and more confident in his super abilities. 
Recommended.    ~Reviewed by Mrs. Sams
     


    

The Exiled Queen

by Cinda Williamas Chima

At the end of The Demon King, Book One of the Seven Realms series, Han Alister has learned that he is a wizard whose powers have been suppressed by the silver cuffs he's always worn on his wrists.  The clan leaders take the cuffs off his wrists and promise him an education at the Wizard's school in Oden's Ford in exchange for his vow to help them fight their enemies when called upon.  His long-time clan friend, Dancer goes with him. 

Princess Raisa meanwhile, flees from a coerced marriage to Micah Bayer, son of the High Wizard.  Accompanied by her friend and guard Amon Byrne and his cadets, Raisa heads to Wein House, the military school in Oden's Ford, at the advice of Amon's father, to receive the military and political training she needs to effectively perform her duties as queen.

Both journeys are filled with dangers and discomforts, but Han and Raisa arrive safely in Oden's Ford to begin classes in their separate schools.  Though they have met in the past, neither knows the other is in Oden's Ford, and Han knows Raisa only as Rebecca Morley, a blueblood he met back in the Fells.

While at Mystwerk, Han must constantly watch his back, as Micah Bayer, Han's sworn enemy, repeatedly tries to kill him.  To protect himself, Han begins meeting with a powerful and mysterious wizard named Crow, to learn more advanced magic.  Raisa excels in her classwork and puts up with the confining rules Amon has placed on her for her own protection.  Their relationship becomes more complicated and tense as Raisa realizes that they can never marry.  Raisa constantly worries about her mother the queen and what is hppening back in her queendom.

Everything changes when Han and Raisa meet and Han convinces the princess he knows only as Rebecca Morley to tutor him in blueblood customs and history.  As Raisa teaches, Han takes on more polished speech and manners without losing his street smarts.  For her part, Raisa begins to fall in love with Han.

An abduction and impending forced marriage of Raisa by Micah Bayer, and a summons back to the clan camps of Han, delivered by Bird, sends both on separate and treacherous journeys back to their homeland.  Neither knows whether all they have learned in Oden's Ford is enough to ensure their safe arrival, or what they will find if they do manage to make it home.  Chima has given her readers a true cliff-hanger in this second installment of the Demon King series.  According to her website, we have to wait until September 2011 before The Gray Wolf Throne, the third in the Seven Realms series is published.  I love this series!  It's going to be a long year.       ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

THE DEMON KING

By Cinda Williams Chima

        A fast-paced fantasy inhabited by a strong-willed princess and an impoverished street rat constantly running from one danger to the next, The Demon King is Book One of a series which promises to be filled with evil wizards, warring clans, secret amulets, unrequited love, and powerful magic--everything I love best in a good story.  Princess Raisa has spent the last few months preparing for her naming celebration, the day she turns 16 and becomes eligible for marriage.  Suitors from all over the kingdom have arrived and sent gifts in hopes of winning Raisa's favor. Her queen mother seems to be under the influence of Gavan Bayar, the High Wizard, a man Raisa does not trust.  Meanwhile, Han Alister has had a run-in with Micah Bayer, the son of the high wizard, and takes Micah's ancient and powerful amulet.  Once he has this magical charm, trouble seems to follow Han everywhere. 

       The night of Raisa's party, after most of the guests have left, her mother sends for her and she realizes that her instincts about the High Wizard were true.  Her mother and Gavan Bayer intend to force Raisa into a secret marriage with Micah Bayer.  With trickery and a little luck, Raisa escapes the castle with Amon, her childhood friend and guard, going into exile to escape the unwanted marriage and the influence of the High Wizard.  When Han is told that silver cuffs which have been around his wrists his entire life were placed there to control his magical powers, he agrees to have them removed and to go to Oden's Ford for wizard's training.  The story ends with Raisa and Han heading toward a common destination with dangers both behind and ahead of them both.  Good news!  The sequel, The Exiled Queen is coming out in September.  The Demon King is on this year's Lone Star list.  Highly recommended.    --reviewed by Mrs. Sams

    

Vampire Academy

by Richelle Mead 

       Lissa Dragomir, a vampire princess, and Rose Hathaway, Lissa's guardian, are bound together by more than friendship.  Rose can actually enter Lissa's thoughts and emotions and feel what she feels.  For two years, they have lived on their own, with Rose protecting Lissa from the Strigoi, the undead, but they are finally captured and returned to St. Vladimir's Academy where they have to adjust all over again to royal intrigues, tons of homework, and having no control over their own lives.  As much as she dislikes being back, Rose recognizes that she needs the intense physical training she is getting from the incredibly handsome guardian, Dimitri.  That becomes even more evident when terrifying things start happening to Lissa, even in the safe world of the Academy.  Dark and edgy, Vampire Academy has everthing a young adult novel should have--conflict, a strong, sarcastic main character, and romance.  Vampire Academy is the first in a five-book series.  Reviewed by Mrs. Sams.

How to Ditch Your Fairy
by Justine Larbalestier

Imagine a world where most people have their own personal fairy--a fairy that performs a single random task all the time .  That world is New Avalon, where Charlie has a parking fairy and everyone knows it.  Anytime Charlie is in the car, the driver can automatically find the perfect parking place, no matter where they are going or what time of day it is.  Charlie hates her fairy, hates driving and cars, and hates smelling like gasoline.  More than anything she wants a cool fairy like her friend's shopping fairy, or like Fiorenze's boy fairy, which makes every boy her age adore her.  To get rid of her stupid parking fairy, Charlie has been walking everywhere for two months, without success.  Her determination not to ride in a car has caused her to be late to her sports school where there are so many rules and ways to get demerits, that she is constantly in trouble.  In desperation, Charlie agrees to meet with Fiorenze's mother, the world's greatest expert on fairies, in an effort to get rid of her fairy.  But things are going too slowly, so Charlie and Fiorenze agree to sneak a look at the ultimate fairy book written by Fiorenze's mother, and learn how to switch fairies.  Charlie could hardly wait to to have every boy in school drooling over her, but when it happens, she soon realizes that constant adulation is not all it's cracked up to be.  Fio and Charlie go to extreme lengths to ditch their fairies altogether in a hilarious, if far-fetched, comedy of errors.  This book is filled with Aussie slang, which is a little hard to get used to at first, but the glossary at the end of the book helps.  How to Ditch Your Fairy is a fun read from the 2010-2011 Tayshas list.
             --reviewed by Mrs. Sams

The New Policeman

by Kate Thompson

      J.J. and his family live on a farm outside the small Irish village of Kinvara.  Musicians all, the four family members struggle to keep up with everything in their lives.  There's never enough time to do it all--chores, school work, house work, fiddle-playing and dancing. It almost seems like the days get shorter and shorter all the time.  J.J.'s mom Helen has a birthday coming up.  All she wants is more time.  J.J. doesn't know how he's going to do it, but he's determined to get more time for his mom.  A chance meeting with a neighbor lady sends J.J. exploring the underground rooms of an ancient fort ruins, and there Anne Korff shows him the passageway into another world, the world of the faeries, where time is supposed to stand still.  Together they hope to discover where the time leak from one world to the other is, and plug up the hole.  The problem with traveling between the two worlds is that it's hard to remember why you've come once you cross over.  J.J. struggles to stay focused on his purpose of finding the time leak.  Meanwhile, the new policeman in Kinvara is really a faerie who entered from the faerie world to search for the leak from this side.  Only he just can't remember why he became a policeman.  Interwoven with ancient Irish legends and the traditional dance music of generations ago, this quiet and magical tale charms and seduces the reader and draws him back to a time in history when fairies and leprechans were as real as a next door neighbor.  A lovely story.

         ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams