INCARCERON
by Catherine Fisher

Here is a darkly fascinating tale about Finn, a young man who lives in a vast, metallic prison world of hunger, sickness, and teachery called Incarceron.  Finn has no memories earlier than three years before, when Gildas, the local wise man, finds him, but Finn is convinced he's from Outside, though the prison has been sealed for centuries. When the Comitatus, Finn's ragtag gang and family, raid another group, Finn captures a woman who has seen the tattoo on his wrist, and knows of the crystal key which also has the same eagle image. Gildas believes the key will unlock the way out of the prison.  He, Finn, Finn's oathbrother, Keiro, and Attia, an abused girl, begin on the the journey out of Incarceron, discovering multiple powers of the crystal key as they go.  For one thing, the key is a communication device to Claudia, the privileged girl on the Outside who holds the matching key, and is the daughter of the feared Warden of Incarceron.  While Finn and his companions make their perilous journey through the prison, Claudia is involved in an intrigue of her own, as she seeks to find a way into the prison to save Finn, and to avoid marriage to the weak heir to the throne.  This story is filled with twists and unexpected turns until finally the reader is left dangling with multiple unresolved plotlines.  This is a story begging for a sequel.  The London Times calls Incarceron one of the best fantasy novels written for a long time.  It certainly is one of the most imaginative and unusual.    ~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

Marcelo in the Real World

by FRANCISCO X. STORK

Marcelo Sandoval doesn't think like most people.  He struggles in social situations and can't always read the emotions and motivations of others.  Marcelo has a mild version of autism called Asperger's Syndrome, and although he is an extremely bright and knowledgeable 17 year-old, he just can't function well by himself and has always gone to a special school called Paterson.  There, Marcelo works with the school's ponies, a job he loves.  In fact, he has plans to work all summer with the horses, before his senior year begins.  Unfortunately, Marcelo's father, a high-powered attorney in his own law firm, has other ideas.  He wants Marcelo to work in a place where he will be challenged to learn new skills.  He wants him to work in "the real world," in his law firm's mail room for the summer.  The deal is that if Marcelo is successful in the mail room, he can choose where he wants to go to school for his senior year, instead of going to the local public high school where his father wants him to go.

       

          The person in charge of the mail room is Jasmine, a girl not much older than Marcelo.  She is not happy that Marcelo has been assigned to her, but soon grows to understand and even love Marcelo.  Marcelo is pure of heart, and has had little contact with evil in the world.  If there's anyplace where one can learn fast about evil, it's in a law office.  Marcelo hasn't been there long before he is confronted with mean people, evil situations, and moral challenges.  Jasmine helps him navigate these new waters as much as she can, but Marcelo has to meet many of these challenges on his own.  He has difficult choices to make that could ultimately hurt his father, the law firm, and even himself, but he finally makes the right decisions with admirable courage.  Marcelo in the Real World is a wonderful coming of age story with a unique hero it's impossible not to admire.  This book is on the 2010-2011 Tayshas list.

                  ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

Three
Cups of Tea
by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Of the hundreds, maybe thousands of books I've read in my lifetime, few have touched me more than this book about the change one man has made for children in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, all during a time of great turmoil among various Islamic groups, and then later, during America's "war on terror" after 9/11.  Greg Mortenson, a missionary kid who grew up in Africa, went to northern Pakistan in 1993 with the intent to climb K2, the second highest peak in the Himalayas.  Besides the challenge of the climb itself, his motivation was to place a bead bracelet which had belonged to his younger sister on the peak in her memory.  Greg's attempted climb was a failure, and in a severely debilitated physical condition, he stumbled into a desperately poor mountain village where the people cared for him for weeks.  As he got to know these humble but proud people, he realized that this village had no means of educating its children.  During the warm months, students gathered on an outcropping of rock, sat on the ground and did their lessons on slates or with sticks in the mud, often without a teacher.  At that point, Greg Mortenson changed the focus of his life and left  Pakistan with the intention of raising enough money in America to come back and build Korphe village a school.  To make this happen, Greg lived in his car or a storage building while working as a nurse, so that he could save every possible penny for the school.  He didn't own a computer, so he hand typed hundreds of letters to the rich and famous, soliciting funds for his school.  His personal sacrifice for children half a world away, was something most of us can't even imagine, much less do ourselves. Yet, today Greg Mortenson has been instrumental in building scores of schools for children, especially girls, who would never have had an opportunity to get an education, but for him.  It's not possible to read this book without being challenged to think about what we all should be doing to promote peace and help those who have little ability to help themselves.  Three Cups of Tea is a must-read.
        Reviewed by Mrs. Sams

            

Saint Iggy

by K.L. Going

Sixteen-year-old Iggy Corso is a projects kid who never caught a break in his whole life. Both parents are drug addicts who owe their souls to their dealer, Freddie, and hardly remember Iggy is alive.  In fact, Iggy's mom went "visiting" weeks ago and hasn't been seen since.  Iggy gets kicked out of school for doing something stupid, and it's basically his last chance.  Iggy never intends to do bad things, but he just seems to fall into situations no matter how hard he tries to stay out of trouble.  He has a hearing with the school superintendant in three days, and he decides he will figure out some way to contribute to society, so that he can convince the school authorities to let him back into school.  When he needs some help and comfort, he goes to his friend Mo's apartment, but Mo is not in a good place himself.  One thing leads to another and soon Iggy finds himself with Mo in Freddie, the drug dealer's apartment, the last place on earth Iggy wants to be.  Mo leaves the place with an assortment of drugs and a $2000 bill to Freddie that he has to pay within a few days.  No one knows better than Iggy that debts to Freddie never get paid, but he goes with Mo to his rich mother's place where Mo is sure he can get the money, and Iggy sees a life he never knew existed.  Mo's mom takes Iggy under her wing, but refuses to give Mo the money.  Iggy knows that Mo is in deep trouble, and he finally realizes what he has to do to contribute to society.  Iggy is a character that it's hard not to like, and who doesn't deserve all he gets.    Saint Iggy is an intense story of drug addiction and poverty, and how one boy chooses to deal with it.  ~reviewed by Dail Sams

Hate List
by Jennifer Brown

Ever since that terrible day last May when her boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on students in their school commons, Valerie has tried understand how she couldn't have seen what was coming. How could something like their hate list just be a way of blowing off steam for her, but deadly serious to Nick, and she never realized it?  Shot while she tried to stop Nick from targeting the people on the list, Valerie is caught between those who believe she is just as guilty as Nick, and those who think she is a hero for saving another student.  All she knows is that the hate list was her idea, and she lost the best friend she ever had when Nick turned the gun on himself.  In the months following the shootings, Valerie alternates between total self-absorption, and surprising sympathy for others. This amazing first novel by Jennifer Brown, tells the story of a girl who slowly crawls back to health from a black hole, and the unexpected compassion she receives along the way.  Highly recommended!    ~reviewed by Dail 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

Getting the Girl:  A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance, and Cookery.

by Susan Juby

Getting the Girl has both of the things I love and the things I hate about young adult novels.  I enjoyed the interesting plotline and appealing main character/narrator.  Sherman Mack is a quirkly ninth grader with a fairly irresponsible mother.  To say that he is often unsupervised, is a gigantic understatement.  Sherm attends a high school where some secret group or person "defiles" a fellow classmate for very obscure reasons.  Being defiled is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a person, because it's equivalent to being a leper in Biblical times or an "untouchable" in India.  In one nanosecond, the entire student body turns against a student in very cruel, nasty ways.  Did I mention that the defiled are always girls?   When one of  Sherman's friends is defiled, he decides enough is enough, and begins his own entertaining and mostly ineffective "investigation" into possible suspects.  This is a fun read, but here comes the thing I hate most about young adult novels.  When authors feel the need to include multiple crudities and unending suggestive language and situations, I just get frustrated.  It seems to take the fun out of the story for me.   I would recommend this book with warnings.                  ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

                                                                                                                                                                                

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

by Beth Fantaskey

     Jessica's Guide is yet another in the huge glut of vampire books following the popularity of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series.  In it, Jessica is a normal teen, adopted by her parents from Eastern Europe when she was a small child. When Lucius Vladescu, a vampire prince, arrives to claim Jessica as his vampire princess bride and carry out the pact made years before, Jessica realizes her senior year is not likely to go as planned.  Lucius is quite handsome, but completely arrogant and overbearing.  And he finds Jessica common and unappealing.  Although the plot premise has potential, I found it just didn't quite live up to the promise.  The book has a bantering tone some of the time that indicates the author was after a light-hearted comedy.  But as the story progresses, it gets darker and more intense.  The reader is left with ambiguous feelings.  Jessica is no Bella and Lucius is no Edward, but still this is a mostly entertaining read for those who can't get enough of vampires.

            ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

Into the Wild
by Jon Krakauer

"In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt McKinley.  Four months later his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters."  So begins the Author's Note of Into the Wild, an account of the events leading up to the tragic death of Chris McCandless.  Krakauer began his research into this harrowing true tale for the purpose of writing an article which was published in Outside Magazine in early 1993.  The article received so much attention that Krakauer decided to do further research and expand the piece into a book.  Meticulously and sympathetically, Jon Krakauer retraces Chris's steps following his graduation from Emory University in 1990, when he disappeared into the West and discontinued all contact with his family.  Though estranged from his parents, Chris was no hermit.  He made friends and influenced people along the way.  In addition to revealing the passionate and intense personality of McCandless, Krakauer also includes stories of other adventurers who ended much as Chris did, and devotes a chapter to his own life when he was near Chris's age, all for the purpose of shedding light on the person Chris McCandless was.  A fascinating and engrossing read, Into the Wild is a cautionary tale against the pride of youth.  I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves a good adventure story, but especially to young men with itchy feet and the intense desire to experience nature to the fullest. 
      --reviewed by Dail Sams