Wednesday, October 29, 2008

New in November

Aurelie: Heather Tomlinson: 184 pages
When a broken promise tears three best friends apart, Princess Aurelie is saddened that she can't make them forgive one another, especially when a dangerous war threatens her beautiful fairyland and she now needs all the support she can get.
The Bone Magician: F.E. Higgins: 272 pages
While working as a body watcher for the local undertaker, Pin Carpue witnesses a bone magician bring a body back from the dead and becomes immediately suspicious of past events that left his mother dead and labeled his father a murderer.
Bogus to Bubbly: Scott Westerfeld: 196 pages
A behind-the-scenes guide to the world of the Uglies series discusses its history, geography, technology, cliques, names, and slang.

Blue Flame: K.M. Grant
When the Blue Flame becomes in danger of falling into the wrong hands and a new religious crusade begins, lifelong friends Raimon and Yolanda's budding romance is put on hold as they work to find the one person who can rightfully wield the Blue Flame's power and save the people of Occitan from pending doom.

More than Friends: Poems from Him and Her: Sara Holbrook and Allan Wolf: 64 pages
Presents poems in the voices of a teenage boy and girl in the throes of attraction as they experience love, awkwardness, insecurity, and distractions while trying to make their relationship work.


Bewitching Season: Melissa Doyle: 346 pages
In 1837, as seventeen-year-old twins Persephone and Penelope are starting their first London Season, they find that their beloved governess, who has taught them everything they know about magic, has disappeared.

Santa Claus in Baghdad and Other Stories about Teens in the Arab World: Elsa Marston: 198 pages
Eight short stories offer provocative snapshots of Arab teenagers growing up in environments riddled with religious, historical and cultural dilemmas.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

New in October

Groosham Grange: Anthony Horowitz: 196 pages
Forced to attend Groosham Grange by his frustrated parents, thirteen-year-old David Eliot is shocked by the strange things he sees and quickly comes to understand the beastly nature of the people who attend and teach there after dark secrets are suddenly revealed.

Impossible: Nancy Werlin: 376 pages
When Lucy discovers that her family is under an ancient curse by an evil Elfin Knight, she also finds out that she must perform three impossible tasks before her daughter is born in order to break the curse save them both.

Shark Girl: Kelly Bingham: 276 pages
After a shark attack causes the amputation of her right arm, fifteen-year-old Jane, an aspiring artist, struggles to come to terms with her loss and the changes it imposes on her day-to-day life and her plans for the future.

Up All Night: A Short Story Collection: 227 pages
Six best-selling authors--Peter Abrahams, Libba Bray, David Levithan, Patricia McCormick, Sarah Weeks, and Gene Luen Yang--respond to the question: What keeps you up all night? with remarkable stories of revelations, confessions, murder, and mystery in each of the authors' powerful style.

Antsy Does Time: Neal Shusterman: 247 pages
Fourteen-year-old Anthony "Antsy" Bonano learns about life, death, and a lot more when he tries to help a friend with a terminal illness feel hopeful about the future.

Brooklyn Bridge: Karen Hesse: 229 pages
In 1903 Brooklyn, fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom's life changes for the worse when his parents, Russian immigrants, invent the teddy bear and turn their apartment into a factory, while nearby the glitter of Coney Island contrasts with the dismal lives of children dwelling under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Beneath My Mother's Feet: Amjed Qamar: 198 pages
When her father is injured, fourteen-year-old Nazia is pulled away from school, her friends, and her preparations for an arranged marriage, to help her mother clean houses in a wealthy part of Karachi, Pakistan, where she finally rebels against the destiny that is planned for her.

Crossing to Paradise: Kevin Crossley-Holland: 339 pages
When fifteen-year-old Gatty, an illiterate field-girl who sings beautifully, is selected for a pilgrimage, she travels from her home on an English estate to London, Venice, and eventually Jerusalem, and experiences great changes in her circumstances and in herself.

Dead is the New Black: Marlene Perez: 190 pages
While dealing with her first boyfriend and suddenly being pressed into service as a substitute cheerleader, seventeen-year-old Daisy Giordano, daughter and sister of psychics but herself a "normal," attempts to help her mother discover who is behind a series of bizarre attacks on teenage girls in their little town of Nightshade, California.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

New in September

The Otherworldlies: Jennifer Anne Kogler: 385 pages
Eccentric and unusual looking, Fern, secure in her family's love and acceptance, has always been able to cope with the taunts and social ostracism of her schoolmates until a series of unnerving events reveal that she possesses supernatural powers that she barely understands and must learn to control if she is to escape being the pawn of two ancient enemies.

Jack: Secret Histories: F. Paul Wilson: 304 pages
Teenaged Jack, later to be known as Repairman Jack, begins to uncover some unsuspected talents in himself after he and his friends, the clever, imaginative Weezy and her brother Eddie, discover a corpse deep in the mysterious Pine Barrens near their New Jersey town.

Climbing the Stairs: Padma Venkatraman: 247 pages
In India, in 1941, when her father becomes brain-damaged in a non-violent protest march, fifteen-year-old Vidya and her family are forced to move in with her father's extended family and become accustomed to a totally different way of life.

Artichoke's Heart: Suzanne Supplee: 276 pages
While working in her mother's beauty shop where all the best town's gossip flies free, Rosemary Goode becomes determined to lose the weight that seems to be an all too common topic and starts keeping a journal to record the year-long experience in achieving her goals, her relationships with others, and her feelings about life in her tight-knit Southern community.

The Possibilities of Sainthood: Donna Freitas: 272 pages
While regularly petitioning the Vatican to make her the first living saint, fifteen-year-old Antonia Labella prays to assorted patron saints for everything from help with preparing the family's fig trees for a Rhode Island winter to getting her first kiss from the right boy.

The Ghost of Spirit Bear: Ben Mikaelsen: 154 pages
Completing his time in exile for assaulting a peer and having made peace with his victim, Cole looks forward to starting his life anew at the local high school, but when new troubles surface and tension mounts, Cole must find a way to manage his emotions in order to avoid another disaster. Sequel to Touching Spirit Bear.

Monday, July 14, 2008

For the Love of Classics

Classic Books and Books Based on the Classics

Loving Will Shakespeare: Carolyn Meyer: 265 pages
In Stratford-upon-Avon, romance blossoms between childhood friends Anne Hathaway and Will Shakespeare, changing both of their lives forever, in this enthralling novel that details the turbulent relationship between the world's most famous playwright and the spirited farmer's daughter he married.

King Lear: Ian Pollock and William Shakespeare: 139 pages
Vivid drawings accompany Shakespeare's classic play portraying the tragic experiences of Lear after he gives up his position as king.

Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte: 578 pages
The classic novel traces the doomed love affair between an orphaned, independent-minded governess and her brooding employer, Mr. Rochester.

Enthusiasm: Polly Shulman: 198 pages
Julie and Ashleigh, high school sophomores and Jane Austen fans, seem to fall for the same Mr. Darcy-like boy and struggle to hide their true feelings from one another while rehearsing for a school musical.

The Book of Mordred: Vivian Vande Velde: 342 pages
As the peaceful King Arthur reigns, the five-year-old daughter of Lady Alayna is abducted by knights who leave their barn burning and their only servant dead.

Little Women: Louisa May Alcott: 562 pages
The four March sisters experience joys and sorrows as they grow into young women in mid-nineteenth-century New England.

Wuthering High: Cara Lockwood: 257 pages
Fifteen-year-old Miranda is sent to a boarding school for delinquent teens in Maine, but she can't tell if it is the unhappy ghosts or the other students who will cause her the most trouble when their lives begin mirroring plots in classic literature.

The Three Musketeers: Alexandre Dumas: 663 pages
D'Artagnan, an impetuous young man determined to join the King's Musketeers, finds himself in an alliance with three of the group's finest swordsmen--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis--as they try to foil a plot by the scheming Cardinal Richelieu and his agent, the wicked Lady de Winter.

For more recommendations ask a librarian about the 111 Classic Books booklist and the Classics with a Twist booklist.

What's your favorite song, songwriter, band, or album? Can't choose just one? Tell us about all your favorites!

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Monday, June 23, 2008

For the Love of Award Winners

Monster: Walter Dean Myers: 281 pages
While on trial as an accomplice to murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
The New Policeman: Kate Thompson: 442 pages
Irish teenager J.J. Liddy discovers that time is leaking from his world into the land of the fairies, and when he attempts to stop the leak he finds out about his family history.

Speak: Laurie Halse Anderson: 197 pages
A traumatic event in the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year of high school.

The Wednesday Wars: Gary D. Schmidt: 264 pages
During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.
Airborn: Kenneth Oppel: 355 pages
Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above Earth’s surface.

The Amulet of Samarkand: Jonathan Stroud: 462 pages
Nathaniel, a magician’s apprentice, summons up the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Lovelace.
Downsiders: Neal Shusterman: 246 pages
A fourteen-year-old boy who lives in the subterranean world beneath New York City meets a girl from above ground. When she visits him down below, she discovers his world is not what it appears to be.
The Hollow Kingdom: Clare Dunkle: 230 pages
In nineteenth century England, a powerful sorcerer and King of the Goblins, chooses Kate, the elder of two orphan girls recently arrived at Hallow Hill, to be his bride and queen.
The House of the Scorpion: Nancy Farmer: 380 pages
In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of the 142-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire.
For more book suggestions, check out the Award-Winning Young Adult Books booklist in the Teen Corner.

What's the Most Recent Book You've Read?

Click on
Comments. Choose Nickname and enter your FIRST NAME ONLY. Click on Publish Your Comment. After your comment appears on the blog, print it out and take it to the 1st Floor Reference Desk for a treat. One treat per person per week.

Monday, June 02, 2008

For the Love of Reading

The Most Popular Teen Books in the Library

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Ann Brashares: 294 pages During summer break, longtime friends Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget each embark on adventures that they share with each other through a pair of jeans that they have decided will be worn by all and so will absorb all of their stories.
Stormbreaker: Anthony Horowitz: 192 pages
After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's intelligence agency, MI6.
Twilight: Stephenie Meyer: 498 pages When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.
Uglies: Scott Westerfeld: 425 pages Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.
Eragon: Christopher Paolini: 509 pages In Alagaèesia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon finds a mysterious stone that weaves his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power, peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters.
Holes: Louis Sachar: 233 pages
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: J.K. Rowling: 435 pages
During his third year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter must confront the devious and dangerous wizard responsible for his parents' deaths.
The Luxe: Anna Godbersen: 433 pages
The revelation of a dark family secret exposes a great scandal that soon sends the lives of the beautiful Holland sisters into a tailspin with lies and betrayal jeopardizing their high-ranking positions in Manhattan society.
Shadowland: Meg Cabot: 245 pages
Sixteen-year-old Suze Simon can mediate between the living and the dead, and she hopes her move to California will be a fresh start, but a hot ghost named Jesse haunts her bedroom and another ghost is bent on vengeance at school.







For more popular reading selections, check out the Provo Teens' Favorites booklist in the Teen Corner.

What's your favorite book? Can't pick just one?
Tell us all your favorites!


Click on Comments. Choose Nickname and enter your FIRST NAME ONLY. Click on Publish Your Comment. After your comment appears on the blog, print it out and take it to the 1st Floor Reference Desk for a treat. One treat per person per week.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Summer Reading 2008

Register for the Teen Summer Reading program Saturday, May 31 - Monday, June 30. For more information, ask at the Reference Desk or call 852-6661.

Starting Monday, June 2 check this blog for special summer recommended reading lists and opportunities to receive treats and prizes.

Happy Reading!

Thursday, May 01, 2008

New in May

The Book of Jude: Kimberley Heuston: 217 pages
In 1989, when fifteen-year-old Jude's mother wins a Fulbright fellowship to study art in Czechoslovakia, the family postpones a planned move to Utah to join her, but the political situation and the move itself are too much for Jude, who is overwhelmed by a previously undiagnosed psychological disorder.
Wake: Lisa McMann: 210 pages
Ever since she was eight years old, high school student Janie Hannagan has been uncontrollably drawn into other people's dreams, but it is not until she befriends an elderly nursing home patient and becomes involved with an enigmatic fellow-student that she discovers her true power.

The Truth about Las Mariposas: Ofelia Dumas Lachtman: 171 pages
When sixteen-year-old Caro Torres goes to help her Tia Matilda at her bed-and-breakfast in Two Sands, California, she ends up also helping her aunt fend off the attempts of her ex-husband to buy the property and steal the treasures that are hidden there.

Primavera: Mary Jane Beaufrand: 260 pages
Growing up in Renaissance Italy, Flora sees her family's fortunes ebb, but encounters with the artist Botticelli and the guidance of her nurse teach her to look past the material world to the beauty already in her life.

Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Manga Edition: Adam Sexton: 185 pages
In this fast-paced manga edition, you're instantly caught up in the conflicts and passions--the murder of the king, supernatural visitations, deception, plots, poisoned wine, revenge--that make this one of Shakespeare's most beloved tragedies.

Mythbusters: Don't Try This at Home: Mary Packard: 144 pages
Based on the popular TV show, this book presents various urban myths and legends, describes how the "Mythbusters" set out to prove the myths, explains the results, and provides instructions for how to do similar "mythbusting" at home.

Once Upon a Time in the North: Philip Pullman: 95 pages
In a time before Lyra Silvertongue was born, the tough American balloonist Lee Scoresby and the great armoured bear Iorek Byrnison meet when Lee and his hare daemon Hester crash-land their trading balloon onto a port in the far Arctic North and find themselves right in the middle of a political powder keg.