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Wednesday, March 3rd 4-5:30

Marcello in the Real World by Francisco X Stork

I started reading Marcelo in the Real World to find out what all the hype was. What a refreshing change from the science fiction/fantasy that I love to read.

Seventeen year old Marcelo Sandolva has what he can only describe as a mild form of Asperger’s, an autism-like condition where his thinking and communication skills are literal making his social-interaction awkward.

He has been attending a special high school where they teach him to communicate and socially interact and where he can work with the miniature horses which he loves. He has a summer job there, working with the horses. The problem is, Marcelo’s father doesn’t think that he is getting real world experience and makes a bargain that if he works at his father’s law firm and follows the rules for the summer, he will be allowed to go back to the school he loves. Otherwise, he must attend public school.
During the summer, Macelo definitely does begin to learn about the real world. He begins to communicate on a social level with Jasmine, who he has been assigned to work with in the mail room, as well as with as some cut throat people at the firm. Real life starts immediately to infiltrate Marcelo's formerly innocent life. He finds his niche in behavior causing him to feel more normal and learns that the most important thing for him is to stay true to himself, not conforming the way his father wishes him to, but also not remaining inside the box as he expected himself to. He is faced with many moral decisions which make for a compelling drama.

Stork develops each of his characters with a skill that makes you feel like they are here with you—Wendell—the spoiled, immoral Harvard educated son of one of the partners of the law firm, Jasmine’s caring personality, Marcelo’s mom’s gentleness and caring all come together to keep you turning each page.

It is a must read for everyone, instilling compassion and understanding for anyone perceived as different in society.

Rating: 9

Reading Next: The Ask and Answer Book by Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
As you begin the book, you find Todd Hewlitt is the last boy in Prentisstown, the last town on New World. He hass been told that he will turn thirteen in one months time and it is then he “will become a man.” Until then, he is isolated from everyone else, doing chores that no one else wants to do. It sounds like a town from Little House on the Prairie with Todd going through the usual resentments about having to do farm chores but you soon find out there are major differences. Why is he the last boy? Because the Christian settlers who arrived from Earth seeking a better, simpler life fought a brutal war with the native Spackles during which the Spacks released a virus that killed all the women and infected all the men with Noise. This is what you learn in the first part of The Knife of Never Letting Go BUT……………. IT IS A LIE.

The Noise, which can be described as hearing what everyone is thinking is a large part of the novel. You would imagine, if this was possible, that no secrets can be kept, but instead it becomes a cacophony of everything all at once and becomes just Noise.
Everything seems to be going along for Todd, when his foster father tells him he has to leave Prentistown. But where? He has been told that there are no settlements outside of Prentistown. With only The things you know right now, Todd, those things ain't true, to guide him, he is given a journal by his long dead mother and a knife from his foster father and pushed out into the world to survive. He finds most of what he has learned about Prentisstown is a lie. Why? He meets a girl, finds a settlement and is pursued by the men of Prentisstown. How can he hide when they all emit noise to give away their location.
Todd was given a dog, Manchee which at first, he finds annoying. In this world, animals can talk mostly what Manchee says is “poo”—what else can dogs say. He starts off the novel as a sort of comic-relief; however, as you read more, Todd changes his perception of his pal along with his perception of the world.
A definite page turner, if you enjoy dystopian novels.
Rating: 10
Reading Next: Marcelo in the Real World by Frances Stork

What to Read Next

What a fun site. Type in what you just read with the author and
you will find suggestions on what to read next.

http://bookseer.com/

Hunger Games 3rd Book Cover Revealed

http://onourmindsatscholastic.blogspot.com/2010/02/hunger-games-book-3-cover-revealed.html

Released August 24, 2010

Can't Wait!!!!

Doodle for Google

This article originally appeared in SLJ's Extra Helping. Sign up now!
Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 2/8/2010
Google invites K–12 public and private students to pick up a pen, pencil, paintbrush, or mouse between now and March 31, 2010, to create an illustration that best expresses this year’s Doodle 4 Google theme: “If I Could Do Anything, I Would…”

The search giant’s annual competition drew more than 28,000 entries last year, when students let their imaginations fly, hoping their doodle might nab the grand prize and make it to the front page of Google. Last year that honor went to then-sixth-grader Christin Engelberth (winning doodle pictured) from Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, TX.

This year Eric Carle, author and illustrator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a master doodler himself, will join the ranks of eight other expert jurors to help select a winner from the thousands of expected entries.

Google’s passion for doodling goes back to 1999 when founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin played with the corporate logo, putting a stick figure behind an ‘O’ to make it clear they were out of the office while at the annual art festival Burning Man. A year later, Webmaster Dennis Hwang was tapped to create a doodle for Bastille Day, an illustration so successful and popular that Hwang was made chief doodler, whose new plays on the logo are featured regularly.



While getting a doodle online in front of billions of faces is a pretty big reward in itself, Google is also offering a $15,000 college scholarship to the national winner, a laptop computer, a trip to New York, plus other prizes including a $25,000 technology grant for the winner’s school. Laptop computers and design tablets will go to the four national finalists, with the 40 regional finalists scoring a trip to New York for the May 26 announcement, with their doodles hanging in the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

But hurry! Registration must be completed by March 17, with entries due March 31. Those schools that submit at least six doodles before March 10 are entered for some extra credit—a side contest with prizes of 20 netbook computers for up to eight winners.

For students, this may be the one time each year teachers can encourage them to put down their homework and, well, start doodling.

Dystopia? What is it?

A dystopia (from the Ancient Greek δυσ-: bad-, ill- and τόπος: place, landscape) alternatively, cacotopia,[1], or anti-utopia) is a vision, of an often futuristic society, which has developed into a negative Version of Utopia. A Dystopia is often characterized by a authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. It often features different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and a state of constant warfare or violence.

from Wikipedia

Restoring Harmony by Joelle Anthony

Another dystopian novel about the Collapse of Government as we know it. Molly McClure is 16 and living in the year 2041. What might have been fun in the “good old days” before all the oil ran out, before the Collapse, becomes a travel adventure of survival. When health problems cause uncertainty for Molly’s family both in the United States and Canada, Molly must leave her isolated farming island in Canada for the very first time. The world that greets her is anything but welcoming. Food is scarce, crime is thriving and cities are abandoned and falling down. Everything is dangerous and trust is at a premium. Molly needs to grow up quickly and make tough decisions about who she can trust so that she can convince her grandparents to go back to Canada with her. The trip to bring her grandfather back as the island’s doctor becomes a rescue mission. She faces challenges at every turn including a dangerous crime organization.

The book is an easy read and draws you into the lives of its down to earth, resourceful characters. Will Molly be able to complete her missions? Will everyone remain safe? Read Restoring Harmony and find out.


Due Out May 13, 2010

Rating: 9
Reading Next: The Knife of Never Letting Go

Warner Bros Picks Up New Book, Heist Society

Source:The Hollywood Reporter February 5, 2010


Warner Bros. Pictures has picked up the film rights to "Heist Society," author Ally Carter's young adult thriller novel hitting stores on Tuesday, February 9. The Hollywood Reporter says Shauna Cross (Whip It) will write the script with Denise Di Novi producing with Di Novi Pictures' Alison Greenspan.

The following is how publisher Hyperion Books for Children describes the novel:

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her to the Louvre...to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria...to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind.

Unfortunately, leaving "the life" for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected. Soon, Kat’s friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring her back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has good reason: a powerful mobster’s art collection has been stolen, and he wants it returned. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he is the list.

Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help. For Kat there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family’s (very crooked) history—and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.

The trade adds that while in the book the protagonist is in her teens attending a boarding school, the studio is going to age the adaptation a notch so that the characters are in their early 20s.


~d

Dotti Enderle

Hunger by Michael Grant

What to do on a day when a blizzard is predicted? Hole up with your favorite book. Hurray!!
I finished reading Hunger by Michael Grant..


Michael Grant also has a website for this series at The FAYZ. (FAYZ stands for Fallout Alley Youth Zone), the subject of his GONE series.
If you try to read Hunger before reading Gone you probably will be terribly lost and will not like the series. It's a long book, 592 pages, but zips right along so you can't wait to turn the next page to find out what will happen. It's not a place you would like to live or even visit—but you can't stop reading!
Briefly, the book is about Sam Temple who was elected mayor of Perdido Beach after all of those over 15 disappeared one day. Loosely constructed order is turning into chaos as people are starving and friends are going against each other. Kids refuse to work because they can't get the concept that food is their reward. Everyone is splitting into warring groups. The normals against the “freaks”, the Coates Academy against Perdido Beach.. The monster at the bottom of the mine shaft is hungry, too, and it’s calling people to it. Chaos is rampant.
If you want to take it to a different level, you can use the book to exemplify different forms of government. Dictatorship, Capitalism etc. The book is sometimes compared to Lord of the Flies.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Fantasy/SciFi.

Rating: 9
Reading Next: The Knife of Never Letting Go

Gone by Michael Grant

Gone by Michael Grant
Michael Grant writes about a section of southern California, where everyone who is older than fifteen, disappears in an instant. Teachers in mid-lesson, those driving vehicles, those at home—Poof. The story takes place in the area of Perdido Beach which has been cut off from the rest of the world by a spherical force field, its center the nuclear plant in town.
Good does seem to fight against evil as the main character, Sam Templeton and his teenage friends, Astrid, Quinn and Edilo take charge. “Mother” Mary, a girl of fourteen takes charge of the nursery and Albert decides to keep himself busy by running the McDonalds. The private school for difficult children up on the hill, Coates Academy sends an envoy. The leader of this group is Caine who lacks compassion and enjoys his power over others.
Many of the children have special powers, which develop over the span of the novel. Sam shoots fire from his hands while Caine can levitate people with his hands. These new powers will help, because the kids of Perdido Beach will need every resource available --- the bullies of Coates Academy up on the hill have come down looking to rule their new world, and are willing to do anything to keep control and stay in power.
“Just as some find opportunity for profit, others find excuses to exercise dark desires. Martial law leads to anarchy, and Sam and his friends find themselves thrown into roles they never cared to be in, testing their friendship and moral codes. The very reason Sam avoids leadership is the same reason he turns out to be the best one for the role.”

Rating: 8

Reading Next: Hunger by Michael Grant