Zenith by Julie Bertagna

Of course, similar to many of our young adult dystopias, Julie Bertagna writes of environmental disastors.

In Exodus, she wrote about the "Century of Storm," Global warming took over and the ice-caps melted and the oceans rose, threatening to overwhelm the island of Wing in the North Atlantic.
.
Exodus ends with Mara forming an alliance with Fox, the grandson of New Mungo's founder, who had no idea about the conditions outside of his environment and how his world was built. Fox stays to rebel from the inside, and Mara leaves, taking Tree-nesters, urchins and refugees on one of the great white supply ships.

Exodus begins with Mara on the ocean and Fox back in the tower city. A new character is introduced, Tuck, a "gypsea", who lives in the floating city of rusty boats known as Pomperoy.Because Mara's ship is basically on auto, her ship ploughs through Pomperoy capsizing and killing many gypseas This sets the whole flotilla off in pursuit of the white ship.

Mara's goal is Greenland, her theory is that it has not sunk; but been liberated it from its weight and it is now a safe haven with a huge freshwater lake in the middle. Unfortunately, it has its own people do not welcome the newcomers.

The white ship is trapped and Mara and her friends are treated as slaves on the auction block when they reach Greenland.

As I identified with the book, reading by the light of a candle due to snow induced blackout, this book definitely kept me turning each page. And now, I anxiously await the final book.

Rating: 5 out of 5
Reading Next: Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
(put on hold when I grabbed Zenith)

Congrats Stockmarket Winners December 2010

Check out our Awards Party

Congrats Isabelle and Sophia earning $2,036.89 in eight weeks.

Drop and Shop 2010

A Great Time was had by all. We made Graham cracker houses, clay snowmen, dressed a snowman, played games, watched puppet shows and were read to. Thanks YA--you did a great job.

Drop and Shop 2010

NEW BOOKS for December

A sampling of the New Books available for December

December Holiday Party

Happy Holidays from the Young Adult Council


December Meeting--The Young Adult Council celebrated the Holidays with their annual Holiday Meeting. Grab bag gifts were passed Left and Right as the Winter Story dictated. An evening of Wii fun and food followed. The Prep meeting for the Drop and Shop is Tuesday, December 14th at 6:30. Creative ideas welcome. Area merchants have been invited to display flyers or gifts certificates to be raffled off.

Fox 2000 Does Taylor Lautner Deal For 'Incarceron'

Fox 2000 Does Taylor Lautner Deal For 'Incarceron'
By MIKE FLEMING | Thursday December 9, 2010 @ 3:34pm ESTTags: Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Fox 2000, Fox 2000 Incarceron, Incarceron, John Palermo, Movie Deals, Movies, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Lautner Incarceron

EXCLUSIVE: Twilight Saga's Taylor Lautner has become attached to star in Incarceron, the Fox 2000 adaptation of the Catherine Fisher young adult novel. The film is being written by Adam Cooper & Bill Collage, who are among the writers behind the Brett Ratner-directed Universal comedy Tower Heist, and who are writing Moby Dick for Timur Bekmambetov and Moses for Fox and Peter Chernin.

Lautner will play Finn, who has lived his entire life on Incarceron, a savage, futuristic prison society. He meets the daughter of the warden, who is trapped in her own prison, a futuristic world constructed beautifully to look like the 17th Century. She knows nothing of Incarceron except that it exists. She and Finn simultaneously find a crystal key that allows them to communicate and hatch an escape plan for Finn. The film will be produced by John Palermo and Lautner is likely to become involved as a producer as well.

Aside from the final two Twilight Saga films being directed by Bill Condon, Lautner starred in Abduction, the John Singleton-directed thriller from Lionsgate. He's also booked to star as Stretch Armstrong in the Universal Pictures/Hasbro film. He's repped by WME and Management 360

http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/fox-2000-in-taylor-lautner-deal-for-incarceron/

Exodus by Julie Bertagna

What makes a leader of people? Courage? Conviction? Resourcefulness? Foolhardiness? All of those things, but perhaps above all a leader has a vision of the future. A dream.

Mara isn't a leader of people when this story starts. She's just a young girl eking out her existence with her family and a few other villagers on a tiny, remote, sinking island. In Mara's world global warming has taken its toll. The ice caps have melted, sea levels have risen and the world has sunk beneath the waters. Storms and tidal surges batter the few remaining, scattered settlements. For all Mara and the people of the tiny island of Wing know, they may be the last souls left alive on planet earth. There is nothing out there beyond their encroaching shores except a vast and angry ocean.

So when they finally have to abandon Wing, it is a desperate and fearful group of people who take to their tiny fishing boats. And they are almost entirely without hope, except for something that Mara has told them. She has accessed the old technology, found her way into the Weave:

Above the scrolling text, the on-screen simulation shows a cluster of towers, colossal trunks of towers, rising out of the flooded ruins of an old city. Now a vast, geometric construction - tiers and branching networks - begins to grow out of the central trunk, cresting higher and higher into the sky, mapping the air space between the towers with amazingly complex patterns, while massive roots bore down through the seabed, deep into the Earth.
Mara's parents gaze in astonishment at the vast structure that rises out of the ocean - a giant city in the sky.
'Impossible,' says Coll. 'It would blow down. How could it withstand a storm?'

It is a nightmare voyage, and not everyone makes it to the New World City of New Mungo. Sickness and the violence of the ocean take their toll. But the real desperation only sets in when Mara and her people realize that there is a mighty wall round New Mungo, and hordes of refugee boat people scrabble a living in the toxic waters just outside.

Mara wonders why she ever persuaded the people of Wing to seek out the God forsaken city of New Mungo. And it is that admixture of guilt and sheer determination to find something better that drives her on, and makes her a leader of people.

It is a monumental task. Mara loses people very dear to her, and makes other friends along the way. Her character is forged by the vicissitudes of her life. She is rocked to the core by her dawning comprehension of man's inhumanity to man. The only thing she has is hope. And a dream.

Read it. I think you will be absolutely enthralled. I know I was.

http://www.readingmatters.co.uk/book.php?id=194

I totally agree with this book review. It is one of those rare books that captures your attention from the first page. It is a great fit for book club discussions and definitely makes one wonder--is global warming just hype or could this happen to our world?

Rating 10 out of 10
Reading Next: Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

Black Hole Sun

Black Hole Sun, by David Macinnis Gill

This is an interesting sci-fi book geared toward Young Adults but enjoyable for adults as well. Human colonists from Earth have settled on Mars, making it their own. But it seems Mars has its own native life as well. Read the book to get to know Durango, an eight year old (although 16 years old in Earth years) who lives on here. Because of and incident involving the death of his father, he now works as a mercenary. The latest job which he accepts is to protect a group of miners, from the Draeu a ruthless species of cannibals.

Mimi, is the voice inside his head and his former chief. Durango heads up a group of misfit mercenaries, Vienne being his "right hand lady" Together they face the real reason that they have been under attack by the Draeu, a secret kept by the miners.

Durango was trained for fighting from an early age. Once his father was killed, he was on his own. The writing is unique and entertaining, although a bit slow going in the beginning.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Reading Next: Exodus by Julie Bertagna

Drop and Shop