Another Column at MyShelf.Com

Babe To Teens, Past
A Youth Column
By Beverly Rowe


New book recommendations
Exciting kids websites


BOOKS FOR YOUNGER KIDS

LIKE THE WILLOW TREE: THE DIARY OF LYDIA AMELIA PIERCE: Portland, Maine, 1918 By Lois Lowry

Another wonderful Dear America book. Orphaned by the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918, 11-year-old Lydia Pierce and her 14-year-old brother, Daniel, of Portland, Maine, are taken by their uncle to be raised in the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake. The Shakers' way of life is very strange to Lydia and she must learn to live in a new world. Now separated from her brother, for men and women do not mix in this community, Lydia must adjust to many changes. But in time, and with her courageous spirit, she learns to find the joy in life again.

THE GENIUS FILES: MISSION UNSTOPPABLE By Dan Gutman
In eight days, Coke and Pepsi McDonald are going to turn 13. Before then, they'll experience some very exciting adventures. They will get trapped in the locked basement of their burning school, be chased cross-country by murderers, and left for dead in the pit of a sand dune. This book is non-stop action, just right for reluctant readers.

JUST IN TIME, ABRAHAM LINCOLN
written and illustrated By Patricia Polacco

Here is an exciting time-travel story that will keep you reading. Michael and Derek don't expect the adventure of a lifetime visiting a Civil War museum with their grandmother. Then the museum keeper invites them to play a game, and before they know it, they’re into a very realistic depiction of 1863. They participate in the destruction at the battlefield of Antietam, and meet President Lincoln. Soon, they start to wonder if it’s really a game, and they race across Confederate-occupied land to return to their own time before it's too late.


BOOKS FOR TEENS AND YOUNG ADULTS

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis
Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She will wake up on a new planet, 300 years in the future. But Amy's cryo chamber is unplugged some 50 years early, and she is nearly killed.

Nothing makes sense. Godspeed's passengers have given control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader, and Elder, his teenage heir. Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she? All she knows is that she must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.

ALL JUST GLASS by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
From a legendary family of vampire-hunting witches, Sarah Vida was raised to never trust a vampire, to never let her guard down, and to avoid all tricky attachments of the heart. But now Sarah IS a vampire --- changed by the boy she thought she loved.

Aida Vida is Sarah's older sister, the reliable sibling who always does her family proud. But when Aida's mother insists that Sarah be found and killed, Aida is given the one assignment that she may not be able to carry out. You will not be able to put down this story of two sisters who must choose between love and duty.

THROAT by R.A. Nelson
Seventeen-year-old Emma feels cursed by her epilepsy --- until the lost night. She's shocked to wake up in the hospital one morning, weak from blood loss. A monster had attacked her: a vampire named Wirtz. And it was her very condition that saved her: a grand mal seizure interrupted Wirtz and left Emma with all the amazing powers of a vampire --- heightened senses, rapid speed --- but no need to drink blood. Is Emma now a half-vampire girl?

UNEARTHLY by Cynthia Hand
Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel. Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger and faster than humans, but it means she has a purpose, something she was put on this earth to do. Figuring out what that is, though, isn't easy.

As Clara tries to find her way in a world she no longer understands, she encounters unseen dangers and choices she never thought she'd have to make --- between honesty and deceit, love and duty, good and evil. When the fire from her vision finally ignites, will Clara be ready to face her destiny?

BLESSED by Cynthia Leitich Smith

This paranormal novel has some of everything, vampires, werewolves, zombies... just the thing for a cold winter's night. Quincie P. Morris is a teen neophyte vampire, and is in the fight of her life. Even as she adjusts to her new appetites, she must clear her best friend and true love, the hybrid werewolf Kieren, of murder charges, and keep her dead parents’ restaurant up and running. She hires a chef and adds the beautiful Zachary to her wait staff. But with hundreds of new vampires on the rise and Bradley off assuming the powers of Dracula Prime, Zachary soon reveals his true nature --- and a flaming sword --- and they hit the road to staunch the bloodshed before it’s too late. Even if they save the world, will there be time left to salvage Quincie’s soul?

THE RUNNING DREAM by Wendelin Van Draanen
Is her life is over when Jessica loses a leg in a car accident? She'll be able to walk with the help of a prosthetic leg, but who cares about walking when you live to run? As she struggles to cope with crutches and a first cyborg-like prosthetic, Jessica feels oddly both in the spotlight and invisible. People who don't know what to say act like she's not there. Which she could handle better if she weren't now keenly aware that she'd done the same thing herself to Rosa, a girl with cerebral palsy. Now Rosa is going to tutor her through all the math she's missed. With everyone's support Jessica may actually be able to run again. But that's not enough for her now. She doesn't just want to cross finish lines herself—she wants to take Rosa with her.


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