Good Reads

This school year I've been able to do a lot more reading than I've been able to do in the past few years. It's been great! I mostly read Teen Fiction / Young Adult Fiction. So they're an easy read, but they are very good! All of the following books have sucked me into them, most of them to the point I don't want to put down the book!

The Compound
By S.A. Bodeen
This book won a Utah book award.
In a burst of panic about a nuclear attack, nine-year-old Eli, his sisters, and his parents move into an underground bunker built by Eli's billionaire father. It's an enormous complex, with rooms similar to those in the family's Seattle mansion. Only his grandmother and twin brother don't make it in. The first ix years of the planned 15 have been fairly routine, but now some food has spoiled, and certain things just don't seem right, or even possible. Eli is starting to have doubts about his father's motives, explanations and sanity.





The Chosen One
By Carol Lynch Williams
This book won a Utah book award
13-year-old Kyra has grown up in an isolated community without questioning the fact that her father has three wives and she has twenty brothers and sisters, with two more on the way. That is, without questioning them much - - if you don't count her secret visits to the Mobile Library on Wheels to read forbidden books, or her meetings with Joshua, the boy she hopes to choose herself instead of having a man chosen for her. But when the Prophet decrees that she must marry her sixty-year-old uncle - who already has six wives - Kyra must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family forever.





The Trolls
By Polly Horvath
National Book Award Finalist
Ten-year-old Melissa, 8-year-old Amanda, and 6-year-old Frank know nothing of their aunt, except that every year she sends a Christmas card from Vancouver Island with a picture of a moose with tree lights strung on it. Still, it doesn't take long for the children to warm up to her, this unusual, beehive-sporting, sparkly-eyed woman who lets them draw monsters with her eyeliner, uses string beans as walrus tusks at dinner, and tells extraordinary stories about her family history, all of which she insists are true, even the ones about the trolls. This story tells about the time kids get to spend with their aunt while their parents are away on a vacation.



When You Reach Me
By Rebecca Stead
Newberry Medal Award
This book kept my mom and I guessing until the very end!
Miranda has lost her best friend, Sal, who lives in her apartment building. One day, while the two of them were walking home from school, a neighborhood kid named Marcus punches Sal, and from that day on Sal just seemed to drift away: he no longer waits to walk with Maranda, and he refuses even to look at her when they bump into each other. In the confusing void left by Sal, Miranda strikes up new friendships with Ammemarie - who was recently ditched by her sometimes snotty best friend Julia - and Colin, :this short kid who seemed to end up in my class every year." One day Miranda finds her apartment mysteriously unlocked after school, and the spare key missing from its hiding spot, unnerving both her and her mother. Shortly thereafter Miranda starts receiving a mysterious notes. The notes set her a mystery to unravel: Who is sending the notes? What kind of trip is the sender planning to take? Which of Miranda's friends will be saved? And from what? These and other questions, along with the rift between Miranda and Sal, drive the story forward.



Among the Hidden
By Margaret Haddix
Luke has never been to school. He's never had a birthday party, or gone to a friend's house for an overnight. In fact, Luke has never had a friend. Luke is one of the shadow children, a third child forbidden by the Population Police. He's lived his entire life in hiding, and now, with a new housing development replacing the woods next to his family's farm, he is no longer even allowed to go outside. Then, one day Luke sees a girl's face in the window of a house where he knows two other children already live. Finally, he's met a shadow child like himself. Jen is willing to risk everything to come out of the shadows - does Luke dare to become involved in her dangerous plan? Can he afford not to?