In preparation for my upcoming booktalk with 7th and 8th graders on Monday, I read a few books. Some of them I’ll use in my book talk, while others are just for me to know about my collection as I work my way through it. So far, there are almost 700 books, and I have a long way to go to read all of them. Here are a few:
1. Rumble Fish (S.E. Hinton): Rusty James is 14 and is a wild child. He doesn’t do well in school and is constantly in trouble because he constantly fights, cuts school and acts up in class. He spends most of his life in the streets fighting, trying to find food and fun, while chasing after his 17 year old brother, Motorcycle Boy, who got his name for taking motorcycles for rides without getting permission from their owners and disappearing for days. When Rusty is about to get expelled and sent to a reform school where a boy who’d just knifed him in a fight attends, the counselor asks him “don’t you think it’s time you gave some serious thought to your life?” Rusty’s answer sums up his life “well, I had to worry about money and whether or not the old man would drink up his check before I got part of it, and whether or not the Motorcycle Boy would pick up and leave for good, and I had a cop itching to blow my brains out. Now I was getting sent to Biff Wilcox’s turf. So I didn’t have much time for serious thinking about my life.”
2. Feed (M.T. Anderson): Set in the future, it’s a science fiction story of teens who live in a world where a live feed is placed in your brain at an early age. The feed allows you to think of whatever you want and commercials for it run through your head – including where to go for bargains and how to accessorize. Your feed is tuned in to whatever you tell it to do – whether it’s a tv show or music. You also talk to your friends through your feed – no one engages I regular conversation anymore. It’s like IM’ing in your head. One day, the feeds get a glitch and stop working. What will they do? How can they live without their feed? As you read, you’ll find out what’s important in life and what feeds do to make your life change – and not for the better.
3. Things not seen (Andrew Clements): Imagine waking up one day, looking in the mirror and seeing – nothing! That’s right, you are now invisible. That sounds like fun – right? You can sneak up on everyone, listen in on conversations and many more exciting things. The problem is – if you’re invisible, that means you have no life. What girl would be interested in an invisible guy? Where could you work? What could you do? Where could you hang out? Who would hang out with you anyway? Would you have to live with your parents for the rest of your life? Read “Things not seen” by Andrew Clements to find out how Bobby discovers that being invisible isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
4. The face on the milk carton (Caroline B. Cooney): Meet Janie Johnson – your normal, average, everyday high schooler. She has lots of friends, a guy she likes, loving parents, a beautiful home. Things seem normal, until one day she drinks milk at school. Now, she’s supposed to have a milk allergy, but is too thirsty to care. No big deal right? Wrong! Her life as she knows it ends because there is a picture of a missing little girl on the back. A little girl who was kidnapped from her home at the age of 3. That little girl is – Janie! How could it be? She knows her parents don’t have any photos of her earlier than the age of 3, and she doesn’t have a birth certificate but she recognizes the dress and her face, but not the name. Follow Janie as she tries to solve the mystery of her life.
5. My mom married the principal (Margaret Bechard): Jonah is in 8th grade and having a busy life having fun with his friends and trying to figure out how to get the girl of his dreams to go out with him. He can hear the words in his head that he wants to tell her, but somehow they can’t make it to his mouth. He is also trying to be Mr. Cool with two of the popular boys, and now, his mom has ruined his life by marrying the principal over the summer. Could his life get any worse? Will Jonah survive 8th grade? Read “My mom married the principal” and see what happens.
6. His Majesty, Queen Hatshepsut (Dorothy Sharp Carter): Hatshepsut lived in Egypt in 1500 BC, and was married at the age of 14 to a sickly king. In her time, women had no power, and men were expected to be leaders in everything and have as many girlfriends as they wanted. This really annoyed Hatshepsut, but she couldn’t do anything about it. When her husband died, his girlfriend’s son became king (or Pharaoh) since Hatshepsut had only had daughters, and she was ordered to rule alongside him until he became older. However, Hatshepsut had other plans. Tired of having men tell her what to do, she did what no other woman had ever done before – she became Pharaoh. Read “His Majesty, Queen Hatshepsut” to see how she did it and how she managed to hold on to her title for over 20 years.
7. Dancing with an alien (Mary Logue): This story is told through the eyes of 2 people: Tonia, an earth girl and Branko, an alien who has come to earth for a mission – to find a girl and bring her back to his planet because all the women on the planet have died. As he goes about his mission, we see earth through his eyes. Things we take for granted are new to him. He describes swimming as “running and thrashing around in the lake, hitting it with their arms and legs.” On his planet, water is too precious to waste on washing, so they use a special instrument to vacuum themselves when they get dirty. He meets Tonia and tells her he’s from Romania. She thinks he’s strange, but finds herself falling in love with him. Will she go with him to his planet? Will Branko decide to stay with her on earth? Find out more when you read “Dancing with an alien.”
