Reviewed by Maria Hernandez

The book is kind of confusing at first because the author starts when the main character is older, and then she goes back to when she was younger.  The story gets better though because Juana’s (the main character’s) childhood is very tough.  She is poor and lives in a bamboo shack.  She had already lost two baby sisters and she loses a third one when her house floods and when holding her on top of a table, she falls asleep and lets go of her.   This is a great book.  I give it 5 stars.

Find the book in the Fiction section under FIC Gra.

Reviewed by Mrs. Walker

In this novel by the same author who wrote the Peeps series, the main character, Hunter is a teen with an eye for the next great fad.  He is part of a team of “cool hunters” who help companies market products to teens – an industry where there’s a LOT of money to be made.  Hunter soon meets Jen, a true Innovator – one of those types who defines her own style – the kind of person everyone looks at a bit funny but then quickly imitates.   Hunter knows there’s the potential to use Jen’s creativity for profit.  They become friends, but there’s clear signals that their friendship could be more.  Hunter and Jen are scheduled to meet with a PR rep at a shady location in Manhattan, but the rendezvous turns dangerous, and they become entangled in a very interesting missing-person adventure.  The story is moves quickly, has lots of action and an absorbing mystery while posing some interesting questions about our culture and commercialization.

Find it in the Fiction section FIC Wes.

Nick Andreas is rich, hangs with the popular crowd, plays on the football team, and has a great girlfriend.  HAD a great girlfriend is more like it.  As the story opens, we find Nick and his ex Caitlin facing off in a courtroom where she has accused him of physically abusing her – an incident he dismisses as a little “slap.”  As a result of the incident, Nick’s life begins to crumble – his friends no longer speak with him, he still longs for Caitlin, and he is forced to take an anger management course where he meets an assortment of boys and men dealing with issues of abuse and manipulation against the women in their lives.  Many of the boys come from families where they were also abused.    While Nick originally thinks he has nothing in common with the other guys in his group, he soon finds similarities which force him to take a hard look at himself. 

The story progresses in two directions:  we watch Nick’s life unravel after the trial while we are also slowly introduced to the details behind the story of Nick and Caitlin’s confrontation.  The final revelation is shocking.

Reviewed by Mrs. Walker

Andy Jackson and Rob Washington are stars of their high school basketball team and great friends.  When Rob is killed in a car driven by Andy who had been drinking, Andy’s world turns upside down.  As he drowns in guilt and grief, others try to help him come to terms with the accident and loss of his friend. His girl friend, family, and teachers struggle to recover the vibrant Andy they once knew.  This heart breaking story is told from the perspective of a variety of characters through dialogue, letters, poems, and news articles which allow you to piece together a very honest and complete picture of how the tragedy is affecting Andy and his friends and keeps the pace fast and readers interested.

Reviewed by Mrs. Walker

Reviewed by: Mariana Escobedo 

Khaled Hosseini is a great writer who knows how to involve real life situations in the Middle East and adding a fictional story to keep you hooked.  This book is about a brutal husband who violates his two wives and their story of how they got away and survived the violence.  The story gives great detail of how a woman in that situation feels when she is going through all that violent drama while carrying another creature in her.  It’s an emotional book that keeps on rolling with surprises.

Khaled Hosseini also wrote The Kite Runner.  You can find both books in the Fiction section under FIC Hos. 

Reviewed by Elizabeth Gutierrez

A youg girl was in a horrible accident at 13.  She finally wakes up from her coma and finds she is now 17 years old. Not used to the new life, she has to come to grips with her new age, new people, new friends, and her unrecognizable body.  Things begin to really happen when her memory begins to come back and images flow back to her revealing what truely happened in her past and how she ended up in a coma in the first place.  A really good book!  I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Find The Other Side of Dark and other books by Joan Lowry Nixon in the Fiction section under FIC Nix.

Reviewed by Mariana Escobedo

I read Othello in my AP Literature class first semester and it has become one of my top pieces of writing so far. It’s based on jealousy and the perceptions of interracial relationships. Othello, the so-called leader of Cyprus, who is also a moor, calls Cassio to be his head Lt. instead of Iago. Iago seems to be a great man to everybody’s face but betrays every single person he interacts with, including his wife. He makes Othello believe that his faithful wife is cheating on him with his partner Casio. This of course is all a lie. Throughout the play Iago makes little remarks about Othello’s wife and Casio being togehter and by the end of the play, Othello goes nuts. He ends up killing his loving wife then realizing the truth and hating himself so much that he kills himself. It’s a great love story gone bad.

Find all of Shakespeare’s works in the nonfiction section under 822.3 Sha.