How To Steal a Car by Pete Hautman

Stars: **** Scholastic Press (2009)Teen Fiction (Young Adult)176 pages Summary: The first car was an accident. Kelleigh didn’t plan on stealing it, it just sort of happened. But the rush of the experience, the excitement of it all, it gets to Kelleigh. Her life seems to be a crazy mess, and stealing cars helps Kelleigh… Read More »

I am an Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler

Stars: **** Villard [Imprint of Random House] (2010)Teen Fiction (but more like nonfiction)176 pages Summary: Eve Ensler (author of The Vagina Monologues) writes fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls around the globe.Among the girls Ensler creates are an American who struggles with peer pressure in a suburban high school; an anorexic blogging as she… Read More »

The Amanda Project: invisible i by Stella Lennon

Stars: ***** Harper Teen (2009)Teen Fiction352 pages Summary: When enigmatic high schooler Amanda Valentino disappears, her friends vow to find her. But once the teens follow clues that might lead to Amanda, they realize that everything they thought they knew about her was false. As they compare notes on their missing friend, the mystery of… Read More »

The Real Real by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus

Stars: ***** Summary: When Jesse O’Rourke gets picked for a “documentary” being filmed at her school in the Hamptons she’s tempted to turn down the offer. But there’s a tuition check attached to being on the show, and Jesse needs the cash so she can be the first in her family to attend college. All… Read More »

Bran Hambric: The Fairfield Curse by Kaleb Nation

Stars: ***1/2 This review is a part of the Bran Hambric Book Blog Tour. Summary: Bran Hambric was found locked in a bank vault at six years old in a city where magic is banned, with no memory of his past. For years, he has lived with one of the bankers, wondering why he was… Read More »

The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland

Stars: ****1/2 Teen Nonfiction Ages 14+ 240 pages ISBN 13: 9781554511594 Softcover $12.95 Summary: As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry. But when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village,… Read More »

The Book of Nonsense by David Michael Slater

Stars: **** Summary: The book is ancient, ravaged and full of utter nonsense. But the moment it enters Daphna and Dexter’s lives, bizarre things begin to happen. Why is their father, who found the book, suddenly so distant? Is the old man who took it from him some kind of hypnotist? Why is a giant,… Read More »