Thursday, July 1, 2010

Ship Breaker

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Set in the Gulf Coast in a gritty, harsh future, Ship Breaker depicts a not-rosy-at-all future. Nailer is part of a scavange team whose job it is to take apart and salvage valuable resources in the hulking wrecks of ships that have sunk and now washed up on shore. His team belongs to Bapi, who has tattooed his sign on the cheeks of all of his workers. Nailer thinks he might stay small enough to scrounge through the duct-work tunnels of the old wrecks for one more year. What he does after that is uncertain, dark, and scary. But he doesn't give a second thought to the future, because just getting through each day is exhausting enough. When a storm washes a different kind of a wreck ashore, and he and his friend Pima find it. Will it be the thing that changes both of their lives?

Grace Happens

by Jan M. Czech

Grace's mother is Constance Meredith, famous for her acting career and infamous, with Grace, for keeping her entire past a secret. Grace has no idea who her father is, and Constance isn't talking. For years Grace has moved from movie set to movie set with her mother, her tutor, and her nanny. But this summer will be different; Constance has told her that they will spend the summer on Martha's Vinyard for an extended vacation. When the arrive, it's clear that they are not renting a house; they are living in a place wehre Constance grew up. Will this finally be the time for Grace to learn about her father?

Hate List

by Jennifer Brown

Flashbacks and memory-jags litter this novel, and staying with the story's present can be a challenge for less savy readers. However, the writing is excellent, the characters strong, and the plot important for teen readers.

When Valerie was in that awful-middle school age, she realized, clearly, that she didn't fit in with the kids in her town. Didn't. Won't. Ever. And instead of just leaving her to be herself, kids and teachers and the world looked down their noses at her spiked hair, torn jeans, and taste in clothes. To deal with the acid that ate her up, she wrote a list of things she hated: mom and dad fighting, homework that means nothing, names of teachers, names of kids. And that list helped her deal with the hatred that was directed at her day in, day out. And when Nick moved to town, looking and acting much as Valerie did, the found each other and kept the list alive, because it was their proof that they could hate too.

Fast forward to the end of their junior year. Valerie had no idea that Nick had a gun, and that he had a plan. And so, when he opened-fire in the common area, methodically taking out the people who appeared on the hate list the most often, she was as shocked as the rest of the school. Trying to protect Nick's next victim, Valerie was shot. Then Nick shot himself.

Five months, countless hours of therapy, and even more hours holed up in her room have passed. And now it's September. And Valerie must face her peers and finish her senior year. And to do that, she must face the part her hatred had what happened on that awful day in May.

Reality Check

by Peter Abrahams

Cody's Mom died from cancer years ago, and since then his dad has been an absent alcoholic. Cody has only two things going for him: quarterbacking the football team for a possible college scholarship, and Clea, his feisty girlfriend who also happens to be rich. When Clea's father takes a dislike to Cody, Clea is shipped off to visit her uncle in Hong Kong for the summer. That isn't enough to keep them apart, so her dad sends her off to a boarding school across the country, in Vermont. When Cody tears his ACL in a spectacularly bad hit, his football season is over. Unmotivated, he drops out of school and works making deliveries for a local lumber company. When he learns that Clea is missing, he drives from Colorado to VT hoping to help find her, ending up neck-deep in a lot of small-town/rich-boarding-school-kid secret. A page turner with likable characters.