One Crazy Summer

Title: One Crazy Summer

Author: Rita Williams-Garcia
Pub Date: January 2010

ISBN-13: 978-0060760885

One Crazy Summer is, by far, one of the best new books that I've read in a long time.  The summer of 1968 is a turbulent one for Delphine, an eleven-year-old girl who travels from the safety of her loving Brooklyn home to Oakland, CA to visit the mother who abandoned her years before.  With a backdrop of the Black Panthers Revolution, she lives through major transitions in her emotion, mental and physical states.  She gets her first boyfriend, rides a skateboard and a cable car, and learns a lot about what it means to be. 

Rita Williams-Garcia captures an authentic young female perspective through Delphine and her two younger sisters.  The girls' characters are well-developed, and their voices are both believable and unique.  Williams-Garcia also succeeds in portraying the effects of abandonment.  Delphine, for instance, is forced to accept a tremendous amount of responsibility in her mother's absence.  Ostensibly mature, she suppresses many of the age-appropriate behaviors other kids experience.  She longs for acceptance and encouragement from adults, but has little need for friends or peers.  With Delphine, Williams-Garcia has created a very important literary character.  One that can teach us the importance of friendship and surrender.  This book is essential to any public or school library collection!  Winner of the Coretta Scott King award, a Newbery Honor book, and an ALA Notable book.

Shiver (Wolves of Mercy Falls)

Title: Shiver (Wolves of Mercy Falls)

Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Pub Date: August 2009

ISBN-13: 9780545123273

Grace and Sam have loved one another for many years.  But since Grace is human and Sam's shape shifts between human and wolf, their love remained untenable and estranged until the autumn night when Sam became human despite the cold.  Now that they've met, neither can imagine life without the other and they must fight the cold winter to be together.  This tremendous love story is moving and impressive.

Murder and a Spooky Abandoned Theme Park

Title: Closed for the Season
Author: Mary Downing Hahn
Pub Date: June 2009
ISBN-13: 9780547084510


Closed for the Season is a fast-paced and incredibly gripping book by Mary Downing Hahn!  When Logan finds out that someone was murdered in the big creepy house his parents just bought, he finds himself in the middle of a very dangerous ordeal.  With the help of his new neighbor Arthur, Logan tracks clues through an abandoned theme park trying to uncover the truth about the murder.   But just as he's tracking the killer, the killer is also tracking Logan.  And this killer will stop at nothing to keep the secrets buried in the park from being revealed.  Winner of the Edgar Allan Award.