Walking on Glass

by Alma Fullerton
Published by Harper Tempest
ISBN: 978-0-06-077851-4
$15.99 131 pgs. FIC POP FUL

A touching account of a young man's struggle with the attempted suicide of his mother and the decisions he has to face in the following months. Fullerton doesn't actually describe what happens until page 122, so you can accurately imagine the confusion and loneliness (apparent through journal entries written as free verse) that the young man experiences as his father spirals into a deep depression, his best friend Jack becomes a substance abusing monster, and a new girl Alissa tries to enter his life. His personal torture is over when he makes that life and death decision that nobody should have to make about their own parent.

Recommended grades 9th-12th

42 Miles by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

At first, her parent's divorce wasn't too bad since they only lived four blocks apart in Cincinnati, Ohio. But when her father moved into Grandpa's farm after Grandpa died, it was a whole 42 miles away!
JoEllen became two persons: a city girl named Ellen enjoying fashion, baseball, and old movies with her mother during the week and then a country girl named Jo going to the country fair and visiting the bookmobile with her father on the weekends.
Finally, she decides she has had enough and merges the two lives together by introducing her city friends to her country cousin, creating new organic dishes, changing her clothes and hair and spending time enjoying the things she likes most.
The whole coming of age experience is written in simple free verse poems that describes the two lifestyles magically ("Farm Nights & "Cincinnati Nights").

Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
ISBN (library bind): 13-978-1-4169-1171-5
Price: $16.99 #pages: 346
Call number: FIC Had

Annotation:
Against the backdrop of the Triangle Waist Company Fire, one of the worst workplace disasters in history before 9/11, the threads of the lives of three young women are woven together telling a story of the struggle for women's suffrage, the plight of immigrants in America, and the fight for fair labor practices and decent working conditions. Bella is a new immigrant from Italy who has come to America for work to try to save the lives of her starving family back home. She must rely on others to help her with everything and she is cheated and victimized by most of them. Yetta, a Russian Jew, lives with her sister and is consumed with the new union movement. Jane, a bored socialite, begins to educate herself and is exposed to the young, immigrant working girls during their strike. Her encounter with Yetta during picketing eventually leads Jane to meet Bella and to translate a sad, devastating letter from Italy for her. Jane’s compassion for Bella’s situation stirs her to bring the young woman to her home to comfort and nurse her in her grief. When Jane eventually breaks from her father, she runs to the Triangle factory and her friends who shelter her. Finding a job as governess to the daughters of one of the Triangle owners, Jane learns first hand about the life of a working girl on the lower East Side. In the harrowing final pages, all three young women find themselves at the Triangle factory on the day of the fire. Sadly, many lives are lost. Margaret Haddix has always been able to write a good page-turner and this is no exception. Uprising reaches another level, however, because of her emotional involvement with the characters. As in her earlier book,Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey, this one will haunt you long after the final chapter.
Recommended grade levels: 7 and up

You Know Where to Find Me

This contemporary novel incorporates many social issues such as alternative lifestyles, suicide, depression, obesity, substance abuse, and self-esteem, but yet it does not seem exaggerated.
Laura and Miles are biological cousins but they grow up more like sisters in a wealthy part of Washington, DC.
They are very different superficially: Laura is thin, pretty, popular, smart and rich while Miles is fat, ugly, likes to eat, drink and smoke. Laura has many friends and is accepted to Georgetown. Miles is a year behind in school, and has only one friend. That's why Laura's suicide stuns Miles and she spends time searching for a reason while slowly falling into a deeper hole. Eventually, only her faith in herself and friends she did not realize that cared help her rebuild her life.

The Calder Game by Blue Balliett

Petra, Calder and Tommy are back with another great math and art related mystery. Calder goes to England with his Dad. He has a great time exploring the small town where they are staying. There's a new art installation in town of a Calder (the artist) sculpture that he finds fascinating because his class had just gone to see a Calder exhibit in Chicago before he left. He's got a whole plan for how let his friends know how much fun he's having...until he dissappears and so does the sculpture. Are the related? That's the mystery


Petra and Tommy get to go to England to help find him and they create lots of extra intrigue and humor to the rest of the plot.

The Daring Book for Girls by Miriam Peskowitz

There is so much information contained in these 279 pages. Everyone has some gaps in their learning and this is the book to fill those gaps. The book contains some information for a variety of ages: slumber pary games, famous women, how to change a tire, and Latin root words. There is something for every elementary and middle school girl.

Originally posted on the Best Books Blog by CWasserman at 1:15 PM on Jan 2, 2008

A Companion title to the The Dangerous Book for Boys