Book Review: Lockwood and Co:The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

How do you feel about ghosts?  How about adventure and sarcastic banter?

The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, is set in a modern day London where ghosts stalk the night, and only children and teenagers can see them clearly. Our heroes Anthony Lockwood, Lucy Carlyle, and George Cubbins run a psychic detection agency. That is, they hunt and destroy ghosts. But unlike most other agencies, they don't have any adult supervisors. Since adults can't see or hear ghosts very well, Lockwood thinks they just get in the way.  Lucy tends to agree, given her unpleasant past.  George hates everyone equally.

We meet Lucy and Lockwood as they prepare to banish what they think is a routine ghost.  The ghost, and the case itself, prove too hot to handle, and Lucy and Lockwood barely escape.  Unfortunately, the Lockwood and Co. Psychic Detection Agnecy finds itself in some trouble with the law, and Lucy, Lockwood, and George are forced to take on a dangerous case in one of the most haunted houses in England.  The last team that tried to clear the historic mansion of ghosts died; every last one of them.

I enjoyed all the action and adventure, as well as the smart mouth comedy in the face of creepy, deadly ghosts.  Hope you will too!

Happy reading!

~ gothbrarian

Book Review: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is a book about the future. In this future, at the age of 13 parents can have to choice to "unwind" their kid. Unwinding is when doctors will take all the child's organs and parts away and give them to different kids around the world. The unwound kid will still be able to have some control of the parts when with an other kid, but not all control. There is three different ways that a kid can be unwound. One is that the parent thinks that the child is beyond saving so they will sign papers to have them unwind. Two is that the government thinks that you don't have enough talent to stay in one piece. And three is that you are born to be unwound, this means that you are a tithe, in which the family gives 10% of everything to God, including their kids. The book is about three kids who try to escape the process of being unwound. The main character's names are Conner, Risa, and Lev. Conner's parents thought that he would be happier unwound so they signed the papers. Risa lives in a state house, which means that she lives with the government of that city. Risa is a musician, but the government feels like she doesn't have enough talent to live so they send her to be unwound. Lev; short for Levi, is a tithe and has always been ready to be unwound. But when Conner escapes and saves Risa and Lev, they find themselves running from the whole world. Will they survive with their lives?

Unwind is a very good book. The details are amazing, and you feel like you know the characters. The book switches from different points of views to the other, so you experience all the characters thoughts. There are four books in the series and they are planning to make them into movies in 2016. I enjoyed this book mainly because of the characters. You can picture all of them in your mind and you can imagine the pain they go through. As the story goes on, you really feel like the cops are going to take you away next. All the locations the characters adventure to, are amazing and dangerous, which make you feel like you are next to Conner and Risa. I finished the first book around two weeks ago, and now I'm around halfway done with the second one. The ending of the book makes you want more and makes you want to save the people being unwound. The action scenes are awesome and the villains make you curl your feet. I do have a favorite character, and every time something happens to hurt them, I get mad. Unwind tries to aim for teen readers, but I think that anyone who picks it up, will not be able to put it down.

-Siera    

How to Save a Life

Happy Teen Read Week! Are you ready to vote for the Teen Top Ten? The 2013 winners will be announced October 22!

 Because you have probably been reading many of 2013's top ten nominees,I wanted to tell you about a nominee from last year.(Topic and story so NOT so last year.) 
 How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr is a story that sticks with you---in a good way!

Jill is wrecked. Her dad recently died. She’s stopped communicating with her friends, family and boyfriend. Her mom, who should be mourning with Jill, is busy planning to adopt a baby from a teen she met online. It gets worse. Jill despises teen mom Mandy and soon Mandy will be moving in with them until the baby is born!

Mandy on the other hand has never suffered a family crisis because...

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Lost in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, a lone teenage boy, Brian, discovers what type of person he really is. In route to his father who lives in a small Canadian town, the pilot of Brian's plane has a sudden heart attack, forcing Brian to crash land. Barely alive, Brian must nurse himself back to life and survive by himself with his only possession, his hatchet. But things start to look up for him; he builds a shelter, learns what to eat and most of all, he learns how to survive. But as we all know, life never seems to let everything be fine for very long. A couple of weeks later, everything Brian created is destroyed, leaving him to rebuild once again.Through his struggles we learn more about Brian and what it will take for him to come back to civilization, alive.

---

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen has been a teen favorite for many years. It is a great read for those looking for adventure, survival and the strength of human will. Paulsen creates the scenes as you are surviving along with Brian; facing the same struggles he does. Other books following the story of Brian in Hatchet include The River, Brian's Winter, Brian's Hunt and Brian's Return.

~ Jerome the Fighting Caterpillar

Bad Impressions

When I was a kid I was rather creepily obsessed with serial killers. Some girls' fave movie involves a princess in a fluffy dress; mine involved Hannibal Lector and Jodi Foster. Interestingly enough, I've never been able to take the gruesomeness of those kinds of books so my reading in it has been limited so I moved on to slightly less creepy reading. This has been helped by the fact that not many teen books revolve around serial killers... until now. I discoverd Barry Lyga's "I Hunt Killers" on an award list and had to check out the serial killer book for teens. It's like Dexter when he was in high school.

Seventeen-year-old Jazz's childhood was filled with lots bonding time with dad, bed time stories, and toys. Except, his bonding time was cleaning up after his dad's kills, bed time stories of the murders, and his father's "toys" -- trophies stolen from the victims. When his father was finally caught, Jazz had spent his childhood being groomed to become a special kind of serial killer. He's spent the last four years trying forget, to have a normal life: he goes to public school, has a girlfriend, and spends his time hanging out with his best friend. Then the murders start. Now he has to accept the horrible gift his father gave him to track down the murderer: the ability to think like a serial killer. But what will that do to a boy raised to think of humans as prey? And now his memory is slowly bringing back horrible images, images that could lead to a terrible revelation....

Tucson Festival of Books Author Spotlight: Jacqueline Woodson

If you like realistic fiction about teenagers with problems, like Crank by Ellen Hopkins or Monster by Walter Dean Myers, you should pick up something by Jacqueline Woodson. You're in for a treat. She'll be a guest speaker at the Tucson Festival of Books this year, which is a huge gathering on the U of A campus to celebrate books, authors, and reading. Here's their page for teens.              

The first book I read by her was If You Come Softly. It's a sad, kind of Romeo and Juliet-esque story. Jeremiah's black, and Ellie's white. They meet at a private school and fall in love without being prepared for how society views their relationship. On her website, she writes that it was inspired by a poem by Audre Lord, which begins:

If you come softly  

as the wind within the trees

you may hear what I hear 

         see what sorrow sees.

Defying the Gods

Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst begins on the morning of sixteen-year-old Liyana's last day on Earth. She has been chosen to be the goddess Bayla's vessel, and come evening she will dance until the goddess has taken over her body--and she has died.

Liyana has always accepted the fate that was shown to her during her dreamwalk, but when the time comes for her to dance, Bayla does not come. Liyana is deemed unworthy and left to die in the desert. She resigns herself to her dishonorable fate--until Korbyn walks out of the desert. He is the trickster god of the Raven Clan, and he brings with him the grave news that five clans have had their deities stolen, and he needs Liyana's help to rescue them.

Braaaiiinns!

Yay, October!

It's that time of year again--the perfect opportunity to read stories that will make you scared to be alone in your house. And what better way to send shivers up your spine than with that quintessential creature-feature, zombies? The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan serves up the perfect blend of suspense, terror, and gore to make you wish you still had that nightlight.

Mary lives in a small village in the middle of the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Through all hours of the day and night, she and the other villagers are plagued by the incessant moans of the Unconsecrated--undead humans longing for warm flesh. The only thing that separates the living and the dead is a chainlink fence, and when Mary's mother reaches through it to be bitten by her Unconsecrated husband on the other side, lives are torn apart in a way no one imagined.

The Catastrophe of a Broken Heart

In The Catastrophic History of You and Me by Jess Rothenberg, sixteen-year-old Brie Eagen is told by her boyfriend that he does not love her—and literally dies of a broken heart. Now in the afterlife, Brie must go through the five stages of grief with help from Patrick, another lost soul, before she can finally rest in peace.

Flights of Fantasy

The best part about anthologies and short story collections is finding an author you wouldn't have encountered otherwise.  And then devouring everything else that author or artist has ever written.  So pick up a copy of Flight, any of the volumes, and dive in.  There's something for everyone in this collection of indie comics edited by Kazu Kibuishi. 

The library has several comics by artists who've contributed short stories to Flight.

A Deadly Serious Cat and Mouse Comic

Maus, by Art Spiegelman, was the first graphic novel I ever read. I was about twelve, I think, and I snuck it out of my brother's collection of comic books. There was just something different about it that caught my interest: it was a real book, heavy, with binding and a hard cover. Yeah, it was a comic book. But it wasn't like the Spiderman or Superman comics that I'd glanced at and found boring. It was a new way to look at a sad, serious subject: the Holocaust.

Death: What Comes Next?

Have you ever used those funny-looking binocular machines on an observation deck, maybe on top of a mountain or bridge, where you can put in a quarter and peek at the landscape below? Well, imagine a sad teenage girl standing on an observation deck, a girl who will never get her driver's license, or go to prom, or college. Instead, she keeps peering through that machine to look down at the world she left behind when she died. She might be dead, but her life's not really over. In fact, it's just about the opposite of what you might expect. Meet that girl, Liz, and follow her to the end of a surprisingly uplifting story in Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin.

-Jenny