Wide-Eyed Reader

Title:  Spin the Dawn Author:  Elizabeth Lim Category:  Free Choice Maia desperately wants to be a tailor like her father before her, and is acknowledged as the only one of her siblings to have inherited her father's sewing ability. After a war tears apart her country, killing two of her brothers and leave another with severe injuries, her father is summoned to the palace to compete for the position of Royal Tailor to the Emperor's soon-to-be wife, Lady Sarnai, who doesn't want to marry him at all. However, as Maia's father is older and her brother is injured, Maia is the only member of the family able to actually go. So, she disguises herself as a boy and journeys to the palace. With the help of magic scissors passed down from her grandmother, Maia wows the judges of the competition, but Lady Sarnai has one more surprise in store: she challenges Maia to make three dresses, made of the sun, moon, and stars. Taking the court enchanter, Edan, with her, Maia has to travel

Title:  Zenith Author:  Sasha Alsberg & Lindsay Cummings Category:  Free Choice Androma Racella is a criminal and a bounty hunter, known to many only as the Bloody Baroness. She travels the galaxy with her crew, refusing to return home, where she knows she faces certain death. However, the past catches up with Andy, and her ship is captured by her ex - Dex, a legal bounty hunter working for the leader of her home planet, and who comes with an offer: help him rescue the general's son, or be put to death. Andy accepts, and the galaxy, she finds, will never be the same. I will admit that I did not enjoy this book. The characters were rather annoying, and I found the story to be convoluted. The villain of the story was the most interesting character, and I did not appreciate that. However, I can see teens liking this novel. I would use it in a library setting in celebration of science fiction and space travel, as this story deals heavily in such topics. I think teens will enjoy the

Title:  A Curse So Dark and Lonely Author:  Brigid Kemmerer Category:  State Book Award Rhen, Prince of Emberfall, was cursed on his eighteenth birthday to become a monster at the end of the season if he cannot find a girl who loves him - over and over again. He and his captain of the guard, Gray, are trapped in a timeloop of the same fall season until the curse can be broken. However, the enchantress is getting bored, and wants to end this game once and for all. So it's up to Harper, a girl with cerebral palsy from Washington, D.C., to help Rhen break the curse before his country falls to ruin and invasion. The real question is: can Harper even begin to love him? I love fairytales, though Beauty & the Beast isn't a favorite of mine. However, I really enjoyed this retelling! Kemmerer's use of the timeloop, as well as introducing a main character with cerebral palsy, are so great to see and truly make this classic tale her own. I also liked watching the romance. For teen

Title:  With the Fire on High Author:  Elizabeth Acevedo Category:  Realistic Fiction Emoni is a senior in high school, raising her three-year-old daughter while attending classes and dreaming about becoming a chef after graduation. She's an amazing cook, everyone who tries her food agrees, and she has the talent with tastes needed to do the work. When a class at her high school taught by a professional chef and featuring a class trip to Spain is announced, Emoni has to choose whether she can go - and work harder than ever to be able to afford it I've read one other novel by Acevedo - The Poet X  - and I've loved both stories. Acevedo is skilled at creating realistic characters and stories, and relates them in such an honest, refreshing way. With the Fire on High  was a great read, and it made me very hungry with all the talk about food! I think this could be an interesting book to use in a teen program about cooking, as it is such a big part of the story, and I think teens

Title:  Girl in the Blue Coat Author:  Monica Hesse Category:  Historical Fiction Hanneke lives in Amsterdam in 1943, surviving by smuggling black market goods to wealthy clients in order to provide for her mother and disabled father. She's good at what she does, though she has never taken the time to dig past the black market trade into the revolution she knows is happening under the noses of the German invaders now occupying her city. However, when one client asks Hanneke to find a teenage Jewish girl she was hiding, Hanneke's drive to solve the mystery leads her straight to the heart of the revolution, and to finally see the pain that is being caused all over Amsterdam. I am very glad that I read this novel! I've read a great deal of WWII fiction, though none besides this one set in Amsterdam, and I found it interesting to get a peak into life in the city during German occupation. I found Hanneke to be a little self-centered at times, but I loved seeing her growth. I thi

Title:  Long Way Down Author:  Jason Reynolds Category:  Verse Will's beloved older brother Shawn was shot and killed yesterday. The two boys have been close for years, since their dad died, and Will's been on the streets long enough to know how this goes: if your brother gets murdered, you find out who did it and pay back the favor. So Will takes his brother's gun and gets into the elevator from his seventh-floor apartment, certain he knows who did this and that he can do what he has to. Until ghosts begin getting on the elevator with Will, ghosts from his past, from Shawn's past, and they have questions for him. Questions he needs to consider before he gets off this elevator. Wow, this book was moving. I first heard about it several months before taking this course, and it was at the top of my to-read list since, so I'm very glad for the opportunity to finally read it. I found Reynolds' poetry to be well-done, a quick read, and with just the right amount of im