Evil Librarian

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - Retired librarian, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: October 31, 2014

Review

What librarian could resist this title? Mr. Gabriel is the hot, young librarian new to Central High. Everyone seems to fall under his spell except for our heroine, Cyn, who is resistant to demonic charm. Can Cyn prevent the demonic takeover of her school, rescue her best friend from Gabriel's clutches, and create the absolute best barber's chair for the school's production of Sweeney Todd? Maybe, but she will have to go to hell and back to do it. And, in exchange for help from her own demon ally, return to hell twice more. Rarely is a comic novel put up for CREAM, but this one is worthy.

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

Knudsen, Michelle

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Book Type: picture book fiction

Genre: horror, romance

Audience: grades 7-9, grades 10-12

Binding Type: trade edition

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780763660383

Price: 16.99

Six Feet Over It

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - MLIS, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: November 10, 2014

Review

Longo takes a darkly comic setting--a family-owned cemetery--to explore themes of love, death, and guilt and gives them the voice of a sixteen-year-old girl named Leigh. Not much has gone easy in Leigh's life since she was born three months prematurely and not breathing. Her death-before-life has defined her and shaped her worldview. Then, in her mind at least, she is forced to choose caring for her critically ill sister and being with the only friend she's ever had. This choice leads to tragic consequences and an overwhelming burden of guilt. Adding to this felicity, Leigh's father makes her work in the cemetery office rather than pursue more typical high school activities. Fun stuff, right? And yet, it is. Following in the traces of Waugh's novel, The Loved One and the HBO series, Six Feet Under, Longo uses the business of death to explore life's enduring preoccupations: family, love, sex, and growth. Excellently voiced, paced, and "plotted," Six Feet Over It is COC.

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

Long, Jennifer

Publisher: Random House

Book Type: chapter book fiction

Genre: realistic fiction

Audience: grades 10-12

Binding Type: trade edition

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780449818718

Price: 17.99

The Killing Woods

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - MLIS, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: November 10, 2014

Review

The "Woods"? are where Emily played as a child; where Damon played kinky sex games, and where Ashlee Parker was killed. Emily's father, a vet with PTSD, found Ashlee's body and carried it to his kitchen table. Now he is accused of her murder, and Emily must discover the truth. Told in the alternating voices of Emily and Damon, The Killing Woods is edgy and dark and a great read. Although the novel has received some luke-warm reviews, I think it is very fine, and recommend it for CREAM.

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

Christopher, Lucy

Publisher: Cicken House

Book Type: Choose Book Type

Genre: realistic fiction

Audience: grades 10-12

Binding Type: trade edition

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780545461009

Price: 17.99

The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - MLIS, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: December 8, 2014

Review

Yes, another dystopian YA novel: but Kwaymullina, an indigenous Australian, has imbued her novel with a sensibility wholly different from the usual. The "interrogation"? of the title involves a fiendish experimental device that can reveal the victim's memories. Ashala has been captured. If she is subjected to interrogation, she may reveal the existence of her tribe of children with special gifts that the bad guys want destroyed less they upset the delicate balance achieved after an ecological cataclysm. Ashala herself can "sleep walk,"? while others can see possible futures and affect memory. These abilities and the character of Ashala herself give the novel a vibrancy that is missing from so many teen novels written lately. CREAM

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

Kwaymullina, Ambelin

Publisher: Candlewick

Book Type: Choose Book Type

Genre: fantasy, science fiction

Audience: grades 7-9, grades 10-12

Binding Type: trade edition

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780763669881

Price: 17.99

Tremor

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - MLIS, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: December 8, 2014

Review

This is the second in the Pulse Series. "Pulse"? is telekinetic power that many in this post-apocalyptic world possess. But it is not limitless. They are all subject to an individual sort of "kryptonite"? that can destroy them. A very few people have a second pulse: they are almost indestructible. Faith and Dylan are two such, and together they try to save the world from the bad guys, who have second pulses of their own. Excellent character development and truly thrilling action make this an excellent choice for any library.

Overall Book Score: very good

---

About the Book

Author:

Carman, Patrick

Publisher: Katherine Tegen

Book Type: chapter book fiction

Genre: fantasy, science fiction

Audience: grades 7-9, grades 10-12

Binding Type: trade edition

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780062085801

Price: 17.99

Egg & Spoon

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - MLIS, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: November 10, 2014

Review

Elena and Ekaterina are two Russian girls living in the waning days of the Tsar. Elena is poor, with a dying mother for whom she is the sole support, her brothers having been conscripted by the army or taken as a servant. Ekaterina is from a noble family. When the train on which Ekaterina and her family are traveling is forced to stop in Elena's village, the two girls meet, and, through a series of wonderfully improbable circumstances, switch places in classic prince and the pauper fashion. Then, the fun starts. Through the voices of the girls, an imprisoned monk, and a string-theory Baba Yaga, Maguire weaves a fabulous tale with a modernist edge. Absolute CREAM.

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

Maguire, Gregory

Publisher: Candlewick

Book Type: chapter book fiction

Genre: adventure, fantasy, historical fiction, folklore

Audience: grades 7-9, grades 10-12

Binding Type: trade edition

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780763672201

Price: 17.99

Vango: Between Sky and Earth

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - MLIS, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: November 3, 2014

Review

With his true, old-fashioned adventure story, complete with zeppelins, Nazis, Soviet assassins, and a boy of mysterious origin, Fombelle evokes Herge and Kenneth Oppel. All of the characters are fully realized, especially Vango himself and the strong young women with whom he becomes involved. Beautifully translated by Sarah Ardizzone, Vango will be a wonderful introduction of Fombelle to young American readers. Absolutely first rate.

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

de Fombelle, Timothee

Publisher: Candelwick

Book Type: chapter book fiction

Genre: adventure, historical fiction

Audience: grades 4-6, grades 7-9

Binding Type: reinforced trade binding

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780763671969

Price: 17.99

A Death-Struck Year

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - MLIS, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: November 3, 2014

Review

Lucier's timely novel set during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic introduces us to Cleo Berry, a seventeen-year-old orphan who leaves the safety of her boarding school to volunteer in the Red Cross when the flu extends its claws to the West Coast. Unsparing in her depiction of the flu's predations and the fear of contagion that spreads even more rapidly, Lucier gives us a young woman whose courage is fully equal to anything that has emerged in any of the recent dystopias, and reminds us that historical events can grip us every bit as much as the imagined future. Cream

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

Lucier, Makiia

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Book Type: chapter book fiction

Genre: historical fiction

Audience: grades 7-9, grades 10-12

Binding Type: trade edition

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780544164505

Price: 17.99

The Fall

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - Retired, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: January 7, 2015

Review

Griffin's novel retells Poe's Classic, The Fall of the House of Usher, from Madeline Usher's view. Through a variety of devices that challenge the reader to keep up, including a non-linear chronology, Griffin manages to make Poe's tale of a cursed family and their crumbling mansion into something beyond pastiche. Will Madeline escape the curse of madness that has taken her parents? Can she protect her twin brother? This is a new story, which will nevertheless send readers back to the original to see how Griffin has made it her own. Although it goes off the rails a bit here and there, I recommend it for CREAM.

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

Griffin, Bethany

Illustrator: ,

Publisher: Greenwillow/HaperCollins

Book Type: chapter book fiction

Genre: horror

Audience: grades 7-9,grades 10-12

Binding Type: trade edition

Binding Quality: good

ISBN: 9780062107855

Price: 17.99

Spinoza the Outcast Thinker

Reviewed by: Nina Sachs - MLIS, Portland, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: January 13, 2015

Review

Baruch/Bento/Bendict de (ironically meaning "blessedness" in Hebrew, Portuguese, and Latin) Spinoza was a 17th century philosopher born of Dutch Jews originally from Portugal. He had an unremarkable upbringing in the Jewish section of Amsterdam, then the most tolerant city in Europe. But by age 23, he had been cast out of the Jewish community for his heretical beliefs. As they evolved, these beliefs would come to deny the existence of God as the creator and judge of humans as good or evil. Moral concepts were meaningless aside from those meanings attached to actions by the individual. Heady stuff for the 1600s. In fact, Spinoza's philosophy is so modern in its nihilism that it causes spirited debate in classrooms and lecture halls today.Think existentialism. Lehman's brilliant and eminently accessible biography of Spinoza and his thought is an essential text for young adults beginning their own exploration of morality and the limits of religion, on the one hand, and logic on the other. This book will also stimulate debate about how students can be exposed to the central ideas of philosophy without treading on anyone's personal beliefs. Lehman sources her book extensively with end notes and bibliography. The illustrations are difficult to make out, but probably couldn't be reproduced and clearer without huge additional. One quibble: Lehman writes in her Epilogue, "It is impossible to underestimate the effect that Spinoza has had in our world."(p.218) Surely she means just the opposite. Recommended for CREAM/

Overall Book Score: excellent

---

About the Book

Author:

Lehman, Devra

Illustrator: , archival

Illustration Quality: good

Publisher: Namelos

Book Type: chapter book nonfiction

Genre: biography / autobiography

Audience: grades 7-9,grades 10-12

Binding Type: other

Binding Quality: very good

ISBN: 9781608981816

Price: 14.95