Mr. Watt’s begins teaching on the island when most of the other white people have left back to the main land. War is raging among the redskins and the rebels. Mr. Watt’s stays because he and his wife, who is a native of the island, live there. He has never taught before and decides to read aloud to the students from Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations. The group he teaches is of mixed ages since the island has a one room school house. Mr. Watts changes the story when necessary to make it easier for the students to understand. It gives them a source of escape when their world is crumbling around them. The main character, Matilda, falls in love with the characters from the novel. She tries to explain to her mother how much the characters and story mean to her. Her mother is suspicious and even goes to the school to check up on what Mr. Watt’s is teaching her.

Eventually the redskins invade their village. They ask for Pip (the character from Great Expectations.) When they are unable to find him, the leader of the redskins says they have two weeks before they come back. If they don’t turn over Pip at that time, they will burn down the village. Matlida’s mother steals the book (but no one except Matilda knows she did it), so Mr. Watt’s can’t find it to prove Pip is really only a character in a story. Eventually, with the return of the redskins Mr. Watts takes the blame. The soldiers are merciless. They butcher Mr. Watts. When her mother stands up for him, they butcher her as well.

After that night, Matlida escapes the island on a boat with some other members of her village. She grows up and is still intrigued by Mr. Watts and Great Expectations. She reads it again, but discovers it is not as “good” as when Mr. Watts read it to the class. Matlida searches to find out everything she can about Mr. Watts and is surprised to find out how he and his wife met, married and came to love on the island.

This book will be good for teaching young adults about the realities of war.  Although some scenes are gruesome, they are necessary to the plot of the story.

Hannah Baker was someone Clay dreamed about dating. She had a reputation that made Clay think there was no way he had a shot at dating her.  The closest they got was at a party.  After both of them had a few drinks, they went into one of the bedrooms and started kissing.  But that was all that happened, before she pushed him away.

When Clay found out Hannah had committed suicide, he felt shocked.  He never had a chance to get to know her, but Hannah had a solution to that problem.  She left behind a set of tapes she recorded explaining how thirteen people impacted her life and influenced her suicide.  Each person on the tape is to listen to the entire tape and then send them to the next person in order of appearance on the tape.  What if they choose to just throw them away?  Hannah sends out a backup copy to a trusted individual who will release all the dirty little secrets present on the tape to the general public.

When Clay gets the tapes he can’t believe he is on the tapes.  He keeps wondering what he did to her to hurt her so badly.  As he listens to the other stories he begins to see inside Hannah’s soul.  He wishes he could have trusted his gut and talked to her sooner.  He thinks maybe things would have been different.  Would it have mattered?  We’ll never know.  What we do know from the tapes is Hannah had one rotten thing after another happen to her.  High school is filled with rumors.  These affected her deeply.  High school is filled with jerks.  I could relate to her story when she spoke of Bryce touching her without her permission.  I will never forget this persistent boy in high school who was always trying to grab my butt or tell me nasty things.  Just like Hannah, I didn’t go to anyone for help.  I thought I was on my own.  I felt sincerely touched by this story.  I wanted to reach out to Hannah and let her know we all feel like life sucks at some point.  I wanted to scream, talk to someone…but don’t beat around the bush TELL them exactly what you are thinking. 

Fanboy is your typical “bored with life” teenager.  He is a loner.  He has a list that he keeps of people who piss him off.  His only friend is Cal, an athlete with a closet enjoyment of comic books he shares with Fanboy. His mother is remarried to the “Step-fascist.”  And pregnant (oh the horror.)  He hates being around his parents, he hates school.  The only thing he doesn’t hate is his computer and comics until he meets Goth Girl.  She sees some of the jocks picking on him at school and that night IMs him.  He thinks it is a prank at first, until she sends him pictures from her cell phone taken during the beating.  After arranging a meeting, they decide they have a lot in common and start hanging out.  Goth Girl is full of complexities.  She is usually not very honest with him, more out of self preservation rather than actually trying to be cruel to him.  At the same time his best friend Cal is absorbed with sports and is hanging out with the jocks more and more.  He shares his dream of publishing his own graphic novel.  She supports him and stands up for him when he goes to meet his idol and things don’t turn out how he had planned.  This book reminds me a little of what happened at Columbine.  It looks at how badly some kids are treated while other students and adults turn a blind eye and ignore it hoping it will go away.  Along the way he realizes how much he liked Kyra (aka Goth Girl) as more than just a friend, but she is moody and emotional and tries to push him away.  Will they end up together?  What about Cal…has he decided it is better to be a jock than be friends with Fanboy?

It had been a while since I had read the tale of Beowulf back in English 4 my junior year of high school. I remembered the basics, but I also remembered reading them dryly from the page. That certainly was not the case with Gareth Hinds’ graphic novel version of Beowulf. The format of this book will appeal to teens, making this old tale a new found story of heroism for many. I am not a big graphic novel reader and at times I found it hard to follow the pictures. Not quite sure how to follow them across the pages. The text boxes and graphics boxes were often irregularly shaped and it was hard to determine which went first. I was also overwhelmed by the fight scenes which went on for many frames. That being said, today’s teens are used to a huge amount of stimulating material thrown at them at the same time. I think they will love the fast pace of the story line. I thoroughly enjoyed this illustrated version of Beowulf. I found it easy to read with just the right amount of traditional language. Hinds did a wonderful job with the illustrations for this book. Beowulf’s bravery, courage and valor show readers what a true superhero is.

When Stephanie’s uncle suddenly dies, she is transported into a world she never knew existed.  After his funeral she is alone in the her uncle’s house when something comes knocking on the door.  She is scared and doesn’t know what she will do when it breaks the glass and comes intruding in.  But then, Skullduggery is there…getting rid of this intruder for her.  The first time she saw him was at her uncle’s funeral.  He was odd- dressed in a full length trench coat , hat, scarf, sunglasses and gloves despite the hot weather.  In the scuffle, Skullduggery loses his had and immediately Stephanie realizes why he was so covered up.  He is a walking, talking skeleton!  He introduces himself as a detective and friend of her uncles.  Regardless of his strange appearance, Stephanie likes him and decides to trust what he tells her.  There is a war raging between good and evil and Skullduggery tells Stephanie he thinks her uncle’s death was not an accident.  It turns out he was involved in magic and was hiding something very important…the scepter.  Skullduggery tries to talk Stephanie out of accompanying him on this mission, but she is stubborn and adventurous.  As she becomes more involved in this parallel world, she uncovers the fact that magic runs in her family.  In the midst of everything, Skullduggery Pleasant is kidnapped.  Working together with Tanith, Gastly and two Cleavers, Stephanie and the others storm Serpine’s house.  In the end, they must go to the caves to use the secret key to reveal the scepter.  It is a race against time as good versus evil both try to reach the caves first.  She finds herself separated from Skullduggery, but this leads to an advantage.  She is able to approach Serpine from behind and distract him long enough for Skullduggery to grab the scepter and use it on Serpine.  At the end Stephanie is recovering from attack and we see she is also honing her magic skills.  The teaser at the end of the novel, had me ready to race out and get book two: Skullduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire.

This books was funny and fast paced.  It reminds me of The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.  However this book was more fun.  Both have teenager main characters on adventure that will ultimately save the world.  The dry humor, British accents, hilarious mentor (Skullduggery) set this book at the top of my list for must reads.  I heard from my professor Dr. Lesesne that the audio for this book was outstanding.  While I did not purchase the audio for this book, I did go online and listen to a free sample of the audio from www.skullduggerypleasant.com/us .  I immediately considered buying the audio and listening to it all over again.

As S.E. Hinton wrote in Tex, “There are some people who go places and some who stay.” Arnold Spirit will go places. In this touching and laugh out loud story Arnold tells just what it takes to make it in the world. Poor Arnold. He has a rough life. He was born with water on the brain. After surgery to treat the problem, he has permanent brain damage which causes him to stutter, lisp, and have 10 extra teeth. Because of all that he is constantly being picked on. But that’s not getting Arnold down. In fact, Arnold is doing everything he can to beat the odds. All his life he has grown up on a reservation, or the Rez as Arnold calls it. His family is very poor and his father is often drunk. He best friend is the town bully, but he is also Arnold’s protection. When one of the reservation teachers tells Arnold he is really smart and not to give up like so many other Indians on the reservation have, Arnold decides the only way to be someone is to get off the reservation. Arnold enrolls in the closest public school, almost 25 miles away in Reardan. It’s a hick town, small minded, with hardly any minorities and Arnold Spirit sticks out like a sore thumb. The first day is rough, but after Arnold punches the captain of the football team, he slowly earns the school’s respect. The Indians back home seem to think Arnold is acting superior and even his best friend stops talking to him. Arnold finds himself split to two…stay on the reservation and become a loser or risk everything to get off the reservation. In the end Arnold makes new friends at the school in Reardan and stands up for what he believes in.