Who's Your Daddy? By Lynda Sandoval

Who's Your Daddy? 
By Lynda Sandoval

So, what does YOUR daddy do? Has that ever gotten in the way of your social life? 
What if your daddy was:
• the chief of police?
• the vice pricipal of your high school, the football coach, and the driver’s ed instructor all rolled into one?
• a famous and fabulously wealthy musician?

That’s the dilemma shared by Lila, Meryl and Caressa, three social outcasts in White Peaks, Colorado all because of their daddies. They are all cute enough, bright enough, and talented enough, but what boy in his right mind would be BRAVE enough to date one of them when the girls have fathers like that?

These three desperate girls decide to take their dateless matters into their own hands. At midnight on the night of Homecoming, they convene to conduct a Dumb Supper- dumb as in silent-which is a traditional ritual from 17th century England. They hope to reveal the identities of potential boyfriends- maybe even prom dates. But, despite their excellent planning, everything goes wrong. They are interrupted before they can carry out the supper. Yet… three guys are revealed. But, how could that be? And, perplexingly, some of the guys are not who the girls wished for at all. Did the supper somehow work, or was it fate?

It may surprise you to find out that the author, Linda Sandoval, is a police officer-turned-writer. Nevertheless, you will laugh out loud with this book, and hope for a sequel!

Booktalk by Kathy Caldwell, Woodward Middle School Library

Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton

Chanda'sSecrets 
by Allan Stratton

When Chanda’s Secrets starts out, Chanda is sitting in a Funeral Home. She is only 16 but her step-father is off drinking and her mother can’t seem to get herself up off the floor, so it is up to Chanda to arrange for a funeral for her baby sister. 

The funeral home used to be a building supply store but lately in Chanda’s town there is “more money in death than in construction.” 

If you think this is going to be one of those books where so many bad things keep happening to one person that it just isn’t believable, then you are right. Sorta. This story is fiction, so it is not true but it is based on a reality that is very true. That reality exists in sub-Saharan Africa where in some countries over 20% of the people have AIDS or are HIV positive. You can read a lot of books about the statistics about what is happening with this epidemic in Africa but they won’t tell you the story like this book does. 

It seems that people all around Chanda are dying of AIDS, but no one will talk about it. The cemeteries are filling up as fast as they are being built, but every time someone dies people say the death was from TB or pneumonia or Cancer. Because AIDS is too scary to say out loud and if you have it and you live in Chanda’s town, you could lose your job or your friends and even your family might toss you out. 

This is Chanda’s reality and she doesn’t know what her baby sister died from or what her mother keeps getting sick from. And Chanda isn’t sure she wants to find out, because knowing the truth may be too big of a secret to have to keep.

Booktalk by Jane Wheeler, Whatcom County Library System

Chanda'sSecrets 
by Allan Stratton

What would it be like to live in world where going to the hospital or visiting a doctor was a mark of shame: A sign that you or your family was wicked, evil?

You really wouldn't want to get sick would you? And if you did, you'd keep it a secret.

Chanda lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Her family is really poor—ever since her father went off to work in the South African diamond mines and never came back. Her mom had remarried three times—once to a man who abused Chanda badly, another time to a drunken loser.

But Chanda won't give up. She protects her little sister and brother as best she can, and she goes to school. A good education could change everything in her life!

And then they get sick. Really sick.

Chanda hopes for a brighter future, a better life: But her secrets may kill that hope—and Chanda, herself.

Read Chanda's Secret – but don't forget a box of Kleenex.

Booktalk by Kirsten Edwards, King County Library system

Runaways No. 1: Pride and Joy by Brian Vaughan et al.

RunawaysNo. 1: Pride and Joy 
by Brian Vaughan et al.

Do you think your parents overbearing? Jerks? Or just really, really, really annoying?

[wait for responses]

Teenagers Alex, Karolina, Gert, Chase, Molly, and Nico, would probably agree—sometimes—but mostly mom and dad are just, well, parents, and they love them.
They're typical teenagers: goth chick, smart kid, jock—and they mostly get along because their parents are friends.

So it's a bit of shock when they attend what's supposed to be a dinner party thing—a boring "just parents" get-together and they witness mom and dad murdering someone—and not just murder—human sacrifice.

Mom and dad aren't just kind of irritating. They're greedy, overbearing—and EVIL.

What do you do? Pretend you don't know anything? What if you let something slip? What if their parents were only pretending to care about them, and they actually plan to use their kids in some completely evil scheme—?

Alex, Karolina, Gert, Chase, Molly, and Nico have to run away. And of course their parents—and their evil henchmen—come after them. Luckily for these teenagers, they're no more "normal" than their parents, and life on the run brings out strange new talents. Mutants, aliens, werewolves—their whole world has gone crazy and they're in the middle of it.

What do you do when you discover your parents are super-villains?

Read Runaways: Volume 1, "Pride and Joy" and find out!

Booktalk by Matt Laxton, Lynnwood Library & K. Edwards, King County Library System

Premonitions by Jude Watson

Premonitions
 by Jude Watson

[Read from the first page]

I think I was a nice person before my mom died. I have a hard time connecting that person to the person I am now. It's going on a year and a half since the accident, and I think I'm running out of leeway. People, like teachers, aren't giving me slack any more. One of these days, I'm going to have to decide on a personality. I am mean to my best friend, Emily, that day. And no, it isn't the first time. But I'm not the first person in her life to let her down. So that's not why she disappears.

Ever since her parents' death, Grace has had premonitions. Strange moments when she sees things, hears things that couldn't be real… but are. Not that anyone believes Grace. She begged her mom not to board the plane, begged her, but her mom wouldn't believe and died when the plane crashed.

Uprooted from everything she's ever known, mourning her mom, sent to live with an Aunt she hardly knows on an island here in Washington, Grace shuts everyone out. Until she has visions of her friend's kidnapping—and Emily disappears. When the visions continue, she realizes that Emily must still be alive—but terrible things are happening to the girl.

Grace has to reach out—to try share her strange abilities, understand and master them, if she has any hope of saving Emily. Grace is afraid people won't believe her, will laugh at her, and think she's crazy. What Grace doesn't realize is that she's unless she's very, very lucky that's far from the worst thing that can happen to her—or will.

I love twists and turns. Sneaky plots that trick you into thinking you know what's going down—then completely surprise you.

Read Premonitions for a story that will keep you guessing right up to the end!

Booktalk by Kirsten Edwards, King County Library System

Double Helix by Nancy Werlin

DoubleHelix 
by Nancy Werlin

Eli is smart, really smart. After he graduates from high school, he is supposed to go to a really good college, but Eli puts school off. Instead he is offered a job in a genetics lab with a legendary scientist, named Quincy Wyatt. In the science world this is a little like when a basketball player gets drafted out of high school straight into the NBA. 

Life could be almost perfect for Eli. He is getting paid big bucks. Quincy Wyatt has taken a special interest in him, buying him expensive dinners and introducing him to interesting people. 

There is just a little problem with the situation. Eli’s father seems to hate Quincy Wyatt and is completely against Eli working at the lab. At some point in the past something happened between Eli’s parents and Mr. Wyatt but Eli’s father won’t say what it is. And Eli’s mother is debilitated with Huntington’s disease. She is in a nursing home and can no longer talk.

Eli tries to unravel the mystery on his own. He starts snooping around at the lab. As Eli gets deeper into the mystery he begins to realize that he is actually at the center of the big secret. And his father, mother and Mr. Wyatt may not be exactly the type of people that they appear to be.

Booktalk by Jane Wheeler, Whatcom County Library System

DoubleHelix 
by Nancy Werlin

Eli just cannot face college right after graduation, and takes a job at Wyatt Transgenics, famous for its biogenetic research. This company is run by Dr. Quincy Wyatt. Eli knows his mother knew him years ago, and also knows his father hates him now. But, why does his father hate Dr. Wyatt? Eli’s father won’t tell him, and he cannot ask his mother because she is dying and in the final debilitating stages of Huntington disease. The longer Eli works for Dr. Wyatt, the more puzzled he becomes. Why was the doctor so eager to give him a good job, and why has he been so friendly to Eli? Why does Dr. Wyatt’s houseguest, Kayla, look so much like Eli’s mother at eighteen? Why has Eli always felt superior- smarter at school, and more athletic- to the point that he purposely avoids competing? Mesmerizing answers to all these questions are slowly revealed in this chilling book.

Do you have any questions like Eli’s--?!

Booktalk by Kathy Caldwell, Woodward Middle School Library

The Secret Hour: Midnighters Vol. 1 by Scott Westerfeld

TheSecret Hour: Midnighters Vol. 1
 Scott Westerfeld

Funny thing about Rex, class dweeb: When he wears his glasses, some things go blurry, instead of clear. And when he takes them off, and the whole world goes soft-focus, some things; special things, jump right out.

When Rex sees the new girl, after he's just been pounded by the local bullies, he's not wearing his glasses.

[Read from p. 4 – 5]

"He nodded. As she walked away, Rex pulled off his glasses again, and again she jumped into clarity as the rest of the world became a blur.

Rex finally allowed himself to believe it, and smiled. Another one, and from somewhere beyond Bixby, Oklahoma.

Maybe this year was going to be different."

The new girl, fifteen-year-old Jessica doesn't know it, but she's a midnighter. When the clock strikes twelve in her new hometown, for one secret hour, everyone in freezes but her, and the other midnighters, like Rex.

Jessica's about to find out though.

Because the creatures in the Midnight Hour are coming looking for her.

Find out what happens in: The Secret Hour, book 1 of the Midnighters by Scott Westerfeld.

2007 Evergreen Award Winner

The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer