Author: Marcy

The Soaring Eagle Nominee list is a list of 10 books picked by teens, 7^th-12^th grade, in the state of Wyoming. These are titles that other teens have said are amazing and should be read. This year’s list includes nonfiction, novels in verse, realistic fiction, fantasy, and mystery.

Our last set of books are standalone books. The Library of Lost Things, They Both Die at the End and Grenade are all standalone novels.

The Library of Lost Things

By Laura Taylor Namey

“How could I open that door and let him see the messiest parts of me?”

Darcy loves to read. She loves books and language and words. She loves how they help her escape from the reality of her own life.

But what might happen if she chooses to live her life instead of escaping it? Could she create a story of her own to rival any she has experienced through print?

Join her as she navigates family secrets and the beautiful sweetness of young love, and perhaps be inspired to take some risks in the story that is yours to create.

They Both Die at the End

By Adam Silvera

“Mateo, I regret to inform you that sometime in the next twenty-four hours you’ll be meeting an untimely death. And while there isn’t anything we can do to suspend that, you still have a chance to live.”

Imagine receiving this phone call. This is the reality for Mateo, Rufus, and countless others. They don’t know how it will happen or even the exact minute, just that they will die that day. They live in a near future world where a company called Death Cast knows when people will die and then notifies them. You choose what to do with your last 24 hours. Do you hold a funeral? Make memories at Make a Moment where you can virtually skydive, swim with sharks, and have other adventures? Do you spend it with family and friends?

If the last option is your choice and you don’t have any friends or family, the Last Friend App has you covered. Just download the app, sign up and the app will match you with other people dying or just a friendly person that wants to be there for your last day. The Last Friend app connects Mateo and Rufus for their last day. They are completely different; Mateo is a homebody who prefers books and video games, and Rufus is a street kid who prefers to be with his gang of friends. What they don’t realize is they both need each other on their last day and they are more alike than they ever thought. 

Grenade

By Alan Gratz

Imagine being pulled out of your classroom at school and told your small island, the only home you have known, is about to be invaded by enemy forces.  You are just 14; you know nothing about fighting, and yet you are told that you, and all your classmates, are expected to fight.

Each of you is given two hand grenades, and these instructions:  with the first grenade, throw it at the attacking soldiers, and kill as many as possible.

With the second grenade, if you aren’t able to escape… kill yourself.

These are the instructions given to Hideki, a teen boy living on the island of Okinawa, just off the coast of Japan, during World War II.  Part of the Pacific theater, the battle of American and Japanese troops on the tiny island of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest of the war.  In Grenade, author Alan Gratz shows us the terror Hideki faces as he is expected to fight the American soldiers on the Japanese-occupied island that has been his family’s home.

Gratz also introduces us to Ray, an American soldier who is the second narrator of the story… a soldier who is fighting because it is his duty, but not because he hates the Okinawan people.

As Hideki and Ray move across the island, their stories converge in a fateful moment of decision.

Some of you might remember that author Alan Gratz visited schools in Campbell County in the fall of 2019.  Some of his other books include Refugee, which is a current Indian Paintbrush book award nominee, and Projekt 1065, which was the first runner-up for the Soaring Eagle book award in 2019.

To find these titles, stop by the Teen Room or your school library. Haven’t heard of one you might like? That’s okay; stop by the library for other recommendations. You can also click on the category Readers Advisory or Soaring Eagles on the side for other recommendations.

Library Link: The Library of Lost Things

Library Link: They Both Die at the End

Library Link: Grenade

The Soaring Eagle Nominee list is a list of 10 books picked by teens, 7^th-12^th grade, in the state of Wyoming. These are titles that other teens have said are amazing and should be read. This year’s list includes nonfiction, novels in verse, realistic fiction, fantasy, and mystery.

Our next three books are books in series. Ash Princess, Truly Devious and Wizard for Hire are all part of trilogies; Verify is the first part of its duology.

Ash Princess

By Laura Sebastian

After ten years of Theo being held captive in her own country and palace, she thinks the Kaiser has taken everything from her. He’s taken her family, people and even her name, replacing Theo with Thora. Thora thinks that all she can do now is simply survive; she only has one hope at escaping, and they haven’t come for 10 years. The Kaiser also thinks she has nothing left to lose, until he makes her kill the person she thinks is her only hope at escaping. This breaks Thora in a way the Kaiser doesn’t think of and Theo makes the decision that surviving is not enough.  Now, she is determined to take the insult of Ash Princess and turn it into something to be feared. What the Kaiser doesn’t understand is that from the ashes, a queen will rise.

Truly Devious

By Maureen Johnson

Ellingham Academy is a private high school in Vermont, where the best and brightest students go. They didn’t even have an application to get in. The only information to get in was, “If you would like to be considered for Ellingham Academy, please get in touch.”

Stevie Bell is a true-crime aficionado, and her favorite unsolved crime is the “Truly Devious” kidnapping/murder that took place at the Ellingham Academy in 1936. When she got in touch with Ellingham Academy, she told them she wanted to go there so she could solve the “case of the century,” as some had called it. Shortly after arriving at Ellingham, strange things start happening and a student is murdered. Has “Truly Devious” returned? Stevie and her friends must dig into the past and the present to uncover the clues and try to solve this murder mystery.

Wizard for Hire

By Obert Skye

When Ozzy was 7, life was close to perfect: he lived with his parents in a secluded cabin in the forest, filling his stomach with food from their large garden and his mind with stories from their large library. 

Life changed in an instant when, as Ozzy was down by the creek, his parents were kidnapped by large, angry men. Ozzy had to learn to survive on his own.

Fast forward 7 years.  Ozzy discovers two things that will change his life: a mechanical raven, Clark, that was invented by his father; and a newspaper ad that reads, “Wizard for hire,” and leads him to meet Labyrinth, or Rin for short.

Although Rin is nothing like the wizards that Ozzy has read about in his books, he hopes that whatever magic Rin controls will help him find out what happened to his parents, and hopefully bring them home.

What follows is an adventure that Ozzy never could have anticipated.  Was he wrong to trust Rin? Is there enough magic in the world to bring his parents home?

Verify

By Joelle Charbonneau

Meri’s life was changed when her mom suddenly died. Her father started drinking constantly, leaving Meri to fend for herself. Then on the last day of school she sees something she can’t believe; someone being arrested for having paper. Paper isn’t illegal, just very bad for the environment. Everything is digital now, but if you want to own paper, you can, as long as you pay the environmental tax that goes with it. The government has even set up recycling centers where you can take paper and get paid for it. Meri can’t stop thinking about the young man she saw arrested, so when she sees him again, she decides to follow him. When they meet, he shares secrets with her and tells her he was a hidden part of her mother’s life before she died. Meri soon realizes that “Just because you believe something, doesn’t make it true.”

To find these titles, stop by the Teen Room or your school library. Haven’t heard of one you might like? That’s okay; next time we’ll be talking about standalone titles.  If you don’t want to wait,  stop by the library for other recommendations!

As the weather outside turns cold and snowy what better way to spend the afternoons and evenings then by curling up with a good book? Follow us over the next few weeks as we highlight books from the 2020-2021 Soaring Eagle Nominee list.

The Soaring Eagle Nominee list is a list of 10 books picked by teens, 7^th-12^th grader, in the state of Wyoming. These are titles that other teens have said are amazing and should be read. This year’s list includes nonfiction, novels in verse, realistic fiction, fantasy, and mystery.

Our first three are quick reads. Shout and Solo are novels in verse, meaning the story is told in poetry format. Game Changer is told through text messages, emails and script like dialog.

  

Shout

By Laurie Halse Anderson

Twenty years ago, Laurie Halse Anderson wrote a book. It was a book about Melinda, a 9^th grader who is hated at her new high school because she called the police to an end-of-summer party.  Melinda, bullied and cast out, becomes unable to use her voice.  Only farther in the story do we learn the real reason she called the police, the real reason for her silence. Twenty years ago, Speak, a book about rape and its aftermath, offered teens who had experienced sexual assault a place where their pain was understood.

In Shout, Melinda becomes “me” as Laurie Halse Anderson tells the story of her own rape at age 14, during a time when the culture blamed victims and exonerated the perpetrators. As the #MeToo movement has allowed women and men to speak about the unspeakable, Anderson adds her voice, this time in powerful, gut-searing verse, to their stories of shame.

But Anderson’s voice also trembles with rage, as she relays stories of her career as a writer, as the author who wrote “that book,” as her work is censored, and her speaking engagements cancelled because she speaks honestly with teens about sexual violence.  Through Anderson’s hard-hitting poetry, we learn that not much has changed since her own rape in the 1970’s, or even in the twenty years since Speak was published.

 

Solo

By Kwame Alexander with Mary Rand Hess

Blade has it all. By material standards anyway. His family is rock and roll royalty with the mansion, cars and disposable income to back it up.

But when the ground he stands on is rocked to the core by betrayal, uncovered secrets and one too many unkept promises, Blade is left searching for something well beyond the material.

Float along on the rhythmic journey of this book in verse as Blade travels across the world and across his soul to find the things that aren’t really things that make life worth living. Be there when he realizes he really does have it all, not just by material standards.

 

Game Changer

By Tommy Greenwald

Walthorne Wildcats stick together: they win as a team and they lose as a team. Wildcats stand together no matter what, especially when one of their own falls into a coma after an injury at the football training camp. As Teddy’s family, team and community gather round him to support his recovery, the question comes up again and again; what really happened to Teddy that fateful day on the field?

Game Changer is a story told in multiple formats; dialogue, texts, articles, interviews and Teddy’s inner thoughts. Fans of football and sports will love reading about sticking together as a team and coming together when one of your own is hurt.

 

To find these titles, stop by the Teen Room or your school library. Haven’t heard of one you might like? That’s okay; next time we’ll be talking about series, or stop by the library and we can give you other recommendations!

 

And the winner is…. Okay we don’t know the winner yet. Hopefully soon though! However, after going through and showing you all ten of the nominees for 2019-2020, several of those authors have published new titles! Some are sequels and some are not, but I wanted to take a minute to share with you a few new titles by some of our favorite authors.

Jennifer Lynn Barnes, author of Little White Lies, has the sequel published; the title is Deadly Little Scandals. This book continues to follow Sawyer as she searches for the truth some of the events that happened in book one. This one centers around Sawyer and her cousin Lily as they attempt to join a secret group called the White Gloves. This group is composed of girls from the most elite families and not just anyone can join. As the pair grows closer to the group, they discover secrets that are decades old, secrets that will change the life of the girls forever.

Becky Albertalli, one of the authors of What If It’s Us, is back again, cowriting the book Yes No Maybe So, with fellow author Aisha Saeed. This book follows Jamie and Maya. Jamie volunteers for a local senate candidate and does a lot of the behind-the-scenes-type things, but he will not knock on doors and talk to people about their views. Maya is already having one of the worst summers ever: her friends are busy; her trip has been cancelled; and to top it off, her mom has just signed her up to do political canvassing. As luck would have it, when Jamie hears Maya will be going door-to-door, he decides to sign up as well. As the two grow closer they must not only navigate the political world but also their cross-cultural romance.

Karen M. McManus is the author of the popular One of Us is Lying. Her newest book, One of Us is Next, happens a year after the events of One of Us is Lying and follows Bronwyn’s sister, Maeve. After Simon’s “About That” blog was taken down, no other gossip app could stand up, even though many have tried. Now students at Bayview are getting texts about a new game, Truth or Dare. As the students quickly learn, you should always pick dare. But as the dares get more and more dangerous, Maeve and her friends start searching for who is behind the text before the game turns deadly.

There you have three new books by some favorite authors. Follow us on Facebook at Campbell County, Wyoming Government for some virtual book talks!