Scorpia Rising

by Anthony Horowitz
part of the Alex Rider series, book 9 (the last one)

Rating: ****` (4.5 stars)
Age group: 10+
Type: Fiction

Scorpia is a terrorist group with recruits from all over the world. They are notoriously hard to catch and powerful beyond belief. However, there is one spy who has bested them before--MI6 member Alex Rider. Even though he's only 15, he's very good at his job. Even if Alex,  is a great spy though, he just wants to be a normal boy. But Alan Blunt, head of the MI6 (a British spy organization), wants Alex to take a mission in Cairo, Egypt, where a child is needed. The job? Infiltrate the Cairo International College of Arts and Education, the CICAE, and keep an eye on the principal, Erik Gunter, who might be trying to kidnap the wealthiest kids in the school. But what MI6 doesn't know is that  whole thing is a trap set by Scorpia to get rid of Alex once and for all. So when Alex is captured by Scorpia, he's in deep trouble.
This a great book. Anthony Horowitz is really good at writing action scenes. He makes them intense and suspenseful. He's also good at describing things, and that plus the action make for a really good book. There are a lot of sinister characters who make great antagonists, and the protagonists are proportionally good. Anthony Horowitz puts his characters into many sticky situations and he doesn't always try to protect them. Most of the time, they're on their own, and he even lets some of the good guys die. Overall, really wonderful book.

Boy2Girl

by Terence Blacker

Rating:***` (3 1/2 stars)
Age group: 12+
Type: Realistic fiction

Matthew Burton's cousin is coming to do more than visit--he's living with Matthew's family for a while, because of his family. Sam Lopez is moving to England from America and it's a big change for him. He's kind of an outcast, and one day Matthew's group he hangs out with sets him a deal: if Sam pretends to be a girl for 5 days to infiltrate a girl group at school, he can be part of their gang. It works, and soon everyone's convinced Sam (Samantha) is a girl, but after 5 days, Sam doesn't want to stop. He just keeps going. Then his father comes to town, and he must hide from him. And on top of that, he still has to break the news that he's a boy!
This book is very interesting. Sam does a strangely good job of being a girl. However it's one of those stories where the narrative changes quite a lot. Other books like that change every chapter, but here the narrator changes every few paragraphs. It's kind of unnerving. And also the girl's group at school is called the B****es which is slightly strange, even though they have a good explanation for it. But other than that, this is a pretty good read.

Chew on This

by Eric Schlosser

Rating: ***** ( 5 stars)
Age group: 9+
Type: non-fiction

This book describes the disgusting reality behind fast food--from the customer service and the employee treatment to the slaughterhouses and preparation of the food. The author follows the food fresh from birth to dead, on your plate. There are many pictures throughout, which add to the paragraphs and stop it from being a massive wall of text. However this book isn't for the faint of stomach. Describing things such as gory employee injuries--one unfortunate worker was turned into lard when he fell in a vat--and what really goes into your hamburgers--hint: it has something to do with body waste--don't read this volume if you favor your chicken nuggets!
I especially liked this book because it was very informative and interesting. It was nice to finally know the truth about fast food. It was also interesting to find out how people create television ads, because they do that very strategically. My favorite part was probably the employee injuries because they really are gory. It shows how much these places cover up.