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.

The Wednesday Wars

by Gary D. Schmidt

Rating: **** (4 stars)
Age group: 10+
Type: historical realistic fiction

Holling Hoodhood's teacher hates his guts. Why else would she possibly make him read Shakespeare outside of class?
It's 1967 and Holling has a lot to worry about. There's a war going on in Vietnam. He has to keep a good reputation since he's going to inherit Hoodhood and Associates, the architecture family business. Cream puffs. His crush, Meryl Lee, who doesn't always like him and whose father owns a rival architecture company. Mean kids at school. Oh, and there's a pair of giant rats lurking around too. So why does Mrs. Baker have to add reading Shakespeare to the stack?
Eventually, though, Holling learns to appreciate Shakespeare and the Bard starts to improve his life. But after an unfortunate newspaper article featuring him--him!--wearing only yellow tights and white feathers around his butt, it all comes back, with even more worries to haunt him.
This book is very realistic and doesn't seem like historical fiction when you read it, except for the mentions of war. For example, they practice going under their desks in case there is a bomb. Holling has a believable and slightly sarcastic voice that is fun to read. This book is also pretty good, because even if all Holling's worries seem unconnected, Shakespeare ties them all together so it's not a scattered plot. Mostly this book is told with Holling's sarcastic voice but some parts are more sentimental. Overall, this is a really great book.

Life As We Knew It

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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

Miranda Evans is living a perfectly normal life with her two brothers and divorced mother. Recently, meteorologists have predicted that a meteorite will hit the moon and be visible from Earth. It's supposed to be beautiful and everybody in her neighborhood is looking forward to it. However, on the day of the collision, the meteorite actually pushes the moon closer to Earth. This causes havoc on Earth, raising the tides, blocking out the sun, and causing volcanoes to erupt and storms to happen often. Pretty much everyone thinks the world is going to end. Miranda's family must struggle to survive, stockpiling food and keeping warm, because the moon has changed weather too. People around them are dying, even close friends. The gas company can't supply them anymore, and stores are shut down. They're only surviving because of their woodstove that doesn't need gas.  But they still have many troubles... can they make it through everything?
This book is really gripping. It is told in a diary format and Miranda's voice is very believable and realistic.  The family troubles that don't have to do with the weather are also believable. Something else that is realistic is the portrayal of life after the moon moved, even though it hasn't happened. It's a dystopia but it's not a crazy and strange dystopia. It seems like it could actually happen. Life As We Knew It is a great survival story. It is very thought out. It ends at a sort of drop-off, but there are also some sequels which are called The Dead & The Gone and This World We Live In.

The Mysterious Howling

by Maryrose Wood
Part of a series, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place

Rating: ****` (4.5 stars)
Age group: 9+
Type: fiction

Penelope Lumley just graduated from the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females and is applying to be a governess at Ashton Place, a huge manor-type house. The young mistress of the house, Lady Constance is acting strangely--giving her the position without actually interviewing her, shutting all the windows on a beautiful day, making Penelope sign legal papers to stay on the job before hiring her. Then Penelope hears a mysterious howling from the barn and decides to see what's up. It turns out there are three wild, wolf-like children hiding in there--Alexander, the oldest, Beowulf, the middle, and Casseopeia, the youngest, who likes barking. Lord Frederick names the Incorrigibles. Penelope cleans them up in no time, and trains them out of most of their wolfish habits such as chasing squirrels and barking instead of talking. But when Lady Constance announces a fancy Christmas party and requires the Incorrigibles to learn many, many more things than reading and math, Penelope is hard-pressed to teach the children everything. And when the party arrives, it seems like someone is trying to sabotage everything... can Penelope solve the mystery and keep the Incorrigibles from taking the blame?
This is a really good book. I actually listened to it as an audiobook, narrated by Katherine Kellgren, and she makes it much better by doing all the voices perfectly!! This book has MANY humorous parts. The children are all very eccentric and wolfish and that makes this book all the funnier. There are also lots of strange happenings at Ashton Place that add to the storyline. It ends at a sort of cliffhanger so you might want to read the next few books, The Hidden Gallery and The Unseen Guest. 

PARENTAL SECTION
Sexual parts: no
Violence: no
Fighting: no
Kissing/romance: no
Pregnancy: no
Stealing: no
Vandalizing: no

The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

by Claire Legrand

Rating: ***` (3.5 stars)
Age group: 9.5+
Type: fantasy

Victoria Wright has a stubborn personality and strives for a perfect academic record, but she only has one friend--Lawrence. Even if Victoria criticizes him and thinks of him as an experiment, he's loyal to her. But soon Victoria notices children going missing in her town--all the imperfect ones. And then Lawrence disappears! Victoria has a feeling that the mysterious, sinister Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, run by Mrs. Cavendish and Mr. Alice, is behind the kidnappings and she decides to investigate. But she always encounters strange ten-legged bugs that leave marks behind when they touch you. When she meets the only adult who will believe her, the bugs suddenly take him! Victoria digs deeper--too deep, apparently, because then Mrs. Cavendish takes her, too. Now she is trapped in a terrible prison with walls that alive and strange slaves to Mrs. Cavendish called gofers. Finally she knows what's happening to the missing children--but she has to get everyone out before their thirteenth birthdays or something terrible happens to them that nobody knows. Victoria finds out a dark secret--a dark, gross secret, and Lawrence's thirteenth birthday is coming up! Will she ever save the kids and destroy the Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls?

 This book is pretty good and it's interesting how Victoria's personality changes. The author does a really good job of making the Home feel creepily nightmarish and there's a lot of pressure put on Victoria to escape which makes parts of the book suspenseful. This book is very exciting but there are some really disgusting parts. Also it's a little bit scary. But overall it is okay.

PARENTAL SECTION
Sexual parts: no
Violence: not really
Fighting: not really
Kissing/romance: no
Pregnancy: no
Stealing: no
Vandalizing: no
SPOILER ALERT!!!




There is one really, really disgusting part where Victoria finds
out that on the kids' thirteenth birthdays they are turned into
gofers and eaten. This is also somewhat intense but not really.