Teen Pick of the Week: Going Vintage

             
Going Vintage by Lindsey Leavitt

     When Mallory's boyfriend, Jeremy, cheats on her with an online girlfriend, Mallory decides the best way to de-Jeremy her life is to de-modernize things too.  Inspired by a list of goals her grandmother made in 1962, Mallory swears off technology and returns to a simpler time ( when boyfriends didn't cheat with computer avatars).
The list:

• Run for pep-squad secretary
• Host a fancy dinner party/soiree
• Sew a dress for homecoming
• Find a steady
• Do something dangerous

     But simple proves to he crazy complicated, and the details of the past begin to change Mallor's present.  Add in a too-busy grandmother, a sassy sister, and the cute pep-squad president--who just happens to be her ex's cousin--and soon Mallory begins to wonder if going vintage is going to far.

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

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Small Fry Picks of the Week: The Tree Lady

The Tree Lady by H. Joseph Hopkins


Meet Kate Sessions, a young woman with a grand passion for trees.  She has guts. She has Vigor. And she has a vision-- a green, leafy vision that will one day transform the city.

A lovely and inspiring picture book that follows the life of American botanist and horitculturalist, Kate Sessions. The true story of how one tree-loving woman followed her passion and love for science and the outdoors when most girls were supposed to keep their hands clean, and changed a city forever.



Locomotive by Brian Floca

Here are the locomotives, the iron horses, the great machines, pulling their trains behind them.  Here are the crews that make them run, and here is how they do it. And here is a family heading West, hoping to start a new life. It is the summer of 1869, and trains, crews, and family are traveling together, riding America's first transcontinental railroad, still new, just built.

Come hear the hiss of the steam, feel the heat of the engine, watch the landscape race by.  Come ride the rails, come cross the young country!  All Aboard!


Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

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Teen Pick of the Week: The Lord of Opium

The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer

Until recently, Matt, the hero of Nancy Farmer's award-winning The House of the Scorpion, was a clone grown from a strip of old El Patron's skin.  Now he is lord of an army of eejits, zombielike workers who are harnessed to old El Patron's sinister system of drug growing.  His country?  The Land of Opium, on the one-time US-Mexican border. Opium is the largest territory of the Dope Confederacy, which ranges on the map like an intestine, from the ruins of San Diego to the ruins of Matamoros.  The rest of the world has been devastated by ecological disaster and is now known as God's Ashtray.  But hidden in Opium is the cure.

Who is and who isn't an eejit, who is and who isn't microchipped, who is and who isn't an enemy or friend make for a tantalizing puzzle Matt must solve in his own unforgettable story of survival.

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

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Small Fry Pick of the Week: Warriors: The Sun Trail

Dawn of the Clans
Warriors: The Sun Trail # 1 by Erin Hunter

     Follow the Trail of the Rising Sun.  For many moons, a tribe of cats has lived peacefully near the top of a mountain.  But prey is scarce and seasons are harsh--and their leader fears they will not survive.  When a mysterious vision reveals a land filled with food and water, a group of brave young cats sets off in search of a better home.  But great dangers await them.  In this unfamiliar world, faced with loners and fierce rogues all vying for territory and power, the traveling cats must find a new way to live side by side--or risk tearing one another apart.

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Teen Pick of the Week:The Eye of Minds

The Eye of the Minds by James Dashner

Michael is a gamer.  And like most gamers, he almost spends more time on the VirtNet than in the actual world.  the VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and it's addictive.  Thanks to technology, anyone with enough money can experience fantasy worlds, risk their life without the chance of death, or just hand around with Virt friends. And the more hacking skills you have, the more fun. Why bother following the rules when most of them are dumb anyway?

     But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And recent reports claim that one gamer is going beyond what any gamer  has done before: he's holding players hostage inside the VirtNet.  The effects are horrific--the hostages have all been declared brain-dead.  Yet the gamer's motives are a mystery.

     The government knows that to catch a hacker you need a hacker.  And they've been watching Michael.  They want him on their team.  But the risk is enormous.  If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid.  There are back alleys and corners in the system human eyes have never seen and predators he can't even fathom--and there's the possibility that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever.

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week?Email me!