Teen Review by Abdullah. . .Erratum by Walter Sorrells

Jessica Sternhagen always knew she was different. She liked things that were. . .just plain different from everything that other people liked. It all started with eleven-year old Jessica's love for books, she read all the books that she could get her hands on. Which basically meant she was tons smarter than other kids.

Jessica lives in Alsberg, Minnesota - aka, the most boring town in the U.S. so it was very typical for her to walk in to a new bookstore that she's never seen before. But something is wrong with the store, the owners talk in old fashioned english, their eyes have weird flickering lights in them, and to top it off they say they have book for her titled Her Lif. At first Jessica thinks its a printers mistake, or erratum, shouldn't it be titled Her Life? All these things are just the beginning of a series of bizarre happenings. Including a narrowly escaped murder, her life getting switched around with her best friend Dale's, and saving the universe.

As master mystery writer Walter Sorrels tells the story of Jessica and "Her Life", he'll have you waiting to turn the page to see what Jessica does next. Mr. Sorrells is also the author of many other award-winning mysteries that have been given the thumbs-up by some of the best critics. Although the cover and title might seem boring, Erratum is extremely fast-paced and compelling for anyone looking for a good read.

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Thanks, Abdullah, for the review! Always appreciated. If you want to read something as fast-faced as Erratum, try one of these:

Raven's Gate by Anthony Horowitz

The Alchemyst by Michael Scott

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Ninja Amy's Top 5 books of 2009 and Top 5 books to look for in 2010

It's totally not fair that Ninja Jenny and I read and love a lot of the same books. So, I am sorry if some of my books are the same as hers, but that just means they are so flippin' awesome that you should read them, too. Not all of my books were published in 2009, but I did read them in 2009. And I also cheated like Jenny (cheater!!) and chose two for my number 5 because I loved them both.


Amy's Top 5 Books of 2009
5. I chose two graphic novels for this slot because I couldn't leave either of them out. Stitches: a memoir by David Small is cataloged as an Adult book here at the Arlington Public Library, but some places consider it Young Adult. Stitches was one of five books nominated for the National Book Award in the category of Young People's Literature and I really wish it had won. I read it in one sitting and actually went back and re-read it because I couldn't believe it ended so quickly (despite being 329 pages - of course, it is a graphic novel). You won't believe the strange childhood the author/illustrator had. It has to be read and seen to be believed.Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan is much lighter fare than Stitches but still contains some melancholy themes now and again. But there are lots of funny parts, too. It contains 15 illustrated short stories set in the suburbs of Australia. I've been a fan of Shaun Tan since his book The Arrival, so I'm a bit biased. =)

4.I have to admit that I didn't like the first cover that Lament: the faerie queen's deception by Maggie Stiefvater was published with (not the one shown here), but I made myself pick it up just to give it a chance. Boy was I glad! Teen harpist Deirdre meets a strange flute-playing boy named Luke at a competition and gets roped into performing a song with him. Before she knows it, Deirdre is thrown into a world she didn't know existed: faeries and monsters and of all types, some of whom want to use her for rather nefarious purposes. Romance, action, and supernatural creatures abound.


3.Ninja Angela got me to read Wake by Lisa McMann, along with the sequel, Fade. Some people may be surprised to see this on my list, but the truth is that I was really floored by the simple yet very deliberate style in which McMann wrote the book. It was not what I expected and was much darker and inventive than a lot of the supernatural YA fiction out there. Main character Janie falls into people's dreams, but especially their nightmares, and doesn't seem to have control over it. Makes a school day rather difficult.

2.Yes, I know that Jenny chose this book, too! But this is the book that got me to eat healthier and stop drinking sodas. I'm not kidding. Fat Cat by Robin Brande might not change your life, but it is one of my very favorite books EVER and, if nothing else, Brande tells a great story with characters you can't help but love. Cat decides to get a little crazy with her 7-month-long science project and not only begins to eat as closely to the way our earliest ancestors (hominims, specifically the homo erectus) ate, she also gives up as much technology as possible. Crazy!

1.And where do I start with The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness? Oh, Patrick Ness, how I love thee (don't tell my boyfriend!). Set in a town where there are only men and everyone can hear each other's thoughts (even animals), Todd realizes that his upcoming birthday, which will "make him a man", is something to dread. Where did all the women go? And why can they all hear each other's thoughts? I read this. My mom read it. My brother read it. My best friend read it. My mom's boyfriend read it. And several librarians here have read it. When are you going to read it? Soon, I hope.


Amy's Top 5 Books to Look Forward to in 2010

The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong	Thresholds by Nina Kiriki Hoffman	Gone by Lisa McMann
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness	Strange Fate by L.J. Smith	Book 3 of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Okay, so I cheated and did 6, but I couldn't forget the third Hunger Games book even if Jenny already did that one, too. Grr!!! Also, I have been waiting for Strange Fate to be published since I was 18 years old. I will turn 30 before this book is published. Haven't I waited long enough, Simon & Schuster? Haven't I???

Would your parents read these books?

So, I am totally cheating and x-posting something I wrote about on the adult's What To Read blog.

My question to any teens reading this is: Would your parents - or any other adults you know - read and enjoy any of these teen books?

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins	Little Brother by Cory Doctorow	Unwind by Neal Shusterman
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness	The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs by Jack Gantos	A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

I'm always giving my mom teen books to read, and she's always passing them on to her co-workers. I think if more adults would pick up just one teen book, they would see how great these books are and that we definitely need more of them in the libary! (Um, I guess that means more of the teen books AND more of the adults who read teen books. Heh.)

Sneaky book fanatics

My mom, brother, and I read pretty much the same books. My brother lives in my apartment complex and likes to sneak into my apartment and steal my books (and food, of course) when I'm not there. He usually leaves food wrappers or plates sitting around, so of course I know he's been there. He's not the stealthiest person I know.

My mom is sneaky in a different way. She recently read the Twilight series and loved it. Yay! But then I had her read The Hunger Games and she just about had a fit when she found out there is a sequel that won't be out until September. [ insert maniacal laughter here ] She hates to read series that aren't completed because she hates having to wait for the next book to come out.

I am a sneaky daughter because I tricked her into reading Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go, knowing all the while that there is a sequel that has not yet been published. The book is incredible, one you don't want to put down, not even to eat or take a shower, so she loved it as much as I did.

But then she got sneaky. Patrick Ness, the author of The Knife of Never Letting Go, lives in England, so the book comes out first in the UK and is published months later in the U.S. The sequel, The Ask and the Answer is due to be published September 8, 2009.

I went over to her house yesterday and guess what she had? That's right. A UK copy of The Ask and the Answer. She'd ordered it through Amazon.co.uk and was very smug about it, too!

But I did what any good, sneaky daughter would do. I grabbed it and took it home with me. So now I am happily reading it and will know what happens in the story before she does. This is where I give a happy little sigh. =)

The Ninja Reviews. . .Unwind by Neal Shusterman

In a not-too distant future, parents can choose, for whatever reason, to have their teenage sons and daughters unwound. To be unwound is to have your body parts - everything from your eyes to your lungs to your entire leg - harvested and given to someone who needs them.

In Neal Shusterman's eerie, Lone Star award-winning novel, the story goes back and forth between three teens: Connor, whose parents can no longer deal with the trouble he causes; Risa, an orphan who isn't as talented as she needs to be to survive the orphanage's budget cuts; and Lev, who is known as a tithe, someone raised in preparation to one day be unwound.

A friend of mine brought this book to me and said, "You have got to read this. There was this one part that I just can't stop thinking about. I can't get it out of my head!"

And, yeah. My friend was right.

Even if you can't believe that the government would allow teenager's body parts to be "harvested", the story sucks you in right away. One of the issues the characters deal with is whether or not teens are still alive when they are unwound. The authorities say so. They never use the words "kill" or "dead." Instead, they say someone who has been unwound is "in a divided state." When a teen is sent to be unwound, they are sent to harvest camps. Makes it sound much nicer, doesn't it?

My favorite character was Cyrus Finch (CyiFi), whom Lev meets up with. Cyrus is a good person, but has these moments where he talks and acts strangely. Cyrus's story is incredibly terrifying and nearly made me cry.

There is also a lot of great slang words that the characters use that add to the creepiness of the book.

I highly recommend Unwind to anyone who likes these:

The Ninja Reviews. . .The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

What if you lived in a small town where you could hear the thoughts of every single living soul (man, dog, bird, squirrel) and they could hear yours?

This is how Todd Hewitt has grown up. In Prentisstown all 147 residents are male and every single one can hear each other's thoughts, which they call Noise, all the time. An individual's Noise can be picked out of the mass of thoughts, but there are also lies that are hard to tell apart from true thoughts.

Todd is the only boy left in this all-male town. When he turns 13, which is fast approaching, he will become a man. But there is something strange about becoming a man in Prentisstown, only Todd doesn't know what it is.

On a trek out to the nearby swamp to pick apples, Todd discovers a place of utter silence that should not exist. Why is there quiet when there shouldn't be? And what are the men of Prentisstown not telling him? The answer to these questions begins when Todd is forced to run from the place he grew up.

I absolutely loved this book. It grabbed my attention from page one and held it throughout. I immediately liked Todd and his loyal dog, Manchee. As Todd ran from Prentisstown, I found myself incredibly nervous, afraid for his safety.

The book is written in a somewhat mild form of dialect, meaning that some words are spelled out the way Todd pronounces them. Some people might not like this, but I didn't have any problem at all because it wasn't every single word. There is also a sense of stream-of-consciousness that really helps illustrate Todd's personality and his distress. Again, some readers may not like this. The ending is also a HUGE cliffhanger, which may irritate some readers. The book is actually titled The Knife of Never Letting (Chaos Walking, Book One), so a cliffhanger ending is really to be expected since there will be a sequel.

Recommended for mature or older teens because of violence and some language.