Tolog Recommendations: Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone
by Daniel Woodrell

reviewed by Sarah Peterson
class of 2017

Winter’s Bone was an exciting book about a sixteen year old girl whose father had left her her mother and her two younger brothers. Her mother is ill and her two young brothers are barely ten, so she took on the responsibility of taking care of her family. Ree finds out that her father trial is coming up and she has to find him in a week dead or alive. This book is not my favorite, but what I love was how strong of a female character Ree was. Over the past few years, I have read mainly books with strong female characters because it gives me inspiration, and when I read a book I like to picture myself in the place of one of the characters and imagine if I was them. While reading this book, I could imagine myself in Ree's place. Besides Ree in the book, the book also showed me the hardships and reality that some people have to live in. This book is fiction, but I felt it could have taken on the story of someone who is real. Winter’s Bone was a good book and I would recommend it to any of my classmates at FSHA. If you liked realistic fiction with all lot of excitement and drama, you'll love this book!

Enter to Win: The Teens' Top Ten Award nominees are here!

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to select the Teens' Top Ten Award winner for 2013.  
There are twenty-eight books nominated for the award, and we have them all in the FSHA Library.  Cast your vote and join people from all over the country in selecting a favorite.  Plus, you can win some great prizes for participating!  
Here's how:

1. Read one of the nominated titles (displayed in the Library RIGHT NOW!).

2. Submit a review of the book on this blog.  (See this review and this review of the nominees.)

3. Get a raffle ticket for submitted your review. (Hold on to that raffle ticket!  Prize winners will be announced at the end of October. Prizes include gift cards, books, and more!)

4. Read more books from the list, submit more reviews, get more raffle tickets, have more chances to win big! (It's like in The Hunger Games - the more times you enter, the more likely you are to win. Though much less death in involved.)

5. Vote for your favorites on the Teens' Top Ten web site.

The 2012 winners are:

1).   Roth, Veronica. Divergent. 

2).  Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. 

3).  Lu, Marie.  Legend. 

4).  Riggs, Ransom. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. 

5).  Dessen, Sarah. What Happened to Goodbye. 

6).  Revis, Beth. Across the Universe. 

7).  Meyer, Marissa. Cinder. 

8).  Stiefvater, Maggie. The Scorpio Races.  

9).  Forman, Gayle. Where She Went.   

10).  Cabot, Meg. Abandon. 

We have all of these in the Library too, FYI.  As you can see, these are all great books.  Which of the nominees will make it onto the 2013 list?  You decide!

Read it NOW! Code Name Verity

I adore this book.  Author Elizabeth Wein tells a story of World War II different from any I've read.  Two young women, thrown together by the war, one a civilian pilot, the other a radio operator...until they're drafted into a secret branch of the Royal Air Force that conducts covert missions in Nazi occupied France. One captured by the Gestapo, one presumed dead.  The reader hears the story of these girls through the voice of the captive radio operator as she confesses her secrets under the threat of torture and execution.  This book is gripping from start to finish.  The narrator's voice is irreverent and bright.  Even in bewildering and horrific circumstances, she is completely herself.  I love this book.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.  If you liked reading The Book Thief, you'll love this.  Once of the best things about this book is that it doesn't really remind me of any other book.  Isn't that wonderful?  It's quite original.

Plus, it's one of the nominees for the Teens' Top Ten Awards.  You can read them all at the FSHA Library and cast your vote by clicking the link on the right side of this page.  This book has my vote for sure.

What I'm Reading: A Teens' Top Ten nominee

I'm in love with this book. It's one of the 22 nominees for this year's Teens' Top Ten award. The author has already won two major awards for this book, the Michael J. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature and The Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America. Read it and join me in voting for the Teens' Top Ten! (You'll have to wait until I finish to get the Library's copy, but don't worry!  It won't be a long wait.)



Here's the author talking about how she got the idea for the story.  It all started with her own interest in becoming a pilot.