Monday, January 17, 2011

Two new adventure titles

Hide & Seek (4.5/9.0) by Katy Grant- Students who enjoy Will Hobbs' books will definitely enjoy this one. Chase, a 14 year old boy who lives in the White Mountains of Arizona, sets out on his bike to find a geocache. A geocache is basically a box of items that someone has hidden. "Players" list the coordinates in a website and others use that information to find it. Once you find the geocache you log your find in a journal inside and trade something you have brought with something in the geocache. It's a neat concept for people who enjoy outdoor sports like biking and hiking. Chase locates the geocache 5 miles off the paved road hidden in a tree trunk, but something is wrong. The contents of the box has been left scattered around the area and he finds a strange note in the log book. "WE NEED FOOD". Chase decides to keep a check on the box and find out who left the message. But what he finds surprises him...

Jump (4.6/9.0) by Elisa Carbone- Since this was written by the author of Blood on the River, a historical-fiction book I really enjoyed, I thought I would really like this one. It was only so-so in my opinion. P.K. and Critter (seriously, those are the names) are high school students with serious problems. P.K. thinks her parents don't understand her and she is about to be shipped to a boarding school for her senior year. Critter is an escapee from a mental hospital. He was placed there by his parents after he tried to commit suicide. Both are huge mountain climbing fans, so they run away together to climb mountains. The outdoors mountain climbing parts of the story are actually very good and adventure packed and are certainly enough to make the book worth reading without all the other drama. I'm not sure why the author felt the need to add the suicide/mental health issues because they really don't advance the story. Seems to me like it is a ploy to get nominated for some awards. This is clearly the type of thing critics love. I wager it will be on the GA PEACH award list in the near future. This is totally the kind of book they go for. Nothing in it was overtly offensive, and Critter actually says attempting suicide was a bad move and tries to convince someone else not to, so I will keep it in the mc, but I will label it for 7th and 8th only. (I'm pretty sure that has got to be a run-on sentence. Sorry Hoppy! I did use "comma + conjunction" to link the independent clause with all those subordinate clauses.)

Currently reading: Oh My Gods by Tera Lynn Childs- I'm only about 100 pages in, but my first impression is that it is a very cute book! The female version of the Lightning Thief.

See you tomorrow! Hope you enjoyed the week off!