Absolutely Positively Not by David LaRochelle
Chronicles a teenage boy’s humorous attempts to fit in at his Minnesota high school by becoming a macho, girl-loving, “Playboy” pinup-displaying heterosexual.

American Born Chinese by Gene Yang
Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture

Boot Camp by Todd Strasser
After ignoring several warnings to stop dating his teacher, Garrett is sent to Lake Harmony, a boot camp that uses unorthodox and brutal methods to train students to obey their parents

The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart
Ruby Oliver, a moderately popular fifteen-year-old who has suddenly become a social pariah, begins seeing a psychiatrist and makes a list of all her past boyfriends in an attempt to understand where her life went wrong.

Copper Sun by Sharon Draper
Two fifteen-year-old girls–one a slave and the other an indentured servant–escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.

Epic by Conor Kostick
On New Earth, a world based on a video role-playing game, fourteen-year-old Erik persuades his friends to aid him in some unusual gambits in order to save Erik’s father from exile and safeguard the futures of each of their families

Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn
After being expelled from a fancy boarding school, Cyd Charisse’s problems with her mother escalate after Cyd falls in love with a sensitive surfer and is subsequently sent from San Francisco to New York City to spend time with her biological father

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
Three teens who meet at Reno, Nevada’s Aspen Springs mental hospital after each has attempted suicide connect with each other in a way they never have with their parents or anyone else in their lives.

Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt
When Lord Death comes to claim sixteen-year-old Keturah while she is lost in the King’s Forest, she charms him with her story and is granted a twenty-four hour reprieve in which to seek her one true love.

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family’s struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

Notes From the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick
After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.

Plain J.A.N.E.S. by Cecil Castellucci
After a bombing in the city, Jane’s parents move to a suburb where she befriends three outcasts–all named Jane–and starts a group called People Loving Art in Neighborhoods, which tries to enrich their community with art but instead is viewed as a threat.

Right Behind You by Gail Giles
After spending over four years in a mental institution for murdering a friend in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Kip begins a completely new life in Indiana with his father and stepmother under a different name, but has trouble fitting in and finds there are still problems to deal with from his childhood.

Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi
While playing in a crucial basketball game on the very court where his best friend was murdered, Mackey tries to come to terms with his own part in that murder and decide whether to maintain his silence or tell J.R.’s father and the police what really happened

Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss
Fourteen-year-old Isabella is a typical teenager. She is concerned with friends, school, and gaining weight until the fateful morning that she discovers the enlarged glands in her neck. With the subsequent diagnosis of stage-four Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she enters the netherworld of cancer.

Sold by Patricia McCormick
Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old from a poor mountain village in Nepal, gets a job thinking she is being hired as a maid. Instead, she is forced into prostitution in India when her stepfather “trades” her for 800 rupees.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan’s history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband.

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Tally is faced with a difficult choice when her new friend Shay decides to risk life on the outside rather than submit to the forced operation that turns sixteen year old girls into gorgeous beauties, and realizes that there is a whole new side to the pretty world that she doesn’t like.

Anotated title list by Georgia Library Media Association

Want to register?

Check with your counselor or Library Media Specialist.

Web Sites to check out:

MLK Birthday:
http://www.educationworld.com/holidays/archives/mlking.shtml

Teaching Tolerance:
http://www.tolerance.org/teens/index.jsp

QUOTE THIS MONTH
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
What book did this first sentence come from?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief…..”
Answer in next month’s issue.

Literary Birthdays

J. D. Salinger January 1

Isaac Asimov January 1

J. R. R. Tolkien January 3

Carl Sandburg January 6
Poems

Zora Neale Hurston January 7

Jack London January 12

Ben Franklin January 17

Anton Chekhov January 17

Edgar Allen Poe January 19

Robert Burns January 25

Lewis Carroll January 27

Spotlighting one of nominees for the Georgia Peach Award for Teen
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

American Born Chinese is a beautiful, full color graphic novel with three distinct story lines that come together in the end. First is the story of the Monkey King, a character from Chinese folklore. The Monkey King studies and disciplines himself but becomes too prideful and is punished and humbled by the gods. Jin arrives in the United States as a young boy only to face racism and discrimination from his fellow classmates. Daniel is a popular high school student humiliated by a visit from his cousin from China who is a caricature of every possible negative Chinese stereotype. If, like the characters in this book, you sometimes wonder if you fit in and would like to be someone different, you might learn something from the lesson that the Monkey King, Jin and Danny learn.

Review From: http://nancykeane.com/booktalks/yang_american.htm

The Media Center provide training on October 21st on Club & group pages for teaching staff and a training session on improving your e-classroom pages for increased communication.

We circulated 927 items this month.  An average of  13 students per day used the media center during their lunch period.  On October 29, we placed an order for 221 new titles to add to our collection.  These was our largest book ever!

     I designed and planned instruction for the sixth grades to orient them to the Davidson Media Center.  A bulletin board was designed around the word “look” with eyes hung from the ceiling.  This tied into our school theme and encouraged students to look to the media center information.  It identified sources of information: books, databases, internet, digital stories, podcast, blogs, and so forth. It appeared like a design for elementary students but tied into an emphasis on Dr. Suess. (Spring Musical will be Suessical) The book order contained many Dr. Suess books. 

     I began the instructional process of implementation our electronic classroom enviroment (eChalk).  The first step of this process was to train teachers on how to enroll their students into their eChalk classes.  This training was held on September 8th.  The week of the 8th, I instructed the AP classes on the different areas within their eChalk accounts. The week of the 15th all high school students recieved their accounts and instruction on the work areas within eChalk.  The week of the 22nd all middle school students received their accounts.  Middle school students do not have email; however, they can receive and send email to their teachers.  

     In addition to eChalk implementation, a new web page was designed to reflect the school’s theme of “A school full of Art, a life full of Heart!”