Vampire Academy

Title: Vampire Academy
Author: Richelle Mead
Year: 2007
Genre: Fantasy, Vampires
Age: 7th grade up

Summary: Best friends Rose and Lissa are sent back to their vampire boarding school after two years as run aways. Readjusting to not only school but vampire politics takes its toll on the two.

Review: What a fantastic vampire book! Mead gives us a new take on vampire myths with a big helping of high school drama. But more than that, the damsel in distress does a bang up job of trying to rescue herself, and when rescuers actually come? That hero is a girl, not a love interest. Girl power, vampire power, romance-- this book is fantastic. Better than that, there’s more, an entire series! Look for it this fall in the middle school.

BOOM!

Title: Boom!
Author: Mark Haddon
Year: 2010
Genre: Adventure, Sci Fi
Age: 5th-8th grade

Summary: Jimbo and Charlie overhear their teachers speaking in a strange language and set out to investigate. They get in far too deep and Charlie is kidnapped (to another planet) and Jimbo must rescue him.

Review: Haddon is British and this book is VERY British. Words that Americans won’t understand unless they’ve watched quite a bit of BBC will throw off many readers. Even I, a complete Anglophile, had a lot of trouble figuring out what on Earth was happening at points. Other than the language barrier, this is a quick little read. I recommend it to those who love British culture and science fiction.

Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz

Title: Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz
Author: Eva Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri
Year: 2009
Genre: Holocaust Memoir
Age: 7th grade up

Summary: Eva details her captivity as a 10 year old in Auschwitz with her identical twin.

Review: This book outraged me and warmed my heart equally. That such atrocities happen to children, being experimented on by a ‘doctor’ after their families have been killed, will make you cry. That the twins survived, helped each other, kept each other human and whole will make you cry with joy. English is not Eva’s first (nor second, nor third) language and the book suffers a bit for it, but it’s still compulsively readable. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the Holocaust or who would like to know more about what happens inside the camps after reading Anne Frank.