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Wonder by R.J. Palacio

My name is Simone, I’m 13 years old and I’m going into 8th grade. I enjoy skiing, playing volleyball, skateboarding and I have a love for fashion.

Wonder is an excellent book that I loved reading. Auggie, or August, is a boy who has a face deformity. He has had countless surgeries and has been homeschooled his whole life but that changes this year. In Manhattan, where Augie lives, fifth grade is the first year of middle school so August will blend in with all the new kids. Auggie does have a cleft palate, he describes himself by saying, “I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.” 

The principal of Auggie’s new school, Mr. Tushman (yes, his name is Mr. Tushman), asks a few

students to show Auggie around the school. Auggie will then need to decide if he’s interested in going there. After laughing together about Mr. Tushman’s name, Summer, Julian, and Jack show Auggie the school of Beecher Prep. While Auggie isn’t sure about Julian, the others make him feel comfortable enough to try to go to school with other kids for the first time in his life.

On Halloween drama sparks when one of Auggie’s friends doesn’t know it’s him under the

mask and says something bad about August.

The most important part of this story, I think, is when the students go to a nature camp as a field trip for school and they all really find themselves. August also finds who his real friends are on this trip. This book talks a lot about loyalty and finding yourself, I recommend!

Find it in print, ebook, eaudiobook, CD and DVD.

Smile by Raina Telgemeier

My name is Simone, I’m 13 years old and I’m going into 8th grade. I enjoy skiing, playing volleyball, skateboarding and I have a love for fashion.

The book Smile is a comic book that was such a fun read!

The main character is Raina she is a sixth grader. After a night of being at Girl Scouts she gets a ride home from a friend’s mom. Raina and her friends want to race to the front porch. Raina starts to fall behind. Shortly she trips. That leads up to her severely injuring her face

and knocking out her two front teeth.

From then on, Raina has a very embarrassing middle school experience with braces, retainers, headgear and even surgeries. If that was not already a bad enough start to middle school. She has to make new friends because her old friends turned out to be very fake.

If you ever need something short and fast but very entertaining this book is great. This book is

actually a part of a series and I love this entire series! I loved this comic book. I could relate to it because my middle school was similar and, I made completely new friends than the ones that I had in elementary school. This read really is a fun and exciting read I recommend!

Find it in print and eaudiobook.

Grenade by Alan Gratz

I’m Briggs and I would rather be outside riding my bike, fishing, hunting or sailing or just anything outside. I also am an avid entrepreneur and am now running my own business.

Grenade, by Alan Gratz, is a harrowing story of two young soldiers. Set in the same battle, same war, the soldiers have the same goal…to  win, and come out alive.

Hideki, is a fifteen year old member of the Blood and Iron Corp. Hideki grew up on Okinawa living a peaceful life, until one day his family split up. Because of the war, Okinawa is getting invaded by the Americans. He believes he is fighting to save his homeland, but he’s just a pawn in the game.

Rey, is an American boy who joined the Marines to escape the wrath of his abusive father. Rey is only seventeen years old. He ran away from home to serve his country. While on his way to freedom Hideki was supposed to be on a ship with his mother and little brother but was stopped. While he was boarding the ship they told him he had to fight for his homeland.

I would definitely recommend this book to the people who enjoy reading historical fiction.
I would also recommend reading Refugee by Alan Gratz. Alan Gratz writes a plethora of phenomenal books about warfare.

Find it through Interlibrary Loan here.

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.

Madeline has read more books that you. It doesn’t matter how many you’ve read. She’s read more. Heaven knows she’s had the time.

Maddy has SCIT, the bubble-baby syndrome, a disease as rare as it is famous. Basically, she is allergic to anything and everything. Anything – the chemicals in a cleaner, the spice in her soup, the dust in the closet – anything could trigger a deadly attack. And so she never leaves the house, which is equipped with state-of-the-art air filters and purifiers and sealed windows so nothing dangerous ever enters.

She hasn’t left her house in seventeen years. 

She will never feel the grass under her feet and the wind in her hair, the summer sun on her cheek. She will never meet anyone or touch anyone or kiss anyone – she never has and never will. 

Then Olly moves in next door. Olly becomes an obsession, and to Maddy the enigma, a very foreign and exciting thing. Because Maddy knows that you can’t read the future or what it has to bring, but you can predict some things. For example, Maddy is almost positively going to fall in love with Olly. It’s absolutely, positively going to be a big blow-up-in-your-face disaster. 

But the longer Maddy lives safe and sound and isolated, the more she realizes how much she’s willing to risk. After seventeen years with nobody but her mother and caretaker for company, Olly – that intrepid and unpredictable and exciting boy next door – is the trigger that starts a chain of audacious and risky new adventures. 

Nicola Yoon weaves a poignant and heartbreaking and beautifully structured story about young love, and what you’re willing to risk to experience it.

Find it in print, ebook, eaudiobook, CD and DVD here.

Frankly in Love by David Yoon

Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.

Frank Li has two names: there’s Frank Li, his American name, which everyone calls him. Frank Li has seven letters, a lucky number in America. Then there’s Sung-Min Li, his Korean name, which has nine letters (a lucky number in Korea). Nobody calls him that. 

Frank is a Korean-American senior in high school and self-described nerd. He has a nice, middle-class American life with his nice American name – and yet his parents still expect him to end up with a nice Korean girl from another perfect Korean family. 

This poses a bit of a problem, since Korean-Americans make up about one percent of the population, twelve percent of that girls his age, leaving him with only one eligible girl about every three square miles. That’s not even considering whether or not he could even like said girl. 

This problem gets even worse when he starts dating Brit Means, a girl from his class who is funny and nerdy, who makes him laugh like no one else and makes him feel better about himself. Brit Means, his dream girl… who is white. 

As he manages his dating life under the fear of being disowned, he comes up with a plan with family friend, Joy Song, who has a similar problem. Together, they create a fool-proof fake-dating scheme to please their parents and go out with the people they actually like. Nothing could possibly go wrong… right?

David Yoon transitions beautifully between humor, young love, and powerful questions about family, race, and what is worth risking. He poses queries about the things that keep us apart, and in the end, whether they really matter that much when there are much more important things to cherish. 

Find it in print and eaudiobook here.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Hi, I’m McCallen. I like skiing and basketball.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a really good book. I would definitely recommend reading it. I like it because the drawings are amazing, and it’s really funny.

For a quick summary of the book: It’s about two middle school kids that love to have fun, and mess around at school. Middle school is tough and they face many challenges like getting in trouble and then blaming stuff on each other. One middle school thing they hate and are very scared of is the dreaded cheese touch. The cheese touch is a piece of cheese on the school basketball court that is very disgusting. It has been there for years. If someone touches the cheese they have the cheese touch. Someone can give the dreaded cheese touch to you. If you have the cheese touch everyone avoids you, and you can’t be by anyone. I enjoyed this book, and I recommend you read it. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a whole series of books by Jeff Kinney and they are all funny.

Find it in print, ebook and DVD here.