Book Beat Reviews

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Review by Ella; dreamer, ski racer, writer, and rock climber. Ella lives in SV, Idaho with her mom, dad, cat, dog, gecko, and fish.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is about Katniss Everdeen, a girl who lives in District 12 of Panem. Panem is the society that rises after the fall of North America. There are 12 districts whose people barely have enough to eat and are mistreated by peacekeepers, basically Panem’s police. Then there is the Capitol. The people in the Capitol are filthy rich and have the most lavish lives anyone could hope for.

At the beginning of Panem, there were 13 districts. The 13th district staged an uprising and was blown off the map because of this. Now every year the citizens of every district must give up two children, a boy, and a girl, between the ages of 12 and 18 to go to the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games provide entertainment for the people of the Capitol where the tributes (what the children chosen are called), are forced to fight to the death in a deadly arena.

Katniss Everdeen’s little sister is chosen at the age of 12 to go to the games. and Katniss bravely volunteers in her place as the first volunteer tribute in the history of District 12 ever. The other tribute chosen is Peeta Mellark, a boy who once saved Katniss’s life. Katniss and Peeta embark on the journey of a lifetime and soon they are facing the biggest challenge anyone can face: The Hunger Games!

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

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

I am Skade. I live in Hailey, ID with my mom, dad, brother and dog. I like to bike, swim and play basketball in my free time.

Turtles All the Way Down is by John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns and many other great romance books. This book is a well written mystery/romance novel about a 16-year-old girl named Aza Holmes and a 16-year-old boy Davis Pickett who met at “SAD” a camp for kids grieving the loss of a parent.

Aza Holmes has major anxiety and questions her every move. Davis Pickett’s dad is a billionaire. His dad goes missing a couple years after “SAD ” camp, shortly after school started and there is a $10,000 reward for any clues or answers for where he is. Daisy, Aza’s best friend, is excited by the idea of solving a mystery and getting a load of money. Aza isn’t that stoked at first, but once Daisy starts to talk more and more about it, Aza becomes interested. Aza realizes throughout the book that she must accept herself and see herself outside of her thoughts and actions.

Davis suffers from loneliness. Throughout the book, Davis and Aza start having feelings for each other. However, Aza’s circling thoughts and anxiety prevent her from coming close to anyone.

This is a good book for high school age students. There is some sex and profanity but other than that it was great and really drew me in. It has really nice details and explains the struggles that high schoolers go through: first love, first kiss and just figuring things out. It is a short read, one of my favorites!

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

Paper Towns by John Green

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.

Quentin “Q” Jacobsen figures that everyone gets a miracle. If you consider all of the unlikely possibilities, it’s not much of a stretch to suppose that at least one should happen to every person. But Q’s miracle is not winning a Nobel Prize or surviving a lightning strike. His miracle is living next to Margo Roth Spiegelman.

Q is comfortable watching Margo from afar – until the night she crawls into his bedroom at midnight, recruiting him as a getaway driver in an elaborate, eleven-part plot of revenge. When the day breaks and Q returns to high school, Margo has disappeared – and apparently left behind a trail of clues for him to follow.

Written with incredible attention to detail, Quentin looks for Margo, and the more he finds, the less he sees of the girl he thought he knew. Just when it seems that the trail has gone cold, another thread appears, weaving a net of paths she could have disappeared to, to get away from the picture-perfect town that they live in.

John Green probes the foundation of what life is like today: every day lived for the next. For Quentin, it has all been simple: the monotonous routine, the pleasant identical-ness. For Margo, it has been all about having more, knowing more, being more than just a paper girl in a paper town. Through a winding mystery, each finds parts of the other than neither of them knew before, a path to discovery that’s ultimately very human.

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

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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.

Imagine living in a world in which, every year, you must stand in utter terror, waiting for your name to be drawn. If it is, it condemns you. If you don’t hear it, you thank your lucky stars that it wasn’t you, that you are safe for another year, safe from the dreaded Reaping. Safe from the Hunger Games. 

The Hunger Games: a gladiator-style, nationwide fight to the death, intended to keep the 12 districts surrounding the Capitol of Panem from revolt. But those twenty-four in the arena? They’re kids: twelve-to-eighteen-year-olds that have been chosen from their districts; one male, one female.

Maybe you don’t live in Panem, but Katniss Everdeen does. Katniss must stand dreading, every year, for her name to be called. Now, at sixteen, her name has yet to be chosen. This year, her name isn’t the one pulled from the bowl. 

But her sister’s is.

When Primrose Everdeen’s name is called, Katniss can’t let her be killed by another, bloodthirsty competitor. So she does the only thing she can: she volunteers for the Hunger Games. Prepared to die, so another can live. 

Before leaving for the Capitol, Katniss makes her sister a promise: a promise that she’ll try to stay alive and try to win. And with that promise in her heart, she boards a train heading for the Capitol. 

Exploring themes of aristocracy and dictatorship, friendship and family, independence and oppression, Suzanne Collins weaves a masterpiece of a novel. With the rifts between the Capitol and the districts triggering unrest and hatred, this book is a warning of sorts, but also defines what it means to be free.

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

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

My name is Slader. My favorite things to do is to play baseball, and watch my favorite movies. I am a 12 year old and in 7th grade.

The One And Only Ivan is a book by Katherine Applegate. In this book, Ivan is a silver back gorilla. Ivan lives in a circus. He is very friendly. His best friend’s name is Stella, who is an elephant. The One And Only Ivan is a very interesting book. It is full of emotion, there are happy parts, and sad parts. I definitely recommend this book if you really like animals. This book is mostly animals. My favorite character is Bob, who is a stray dog, who is also Ivan’s best friend. A new animal is forced to live in the circus, and that’s where the real problem begins.

The One and Only Ivan is easy and decently long with 336 pages. To me, the book got a little confusing at some parts as there were some words I didn’t know, not too much though. Every page is super interesting to read. It never really gets boring. The genre of this book is fiction. I recommend this book if you are in 6th to 8th grade. The One and Only Ivan won the John Newbery Medal, “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children”.

I could not stop reading this book. This novel is definitely one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I have read this book twice and enjoyed it both times. I think you will enjoy it too. Thank you for reading my review.

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

The Time Hackers by Gary Paulsen

My name is Zach. I am a seventh grader, and live in Ketchum, ID. I enjoy playing board games, reading, mountain biking, Nordic and alpine skiing, playing with my family, snowmobiling, and being outside.

Imagine a future where you could see events from the past in the form of a hologram. In The Time Hackers, the two main characters, Dorso and Frank, experience this reality. Scientists have discovered a way to recreate the past and bring it forward. Time travel is still very new to the world, so one of the laws of time states that you can’t go back in time and mess with the past. Imagine you go back in the past and kill your great-grandma. If you did that you would cease to exist. But you wouldn’t exist to kill your relative, thus a paradox.

Dorso becomes the target of a series of pranks using this time travel technology. It starts out with gross pranks that are mostly harmless, but they eventually escalate to being life threatening. When Dorso and Frank keep going back in time and almost dying, they have to work together to stop whoever is behind this before they mess with the time laws and destroy the universe.

This thrilling book has very deep material. It has plenty of ideas that send your mind reeling. It makes you think about time and how it affects the world. This book is somewhat targeted to more mature audiences, but is an easy read for most ages.

Find it in print here.