Category Archives: Children & Young Adults

by | December 14, 2012 · 2:46 pm

Lisa Williams Kline. Blue Autumn Cruise. Grand Rapids, MI: Zonderkids, 2012.

Diana Williams and Stephanie Verra are back in this third book in the Sisters in all Seasons series. This time, the two stepsisters join Stephanie’s extended family on a cruise to the Caymans to celebrate Grammy Verra’s seventy-fifth birthday.

It’s hard for Diana to leave her regular haunts in North Carolina behind, but the islands hold many exciting new adventures. Unfortunately, Stephanie’s annoying cousin Lauren is also on the cruise, and Diana must learn to get along with her as well. The socially adept Stephanie quickly gets tired of mediating between her cousin and her stepsister, while Lauren just wants to videotape her trip and finds it annoying when Diana won’t agree to take part. But when an animal is in trouble on the ship, all three teens band together to help. As usual, each girl learns valuable lessons about herself, the natural world around her, and interacting with others.

Young adults will enjoy this thoughtful addition to a series that follows the difficulties of growing up, going to high school, and learning to get along with new family members.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Children & Young Adults, Kline, Lisa Williams, Novels in Series

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by | November 19, 2012 · 1:36 pm

Sheila Turnage. Three Times Lucky. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2012.

Moses “Mo” LoBeau is no stranger to mysteries. Found as an infant floating down the Tar River on some debris during a powerful hurricane, the rising sixth grader’s very existence is something of an oddity around Tupelo Landing. Which is not to say that she is shunned by the (fictional) eastern North Carolina town; on the contrary, Mo is a star. Helping her guardians, Colonel LoBeau (who found and named her) and Miss Lana, run the local cafe (which serves such specials as peanut butter and banana on Wonder Bread and Mountain Dew as the drink du jour), Mo is beloved by all of the hotspot’s customers. Although she would love to know who her “Upstream Mother” is, and she tries to find her by sending letters in bottles along nearby tributaries, Mo is content. But then Joe Starr, a lawman with too many questions about the Colonel, shows up, and  Miss Lana goes missing.  The town is shocked when Mr. Jesse is found murdered and Mo’s best friend, Dale Earnhardt III, was the last to see him alive. With all this trouble so close to home, Mo steps up as pint-sized detective to crack the multiple cases. In doing so, she preserves  the only family she has ever known and returns her close-knit village to normalcy.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Children & Young Adults, Coastal Plain, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Turnage, Sheila

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by | September 21, 2012 · 3:51 pm

Lisa Williams Kline. Wild Horse Spring. Grand Rapids, MI: Zonderkidz, 2012.

Fourteen-year old stepsisters Stephanie and Diana bonded last summer, despite having two very different personalities and struggling with their parents’ new marriages. Socially adept but squeamish Stephanie learned to be braver and to take risks during a family vacation at a ranch in the mountains, and outdoorsy but awkward Diana finally reached out to her new sister. But now a whole year has gone by, the first one in which both girls attend the same school. Diana still doesn’t fit in and gets made fun of, while for Stephanie making new friends is effortless. Diana is jealous and hurt and pulls back from their budding relationship.

Stephanie doesn’t understand what makes Diana tick. She’s been sweet and kind to her, just as she is to everyone. But Diana refuses to let her in, retreating into her passion for horses and other animals. Stephanie’s problems don’t stop with Diana: she lives primarily with her mother and her mother’s new husband, along with his 18-year-old son Max. Max calls Stephanie names and drinks behind their parents’ backs. Stephanie yearns to live with her dad Norm and Diana’s mom Lynn, but she’s afraid to ask. When Norm, Lynn, Stephanie, and Diana all go to a beach rental on the Outer Banks for the girls’ spring break, Stephanie hopes she can work up the courage to tell her father what she really thinks, even if it means making things difficult for the adults.

But if Stephanie is considering causing problems, Diana can be counted on to stir up trouble. This time it’s the wild horses that roam Currituck’s beaches: Diana becomes obsessed with them, and keeps running off to find the herds. When she discovers a hurt mare hit by a vehicle, nothing will satisfy her but to find the perpetrator, and Stephanie is once more party to her stepsister’s determination. Will the two be able to overcome the new obstacles in their relationship and find out who injured the horse?

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Currituck, Kline, Lisa Williams, Novels in Series

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by | September 18, 2012 · 3:20 pm

Lisa Williams Kline. Summer of the Wolves. Grand Rapids, MI: Zonderkidz, 2012.

Stephanie and Diana are like night and day: blonde Diana loves the outdoors, and gets along with animals better than people. Dark-haired Stephanie is artsy, social, and fashionable. Each regards the other’s world as alien to her own. Unfortunately, Stephanie’s dad and Diana’s mom have just gotten married, and the two new stepsisters are pushed into a “family” vacation at a ranch in the North Carolina mountains. Stephanie is horrified that she’ll be expected to participate in activities like trail riding and white-water rafting, while Diana is angry that she’ll be held back by her stepsister’s reluctance. Stephanie actually wants to be friends, but Diana is so angry that civil interaction is barely possible.

With the family shift weighing down on both of them, the vacation does not start well for the girls. Stephanie nearly falls off a horse, and Diana is even more annoyed when her socially skilled stepsister starts making friends with other children right away. But then Diana discovers the wolves: two part-wolf, part-dog hybrids that a local man keeps for show. Diana’s heart goes out immediately to the skinny, frightened creatures, who are kept in a small pen with little food or water. She determines to free them, and when Stephanie catches wind of her plan, the usually cautious brunette decides to help Diana. Together they free the wolves, but their actions have far-reaching consequences that they didn’t consider. The girls must help those who wish to bring the wolves safely home, realizing along the way that they’re more similar than they thought.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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by | August 7, 2012 · 4:34 pm

Sundee T. Frazier. The Other Half of My Heart. New York: Delacorte, 2010.

Minni and Keira King are fraternal twins, so they already look different from one another. But most people have trouble telling they’re related at all, or don’t believe it, due to a one-in-a-million genetic coincidence: Minni is white, and Keira is black. This phenomenon, known as “mixed twins,” occurs because only eight or nine chromosomes in the human genetic code determine skin tone. Each human being possesses the possibility to pass on a lighter or darker skin tone to their children, and both father and mother’s genes are in the mix. Born to a black mother and a white father, Minni and Keira often describe their family as a walking chessboard.

Now entering the sixth grade, the twins and their parents live in dreary, drizzly Washington State. But a phone call from their maternal grandmother in North Carolina means a visit to the sunny South. As a child, their mother competed in  the Miss Black Pearl Preteen pageant in Raleigh, winning the Miss Congeniality award. Grandma Johnson is determined that her granddaughters will continue the tradition, and is even more certain that one of them will win. But Mama and Grandma Johnson have very different ideas of what it means to be beautiful, and what it means to be black. While practicing for the competition, by turns both girls feel criticized and incomplete due to their many differences in appearance and talent. This pageant marks Keira and Minni’s coming of age, when they must learn to accept their uniqueness along with their identity as sisters.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

 

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by | · 4:32 pm

Jennifer Estep. Touch of Frost. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2011.

Gwendolyn Frost doesn’t think she’s anything particularly special. Sure, she’s a Gypsy: like all the women in her family, she has a special gift related to knowing secrets. Her grandmother can see the future, her mother could tell if someone was lying or not, and Gwendolyn can learn things about a person by just touching them or objects belonging to them. But Gwen doesn’t think this gift adds up to much, at least not compared to her classmates. Because Gwen attends the prestigious Mythos Academy, high in the mountains north of Asheville, North Carolina, and her classmates are all descendants of warriors or mythical beings: Spartans, Romans, Valkyries, Amazons…the list goes on and on. The only thing they can’t do, it seems, is befriend an awkward Gypsy girl. The only one who seems to pay any attention is Logan Quinn, the most gorgeous, and the baddest, guy in school. Gwen isn’t sure what she’s done to earn his scrutiny, but she’s more frightened than flattered.

But something odd is going on at Mythos Academy– something bigger than Gwen’s friend problems. One night, working late in the Library of Antiquities, Gwen finds Jasmine Ashton murdered. Jasmine was one of the most popular, and powerful, Valkyries at the Academy, but no one seems to care that she’s dead. Academy students die all the time– with their talents come great risks. But Gwen doesn’t see it that way. To this sensitive Gypsy girl, every life matters. Additionally, whoever murdered Jasmine stole the powerful Bowl of Tears, and may be trying to wake dark forces that will threaten Earth. Gwen decides it’s up to her to figure out who murdered Jasmine and bring him or her to justice, and to find the Bowl of Tears before it’s too late. Now if only she would stop running into Logan Quinn…

Young adult readers ages 13 and up will enjoy this mythological urban fantasy series.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2011, Buncombe, Children & Young Adults, Estep, Jennifer, Mountains, Novels in Series, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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by | July 30, 2012 · 5:00 pm

Travis Thrasher. Temptation. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2012.

Junior year is over for Chris Buckley in the small town of Solitary, North Carolina, but school isn’t out. Forced to attend summer classes at Harrington High in order to graduate, Chris can think of about a million things a normal teenager would rather be doing than listening to Mr. Taggert drone on about literature and algebra. But Chris isn’t a normal teenager, not after the past year in Solitary. There are much darker, scarier things abroad in this seemingly sleepy mountain town than algebra.

This third installment in The Solitary Tales finds our teenage hero worn down. After the murders, satanic rituals, and strange phenomena he has witnessed over the course of just twelve months, all Chris wants is for it to stop. His friends have moved away or died, his mother is an alcoholic mess, and he has no one to stand with against the darkness. The enigmatic Pastor Jeremiah Marsh assures him that he has an answer to Chris’s pain– all Chris has to do is give up and give in. Pastor Marsh and his friends need Chris Buckley: they need him to fall in line, to stop fighting, and to stop falling in love with the wrong sort of girls. But what they need most of all is for Chris to trust them that he has powers he doesn’t fully understand– powers related directly to the founding of Solitary, and to what makes it such a hotbed of demonic activity. It’s very tempting: Chris is only sixteen, and what kind of sixteen-year-old takes on the Devil? But as Chris learns more and more about his true identity and his family’s history with Solitary, his horror grows, and it becomes more difficult for him to accept Pastor Marsh’s proposal. Chris craves the relief of a normal life, but is it worth his soul?

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Children & Young Adults, Henderson, Horror, Mountains, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Thrasher, Travis

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by | July 16, 2012 · 10:01 am

Stephanie S. Tolan. Applewhites at Wit’s End. New York: Harper, 2012.

It’s the end of the world!

Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but what sort of proclamation would you expect from a family of artists who picked up their New York City lives to establish a “creative compound” in rural North Carolina and then discovered that their finance adviser embezzled all of their money? The Applewhites’ various livelihoods are at risk unless they can think of some way to stay afloat — and fast! Fortunately, it does not take long for the bunch of innovative free-thinkers to come up with a solution: an expensive summer camp for gifted and talented children. After all, who would not what to send their special child to a camp that is run by famous professional artists?

Everything is under way and the Eureka! summer camp is up and running. There are a few things, however, that the Applewhites did not plan for: dietary restrictions, an unwillingness to “rough” the hot summer, and campers’ aversions to branching out to other arts. In other words, spoiled, uncooperative children. Things begin to change, though, when unsigned and alarming letters are sent to the camp. Just as the camp’s very existence is threatened, the Applewhites and the campers band together to find the value in each other and to save Eureka!

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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by | July 12, 2012 · 5:18 pm

Barbara O’Connor. Greetings from Nowhere. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Loneliness is a difficult state. Although everyone feels that emptiness at one point or another, no two people experience it in exactly the same way. Aggie Duncan is a widow who has just made the difficult decision to sell Sleepy Time Motel, which she and her beloved husband ran happily for decades. Willow Dover had a perfect life until her mother moved to Savannah, Georgia, leaving her with a heartbroken, distant father. Loretta Murphy, an adopted girl who has just received a box containing mementos of her deceased birth mother, is consumed with curiosity about this woman she never knew. And Kirby Tanner has always acted out as a way to get noticed, but now because of all of that negative behavior he is being sent away to a school for difficult children.

Although these four vary in age and background, they find the friendship they need over a few days in Shawnee Gap, North Carolina. Willow’s father has just offered to buy the Sleepy Time from Aggie; Loretta’s family is visiting while on an excursion in the Smokey Mountains to find the meaning behind some of her mother’s belongings, and Kirby and his mother need a place to stay after her car breaks down on the way to his new school. Along with Aggie’s cat, Ugly, they realize how good it feels to have each other in the midst of big changes in their lives.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Children & Young Adults, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places, O'Connor, Barbara

by | · 5:15 pm

Jen Calonita. Belles. New York: Poppy, 2012.

Fifteen-year-old Isabelle “Izzie” Scott loves her life in Harborside, North Carolina: working as a life guard at the beach, hanging with her friend Kylie at the local ice cream shop, and swimming laps at the pool in her beloved community center. Orphaned at ten when her single mother was killed in a car crash, Izzie lives with her aging grandmother, and it’s a daily battle to convince her concerned social worker that Grams is a good enough guardian.

Grams is slowly losing her grip on reality, and one day Izzie arrives home to find that a decision has been made without her: Grams is moving to an assisted living facility, and Izzie is sure she’s destined for foster care. But Grams has been hiding a secret from her. Unbeknownst to Izzie, she has a long-lost uncle: a wealthy state senator who lives with his wife and children in nearby Emerald Cove. Her uncle and aunt have agreed to take Izzie and raise her with their children, offering her all the best love and care and a first-rate education at the prestigious Emerald Prep.

Harborside and Emerald Cove are only a few miles apart on the scenic North Carolina coast, but they might as well be on separate planets. Emerald Cove is home to some of the wealthiest families in the state, sporting boutique shops, sprawling mansions, and a refined country club, while Harborside is barely above a slum with its low-income housing, gang violence, and seedy boardwalk. Izzie’s aunt and uncle Monroe are welcoming, but her cousin Mirabelle, nearly the same age, is one of the most popular girls in school, and Izzie definitely doesn’t fit in her with her crowd. Worst of all, the gorgeous Savannah Ingram (Mirabelle’s best friend and the queen bee of Emerald Prep) takes a particular dislike to Izzie, and stirs up plenty of trouble for the new girl. Soon Izzie isn’t sure if she’s fighting to fit in or fighting to get out, but the true drama and scandal haven’t even begun.

Reminiscent of Gossip Girl with a southern twist, Belles is the beginning of a fantastic new series about family, community, and fashion for young adults.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

 

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Calonita, Jen, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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