Summer Reading

Everyone needs a few good books to read over the summer. Here are a few of mine.

White, Andrea. Surviving Antarctica. Reality TV 2083. 2005.

Todays Survivor television show has nothing on reality TV in 2083. There contestants vie to survive the Alamo and the Civil War and some don’t survive. The difference between those shows and this newest reality TV show is that on this show five 14-year-olds are going to try to recreate Robert Scott’s doomed trek to the South Pole. And they are going alone, miniature cameras have been surgically implanted unbeknownst to them. Their survival depends on themselves and the ‘ghost’ of Birdy Bowers. Read Surviving Antarctica. Reality TV 2083 for a taut adventure story.

Farmer, Nancy. The house of the scorpion. 2002. National Book Award.

We meet Matt when he is six-years-old. He does not have a mother or father. Technically his biological mother and father were born almost 150 years ago. Matt is the clone of El Patron a 140+ year old drug lord in a country called Opium between the U.S. and Mexico. Matt is not considered to be anything but a beast without a soul. He was not born but harvested and he lives only to serve El Patron in any way he sees fit. Matt is hated by most but loved by a few and these few might be able to change the course of Matt’s life. Read The house of the scorpion for a story that takes today’s technology to tomorrow’s level.

Avi. Ragweed. 1999.

When Ragweed seeks adventure and what the world has to offer, he finds more than he bargained for. Not only does he go to the city and discover a new way of life, he makes friends, sings in a band, learns a whole new way of talking and even leads the mice to take a stand against the cats of F.E.A.R. Read Ragweed and its sequels and come along for the adventure.

Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson. The familiars. 2010.

In this story, it’s the three familiars of the three wizards and witches that do the rescuing. The only problem is that Aldwyn, the new familiar of young wizard Jack is, in fact, an alleycat. Now Aldwyn has to try and save Jack and two other wizards and make sure that he is not discovered as a fraud by the other familiars; Skylar and Jay. The familiars and its two sequels make the sidekicks the unlikely heroes/heroines and it’s a fun adventure.