Article posted April 22, 2013 at 06:46 PM GMT0 •
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NFHS was given eight copies of the New York Times bestselling book, The Language of Flowers,, for World Book Night. World Book Night is held every year and is dedicated to spreading the love of reading. Every April 23, tens of thousands of volunteers go into their communities and give away half a million of free books to “light and nonreaders.” World Book Night is about encouraging reading in those who don’t regularly read. Thanks to our World Book Night volunteer, Donna Lawrence! If you would like a free copy of The Language of Flowers, please see Ms. Hooper in the media center. She is in the middle of this wonderful book and loves it!
Here is a review of the book from Library Journal:
Diffenbaugh's debut novel opens on Victoria Jones's 18th birthday, which coincides with her emancipation from California's foster care system. Abandoned at birth, Victoria has grown up in a string of bad foster homes, except for the one year she spent with Elizabeth, a vineyard owner who taught her the meaning of flowers. Alternating between Victoria's brief time with Elizabeth and her unsteady attempt to face life as an adult with little education and less experience, Diffenbaugh weaves together the two narratives using the Victorian language of flowers that ultimately helps shape Victoria's future as she grapples with a painful decision from her past. Verdict: Victoria might be her own worst enemy, but her defensiveness and self-doubt as a foster child and her desire to live beyond what she was thought capable of will sway readers toward her favor. Fans of Janet Fitch's White Oleander will enjoy this solid and well-written debut, which is also certain to be a hit with book clubs. —Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll., Pepper Pike, OH
Library Journal
Article posted April 18, 2013 at 06:26 PM GMT0 •
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Beautiful and haunting, Girlchild consists of short chapters with intriguing names like "Teeth", "Hope Chest", "Babysat", and "Funeral Etiquette". Through snatches of memories, welfare reports, letters, and Supreme Court cases, we discover the harrowing life story of Rory Dawn Hendrix. Plucky and off the charts smart, despite describing herself as a "feebleminded daughter of a feebleminded daughter, herself the product of feebleminded stock", Rory lives a paycheck to paycheck life in a trailer park in Reno, Nevada with her hard drinking bartender mother. She uses the following words to capture one facet of her beloved mother: "Still, no matter how fine she looked, especially after she got herself a set of fine with dentures for her twenty-fifth birthday, Mama never forgot how ugly she felt with those snaggly teeth. In her head, she never stopped being a rotten mouthed girl." This multilayered book, which addresses mature subject matter obliquely, should be read widely, especially by those who believe one cannot rise above the circumstances of their birth. Kirkus Reviews calls it, "A darkly funny and frequently heartbreaking portrait of life as one of America's have-nots."
Article posted March 8, 2013 at 07:09 PM GMT0 •
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Fifteen year old Laurel, reeling from the losses she has experienced, begins using meth to ease her pain. This plot line is similar to Ellen Hopkin’s Crank, but this book does not contain anything more graphic than Laurel’s drug use, making it a good cautionary read for younger students. Laurel’s descent into addiction is startlingly quick, and the results dire. She is given meth by her boyfriend to keep warm on a cold night, and BOOM, the next thing you know she has run away from home and is living on the streets in horrific conditions. Beautifully written by Woodson, this book is not to be missed.
Article posted March 8, 2013 at 07:09 PM GMT0 •
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Article posted March 8, 2013 at 07:08 PM GMT0 •
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Every day sixteen year old A wakes up in a different person’s body. It has been that way as long as he can remember. A takes great pains not to change the trajectory of the life of the body he inhabits for 24 hours. That is, until he wakes up as 16 year old slacker Justin and falls in love with his girlfriend. After that, no matter who he is, every day A tries to figure out a way to see Rhiannon and connect with her. This very unusual premise is very well written by David Levithan, one of the stars of contemporary young adult literature.
Article posted March 8, 2013 at 07:08 PM GMT0 •
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Article posted January 17, 2013 at 04:37 PM GMT0 •
comment • Reads 706
This book is coming out as a movie Feb. 1, 2013. You must admit R is amusing for a zombie: I am dead, but it’s not so bad. I’ve learned to live with it. I’m sorry I can’t properly introduce myself, but I don’t have a name anymore. Hardly any of us do. We lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries. Mine might have started with an “R,” but that’s all I have now. It’s funny because back when I was alive, I was always forgetting other people’s names. My friend “M” says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can’t smile, because your lips have rotted off.
Things get more interesting for R when he eats the brain of Julie’s boyfriend, accesses his memories, and falls in love with her. Did I mention Julie is still a living, breathing human? Warm Bodies is gross, witty and utterly unforgettable. I hope the movie lives up to the book. See a trailer below:
Article posted January 17, 2013 at 04:37 PM GMT0 •
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Article posted January 17, 2013 at 03:24 PM GMT0 •
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Read the first book in this series before it hits the theaters on Valentine’s Day!
Here's a quote from the book that pretty well sets the tone of this atmospheric read:
There were no surprises in Gatlin County. We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere. At least, that's what I thought. Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong. There was a curse. There was a girl. And in the end, there was a grave.
Set in South Carolina, this is a supernatural page turner of a love story! Ethan can’t wait to get out of his remote hometown. Then Lena, the lovely and mysterious Lena, shows up in Gatlin. Ethan is smitten, but what will happen on Lena’s sixteenth birthday, the day that will determine whether her powers are used for good or for evil? Secrets abound; secrets about the town and the families of Ethan and Lena that will influence their destinies. We can only hope the movie will be a faithful adaptation of the book. See a trailer for the movie below. What do you think? Will it be as good as the book?
Article posted January 17, 2013 at 03:24 PM GMT0 •
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Article posted October 31, 2012 at 08:36 PM GMT0 •
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The "gone girl" in the title of this psychological thriller is Amy Dunne, a transplanted New Yorker now living unhappily on the banks of the Mississippi with her husband of five years, the charming and handsome Nick. Nick and Amy met at a party in NYC and seemed perfect for one another. However after both lose their jobs, Amy reluctantly agrees to move into a rented McMansion in Nick’s old hometown. Now Amy is gone, disappeared into thin air on her fifth wedding anniversary. Nick’s narration and Amy’s diary entries of the last seven years give the reader disparate views of the relationship and the events leading up to Amy’s vanishing. A police investigation ensues, along with an annual treasure hunt Amy sets up for their anniversary, and neither bodes well for Nick. Did Nick really kill Amy, or are things not as simple as they seem? The twists and turns of Flynn's plot will keep you reading late into the night.
Article posted October 31, 2012 at 08:36 PM GMT0 •
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Article posted October 3, 2012 at 07:32 PM GMT0 •
comment • Reads 680
A beautiful, sweeping work of historical fiction based on the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I and on the author's own family history, Sandcastle Girls is not to be missed.
In the words of the author:
“…I decided that it was time to write a novel about the genocide—what my novel’s narrator calls glibly, “The Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About”…. The novel moves back and forth in time between an Armenian-American novelist at midlife—a female version of me—and a sweeping love story set against the cataclysm of 1915 in the eastern edges of the Ottoman Empire. It is, in part, the tale of Elizabeth Endicott, a 1922 graduate of Mount Holyoke College who travels to the Syrian desert as part of an American relief mission, and her love affair with Armen Petrosian, an Armenian engineer who has already lost his young wife and infant daughter.”
Book trailer from Doubleday:
Article posted October 3, 2012 at 07:32 PM GMT0 •
comment • Reads 680
Article posted October 3, 2012 at 07:08 PM GMT0 •
comment • Reads 182
If you love a good underdog story, this book is for you! Fans of Seabiscuit will love it. The letter from the author below gives insight into what prompted her to write this true story of an man and the horse he rescued beating great odds to rise to the top of American show jumping in the years after the second World War.
From Author Elizabeth Letts: A writer is always on the lookout for a good story, but the first time I saw a striking old photograph, I didn’t realize that I had stumbled across a tale so extraordinary that it had the power to change lives.
The old black and white photo showed a horse and rider team in the midst of a crazy feat--jumping right over the back of another horse. What stopped me in my tracks was the expression on the jumping horse’s face. Even in the vintage picture I could see that the horse had absolute trust in the man who was asking him to make such a tricky leap. I wondered why.
Unable to forget the photograph, armed only with the rider’s name, I tracked down an address, not sure if I would find him there, or even if he was still alive. Just a few days after I mailed him a letter, my telephone rang and a voice on the other end said, “Hallo, this is Harry de Leyer.” The man in the photograph, now in his eighties, was on the phone. The first time we spoke, Harry told me a story that gave me butterflies in my stomach and made my palms sweat--that’s how badly I wanted to write about what he’d said to me and share it with the world.
Walter Farley, author of The Black Stallion, was once asked why horse stories were so popular. His answer was this: “When the books have been read and reread, it boils down to the horse, his human companion, and what goes on between them.” The story of Harry and Snowman, is at its essence, a love story. A man, a horse, and a lucky encounter on a bleak winter day that led to a second chance for both of them. Together, they shared a dream so big that only their combined courage and heart could get them to their destination.
That moment, when the pair of them stood under the spotlights of Madison Square Garden and listened to the thunder of the crowd, was simply unforgettable--the kind of triumph that ripples forward through time. I heard it coming across a crackling phone line, the first time Harry de Leyer told me about Snowman.
Read the book, and I’m sure you will hear it too.
Article posted October 3, 2012 at 07:08 PM GMT0 •
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Article posted October 1, 2012 at 07:31 PM GMT0 •
comment • Reads 177
Set in the 1980s at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, this is a book of secrets. Greta is a star in her high school’s musical theater group, but she also has her problems. No one but her family knows she is only 16, yet she is getting ready to graduate from high school and possibly get a part in a Broadway play. From the outside, Greta’s life looks great, but on the inside, she is spiraling out of control. Her younger sister, June, an outsider at her high school nicknamed Crocodile by her beloved Uncle Finn because "… he said I was like something from another time that lurked around, watching and waiting, before I made my mind up about things." One of June’s secret is that she is in love with her uncle Finn. This is not sexual love but soul mate love. This quote from the book perfectly encapsulates their relationship and the depth of her grief when he dies: "…once you had a friend like Finn, it was almost impossible to find someone in high school who came anywhere close. Sometimes I wondered if I might go through my whole life looking for someone who came even a little bit close." Finn is gay, a fact that the girls’ mother keeps from them. After his death his roommate begins a secret platonic relationship with June. June longs to know more about Finn and the life with Toby that he hid from her. Secrets, sibling rivalry, jealousy and prejudice are themes that run through this beautiful coming of age story.
Article posted October 1, 2012 at 07:31 PM GMT0 •
comment • Reads 177
