SUMMERLOST

It’s been one year since 12-year old Cedar Lee’s father and autistic younger brother Ben both died in a car accident. Now Cedar, her mother, and youngest brother are spending the summer in the small high desert town of Iron Creek where her mother grew up. It’s a summer where everything is the same, and nothing is the same.

Cedar soon befriends a boy associated with the Summerlost Festival, Iron Creek’s distinguished Shakespearean festival, and becomes preoccupied with the decades old, unexplained death of one of its star actresses. Meanwhile, random trinkets, things that would have caught Ben’s attention, mysteriously appear on Cedar’s windowsill at night. Cedar doesn’t believe in ghosts, but what if Ben is sending her a message?

Summerlost is a middle-grade story of friendship, mystery, grief and healing. Ally Condie beautifully and heartbreakingly captures the complexity of love and guilt experienced by a sibling to a special needs child.

Share with theater lovers and fans of Gary Schmidt, Richard Peck, Cynthia Lord, and Ingrid Law.

Grades 5-8

WEDNESDAY WARS

A book review by Mr. B. From the Grandview Branch: 

Holling HoodHood is the only 7^th grader in Camillo Junior High School not excused on Wednesday afternoons for religious lessons. Presbyterians don’t have special training, so he’s assigned to an extra hour every Wednesday afternoon with his English teacher, Mrs. Baker.  In The Wednesday Wars, Gary D. Schmidt documents those awkward, silly, touching, growing afternoons, from chalk dust powdered cream puffs to escaped rats, to reading Shakespeare together, and an unfortunate life lesson at the hands of Mickey Mantle. We also meet Holling’s ambitious father, budding Flower Child sister, and housewife Mom.

In this subtle historical, we see the Stateside 1967-1968 turmoil surrounding the Viet Nam War and its effects on the families it touched as well as the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Obviously in touch with his inner seventh grader, Mr. Schmidt has written a funny, tender, immensely readable historical suitable for seventh graders and their parents.

Reading Level: 5+ / Age level: 11+

HAMLET, YOU ARE SPECIAL

Hamlet's parents are Shakespearean professors. Not only do they teach about Shakespeare, they wear the clothes, speak in the style and eat the food of Shakespeare's time. You get the idea. Shakespeare fanatics. And that's how Hamlet came to be called Hamlet and her sister Desdemona. But, it doesn't end there.


Hamlet thought eighth grade was going to be her year to be at the top of the heap and everything would go smoothly, but no. Her genius seven year old sister, Dezzie, who needs to fulfill her arts requirement before going off to college will be going to be going to school AND attend classes with her. What's worse, in English and Social Studies, they will be studying all things Shakespeare. And just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, it does.


Read all about The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne. A tragic comedy for readers in 6th - 8th grade.