| The
Killer's Cousin, by Nancy Werlin
My
name’s David, and I was only 16 when I discovered
that there’s a before, and an after, and once you
have crossed the line between them, you can never go back,
no matter how much you’d like to. I crossed that line
when I killed Emily. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t
meant to do it or that I was acquitted. All that mattered
was that Emily was gone, and I was the one responsible for
it.
My parents didn’t understand that. They wanted to
pretend that things could go back to the way they were before,
and just go on with their lives. But that wasn’t going
to happen. I’d already crossed that line.
I couldn’t live in Baltimore any longer, and I had
to repeat my senior year because I’d spent too much
of it sitting in a courtroom, so my parents sent me to live
with my aunt and uncle and cousin in Massachusetts. I didn’t
know them; my mother and aunt had been feuding for years.
The last time I’d seen them had been four years ago,
when Kathy, their older daughter, had committed suicide.
But they had room for me, the attic apartment where Kathy
had committed suicide, and a private prep school in Cambridge
had accepted me. So I went.
I had no idea what I was getting into, what was going on
in that house, or in the apartment they gave me. But it
didn’t take long to find out. That first day I discovered
two things—that neither my eleven-year-old cousin
Lily nor her mother wanted me there, and that my apartment
had strange shadows, and humming, buzzing noises that he
couldn’t identify. Who, or what, was I sharing it
with?
Something was wrong, very wrong—and I had to figure
out what. (Top)
Blood
and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
What’s
it like to run wild and free in the forests of the night?
To feel your human body change into a beautiful sleek wolf’s
body? What’s it like to be feared and hunted, and
to see your friends and family killed in cold blood? What’s
it like to live in fear of being discovered as something
more than human—a werewolf?
Vivian knows how all those things feel because she is a
werewolf. Her pack came from Europe in the 1600s and lived
in the hills of West Virginia until a year ago, when two
girls were killed and one of the pack members was accused
of their deaths. The pack was burned out of their homes,
and some of them, including the pack leader, Vivian’s
father, were killed. Now they live in the Maryland suburbs
and quarrel among themselves as the younger males compete
to become the new pack leader.
But Vivian wants nothing to do with the power struggle,
or the age-mates who also compete for her attention. She
has done the unthinkable, the impossible—she has fallen
in love with a “meat-boy,” a human. A human
who writes hauntingly real poems about being a werewolf,
and the power and sensuality of changing from human to wolf.
Vivian is certain that Aiden is the one person who can accept
her as a human and as a wolf, the soulmate she’s been
hungering for and hasn’t found among her pack-mates.
Is Vivian really in love with her true mate, or are the
other members of the pack right when they tell her she’s
just fooling herself? Can a human and a werewolf find love
and mate for life?(Top)
Voices
After Midnight , by Richard Peck
It
was supposed to be a vacation—two weeks in New York
while my dad reorganized his firm’s Manhattan office.
But it turned out to be something completely different.
Dad rented this huge townhouse for us to stay in, and my
little brother Luke and I had the bedrooms on the third
floor. It started that first night when I woke up and heard
voices, a boy and a girl. They were talking about how cold
it was, and he was trying to reassure her. He kept saying
he was sure they’d be rescued.
When I woke up again it was dawn, and I could see the curtains
blowing in the wind. I got up and looked outside. The street
was empty, no cars at all. A man stood in the street with
a cart full of milk cans. As I watched, he poured some milk
into a bucket and took it to the house next door. When I
leaned out to see him better, I saw my sister Heidi sitting
in her nightgown on our front steps. I couldn’t believe
it—Heidi, outside in her nightgown, at dawn? I started
to call her but then I realized how tired I was and just
went back to bed.
Later I opened my eyes to bright daylight, and when I looked
at the windows, I suddenly remembered—the house had
central heating and air conditioning. The windows were all
nailed shut! Where—when—had I been?
Chad, Luke, and Heidi were in New York and in that townhouse
for a very specific reason. The whispering voices they could
all hear grew weaker and weaker. They had to figure out
what to do before the voices died away completely, forever.(Top)
(Adapted from a talk by Joni Richards Bodart in World’s
Best Thin Books)
Silver
Kiss , by Annette Curtis Klause
Zoe
felt as though everyone was leaving her. Her mother was
dying of cancer, and her father was so concerned about his
wife that he had all but forgotten he had a daughter. And
now, Lorraine, her best friend, was moving to Oregon. She
sat in the park in the shadowy darkness, thinking, “Soon
I’ll be all alone.”
Just then she saw someone step out of the gazebo into the
golden pool of light cast by a streetlight. He was slight,
pale, with dark eyes and light, silvery hair. He was dressed
completely in black. As she realized how beautiful he was,
she started to cry. He saw her tears and fled, vanishing
as silently as he’d appeared. Zoe was left alone,
crying for all she had lost.
Simon couldn’t stop thinking about the girl, how beautiful
she was—dark like the night, pale, and thin, so very
thin, almost as though one of his brethren had already claimed
her. But no, she didn’t have that smell about her.
She was untouched. He was surprised to find himself thinking
about her. He didn’t usually think about people or
want to talk to them. They were food, and one didn’t
talk to food. Still, he found himself wanting to see her
again, to be with her, talk to her, maybe even kiss her—with
the silver kiss, the one that would make her his forever.
So, on Halloween night, after the trick-or-treaters had
come and gone, Zoe opened her front door and invited the
real monster inside.(Top)
(Adapted from a talk by Joni Richards Bodart in World’s
Best Thin Books)
Are
You Alone on Purpose?,
by Nancy Werlin
Maybe
it all happened because Alison always felt like she could
never be herself, just Alison. She was always the other
one, the good one, the twin who wasn’t autistic, to
her parents, her friends, the other kids at school. She
was Adam’s sister. That was all.
Maybe it happened because Harry was so angry,lison
was almost always alone,
Alison was almost always alone,
(Top)
| |
--Joni
Richards Bodart
|
Buried
Onions ,
by Gary Soto
I
live in the part of Fresno where fences sag, paint blisters
on houses, and swamp coolers squeak like squirrels. The
old sit on porches, fanning themselves, watching the young
guys work on their cars, and mothers push strollers of fretful,
crying babies.
There isn’t much for me to do except eat, sleep, watch
out for drivebys, and remember all the men in my family
who are gone. I dropped out of City College right after
Jesus, my cousin, was killed, just because he told another
guy he had yellow shoes. The guy just turned around and
stuck a knife into his chest. My father, my uncles, my best
friend from high school, and now my cousin, all are dead.
It seems like I am surrounded by the dead, and by the living
who expect me to avenge their deaths. But I don’t
want to—there has been more than enough killing, and
I will not be a part of making it continue.
I live alone, stencil house numbers on the curbs to get
by, and refuse to answer the phone, so I can avoid my aunt,
who wants me to avenge my cousin’s death, and I watch
my back, because even though I never ran with the gangs
or vatos locos, it still pays to be careful and quick as
a rabbit. And now I also have to avoid Angel, who wants
me to help him kill Jesus’ murderer, and Samuel, who
wants to mess with me for reasons of his own.
It seems that no matter what I do, even when I think I am
doing the right thing, life jumps up when I’m not
looking and slaps me down. Isn’t there any way out
of this life? Any way I can be like other people, with a
home, a job, a family, food on the table and money in my
pocket? Or am I stuck in the barrio with sadness of its
buried onions forever?
(Top)
Burning
Up , by Caroline Cooney
There
was no doubt they wanted to stop her- the old barn that
burned in 1959 was not something they were comfortable talking
or thinking about. But Macey refused to stop. She wanted
to know why it had started, if it had been arson, who had
lived there, and what had happened to him. And her questions
got even more intense after two things happened. She learned
that Wade Sibley, science teacher, had been the first black
person to move into the pink and white Connecticut town.
And Macey was in a fire herself.
Four kids went to Good Shepherd, a black getto church, that
Saturday to help paint the Sunday School classrooms, Macey,
her best friends, Grace and Lindsay, and Austin, who lived
across the street from Macey’s grandparents. The teamed
up with four black kids from the church and started painting.
But it was hot and the paint smelled awful, so Venita and
Macey opened a door to the outside. Minutes later, they
smelled smoke and ran to tell the others. But the fire was
too quick, and Macey’s long luxurious hair caught
fire. If Austin hadn’t quickly yanked off his t-shirt
to smother the flames, Macey would have been badly burned.
And none of them would’ve survived, trapped by the
fire behind a padlocked door, if the fire engines hadn’t
been so close and gotten there so quickly.
Black teacher in 1959 and Black church in 1997; somehow
they were connected. But the deeper Macey looked the more
anger and denial she found, and the more unhappy she got
about the ugly little secrets she was discovering, from
her grandparents, from Austin’s grandparents, from
her own parents, and also from the townspeople who had lived
there 38 years ago.
And finally Macey begins to realize that while doing something
wrong is evil, so is ignoring that wrong, covering it up,
or just being indifferent to it. Who were the evildoers
in 1959? Who are they today?
(Top)
Whirligig,
by
Paul
Fleischmann
It
only took a moment. Brent closed his eyes and took his hands
off the wheel. He didn’t remember the actual impact,
just the police and ambulance lights flashing, and a policeman
who told him he’d escaped with only a minor head injury.
He’d failed. He’d have to go back to the kids
at school who’d laugh and jeer at him, to knowing
he’d never fit in no matter how hard he’d tried,
to knowing there would be no end of everything for him.
But then he was told everything had ended for Lea Zamara,
the 18 year old high school senior who’d been driving
the car he hit when his car went out of control. She was
dead.
Brent went numb. He was a murderer. Instead of killing himself,
he’d killed a pretty, popular girl who made people
happy just by being around her. He was alive. Lea was not.
And there was nothing he could do that would even bring
her back or take away his guilt. He was charged with drunk
driving and manslaughter and was placed on probation.
But it didn’t end there. Brent met with Lea’s
mother, who told him her daughter had spread joy her entire
life, from when she was a baby, and her favorite toy was
a whirligig. Lea’s mother wanted Brent to make whirligigs
in Lea’s memory, so her spirit of joy could live on.
He was to go to the four corners of the United States and
build whirligigs, take pictures of them and bring them back
to her.
And so Brent’s second life began. His first had ended
with the crash. His second began with he stepped onto the
first of many busses that would take his all over the country.
No one lives alone, and there are no accidents. Our lives
touch others in ways we cannot anticipate and we may never
even know about. Go with Brent on his journey and discover
how the whirligigs changed not only his life, but also many
others.
(Top)
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