Category: Pick of the Week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I beg you to ignore the terrible 80’s style book covers, because inside is the story of Alanna, lady of knight of Tortall, whose saga of growing up and overcoming obstacles is the equal of any fantasy hero coming into his or her own (think: Harry Potter, and the like).  In these four books we follow Alanna from ten years old, on the day she decides to disguise herself as a boy and trade places with her brother so she can go to the palace and learn to be a knight, until she is an experienced knight and sorcerer.

I am often wary of stories where girls dress as boys to get what they want, but Alanna’s secret is slowly discovered by her closest friends, and eventually comes out to the whole kingdom at the end of the second book when she becomes a knight.  The third and fourth books deal with Alanna as a knight and a woman,  becoming a desert shaman and adventuring in distant lands to bring back an artifact with important magic for her kingdom.  These are stories of action-packed battles, intense sorcery, palace intrigue, fate and destiny,  love and loyalty.  I am fond of Alanna as a person, she is at turns stubborn, wry, insecure, honest, and noble.  She gathers around herself an interesting supporting cast of friends, lovers, knights, tribesmen, and thieves.  If you love fantasy and adventure, Alanna is someone you’ll want to meet.

There are a lot of different, perhaps better, covers if you do a Google image search. I like this one:

In addition to being available on our shelves, the first book is also available through the digital catalog, in E-Audio format and each of these books are available as Audiobooks on CD through the CW/MARS catalog (That’s Central Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing, to you… which means you can order stuff from other libraries). The audiobooks are quite good, read by actress Trini Alvarado, who does a great job of giving each character a unique voice.

If you find you enjoy this series, or other timeless tales of fantasy and adventure, check out this list of Classic Fantasy I made.

David Levithan takes you inside the secret thoughts of various characters who all attend the same high school in this series of interconnected stories in free verse.  In a short 210 pages we meet teens in love, teens trying to figure out how to relate and how to connect with each other. We meet “the girl who is in love with Holden Caulfield. The boy who wants to be strong who falls for the girl who’s convinced she needs to be weak. The girl who writes love songs for a girl she can’t have. The two boys teetering on the brink of their first anniversary. And everyone in between.”  We meet Jed, the kind of magic boy who connects with everyone by showing up on the fringes of so many stories.  These poems are lovely secrets.

A classroom full of teens in a Bronx High School discover poetry while studying the Harlem Renaissance.  As each student writes and shares their poetry, they learn about themselves and their classmates.  The story is told in short chapters from a variety of different voices. Each chapter includes a bit about the character from his or her point of view and a poem he or she wrote.  These teens are struggling with everything from stereotypes to poverty to teen parenthood to discovering their own identities.  This book has something for everyone.

Aliera Carstairs is a fencer. She trains every day after school and on weekends, too, hoping to go to Nationals.  Her Saturday afternoons are reserved for table top role playing with her cousin.  Between school, fencing, and spending time with her cousin, Aliera is pretty busy.  She doesn’t really fit in with any particular group at school, and until recently she’s liked that just fine.  Until recently, when she met Avery Castle, the beautiful new boy who gets assigned as her lab partner in biology.  Avery asks Aliera on a date, and she rearranges her schedule to meet him at Grand Central Station.  Then, things start getting weird.  With her fencing mask on, Aliera can see all kinds of strange people, and creatures… are these, faeries?   What she thought was a fake plastic gem on the end of her fencing foil might be a ruby from the Seellie Court? And what’s really going on with Avery?

Find out in Foiled.

I’m trying out a new feature on the website:  reviews.  Each week I will post about a young adult book that I particularly enjoyed.  If you read something you want to share or want to write about a movie, a game, a cd, or anything else send me an email (edaly@cwmars.org), and next week it can be your review in this spot!

Sam LaCroix is nineteen, a college drop-out, a fast food worker, and a necromancer. He’s only just found out this last thing. His mother hid it from him as an attempt to protect him from the likes of Douglas Montgomery, a powerful necromancer who either wants to make Sam his apprentice, or kill him and take his power.  Sam has one week to decide.

Over the course of this week he discovers the existence of all kinds of paranormal beings, gets captured by Douglas (and thrown in a cell with a fascinating were-hound girl), and must learn to use his powers to save himself, his friends and his family.

This book is at turns scary, funny, and sweet.  Sam is a likable protagonist, obviously under a lot of stress due to the recent discovery of his powers.  He has close family and friends who support him and make for an amusing cast of side characters. Sam’s romance in captivity with half-fey half-werewolf Brid, is sweet.  A lot of magical elements in the book are introduced quickly, which has me hoping for a sequel.