Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox

Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox is one of those books that I just couldn't put down. It was odd and different from anything I have read before and yet I had to find out what was going to happen. It is really an amazing book--weird and wonderful.

I first picked up Dreamhunter when the sequel Dreamquake was selected as a Prinz honor book last spring. I wanted to read it but decided that I need to read the first book in the series. It took me several months, but I finally got to the bottom of my "To Be Read" pile and there it was. And I am glad that I finally read it!

Dreamhunter is set in a world where only certain people can enter a mystical location known only as the "The Place." Only certain gifted people can entire "The Place"; others walk right over it. But the gifted people known as dreamhunters are transported to a place where they catch dreams that they later share with the others of the community. There are dream palaces where people go to sleep and share in the dreams of the deamhunter. People pay to share these dreams and good dreamhunters can become very wealthy.

Cousins Laura and Rose belong to the first family of dreamhunters. Laura's father discovered "The Place" many years before and Rose's mother is a very famous dreamer. When Laura discovers that she has inherited the gift from her father, she must deal with the fears of entering "The Place" alone. To add to Laura's reservations, her father disappears leaving strange clues for only her to find. Laura must follow these clues to discover what has happened to her father. But more than finding her father, Laura finds the government secrets of how these dreams can be used against the people. Now Laura must decide how much of what she knows to share with her family and her community and how to protect herself from the dangers that follow.

This is a fascinating story of the power of dreams and nightmares. I can't wait to read the next book!

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You by Peter Cameron. James Sveck is 18 years old and enrolled in Brown for the Fall term; however, New Yorker James does not want to attend college instead he wants to buy a house in the Midwest and read the Classics. He is a loner who doesn't really fit in. He is different and doesn't like other people especially people his own age and following a disastrous experience with a national student seminar in Washington D.C., he concludes that he is better off alone.

This book is a wonderful coming of age novel in which James struggles with his sexual preferences and what he wants from the future. At times it is difficult to like James as he tells his story, but still I hoped that he would discover his way and his place in the world.

Harmless by Dana Reinhardt

We all make mistakes and we all try to get out of them. The three girls in Harmless by Dana Reinhardt are just trying to get out of trouble by making up one little harmless story. However, it turns out not to be so harmless after all.

Emma, Anna and Mariah are freshmen in high school and best friends. One night they lie to their parents and attend a party with a bunch of senior guys from a neighboring high school. When they are caught in the lie, the three girls invent a story about being attacked by a man down by the river, so they don’t have to admit to attending the party. The girls give a generic description of the guy and hope that the situation will blow over. However, one small story becomes one huge thing when their parents insist that they go to the police. Then when a man who fits the description is arrested and everything really blows up. The girls learn that it would have been easier to tell the truth and take their punishment from the start because lies pile up and more than Emma, Anna and Mariah are hurt. This is a haunting story about what happens when you tell a lie that you think is “harmless.”

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gavrielle Zevin

With all the rain, this was a good week to sit inside and read. However, after five inches of rain on Friday, the weekend turned out being fairly nice out! So I didn't get as much read as I had thought I would since I had to go out and enjoy the nice weather--finally. But I did enjoy Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. It was a nice light-hearted book and a good read.

In this novel, Naomi falls down the steps of her high school and finds herself in an ambulance with a stranger who claims he is her boyfriend. At the emergency room, she discovers that James is not her boyfriend, but someone she had just met, but she also discovers that she cannot remember the last four years of her life. Everything from the time she is twelve to the present has been erased from her memory. These events include her parents' divorce, her new sister, and her best friend Will. Throughout the course of the book, Naomi spends the school year discovering who she is and why she likes the things she likes. It is a fun book of self-discovery.

The Snows by Sharelle Byars Moranville

The Snows by Sharelle Byars Moranville in a different sort of book. This novel follows 4 generations of the Snow family when each is 16 years old. It also parallels some of the very important historical events of the US. But more than anything it shows the universal struggles that teens go through to reach adulthood whether they are living in the 1930s or the 2000s.

The story begins with Jim Snow as he tries to deal with his family and the difficulties of life during the 1930s. Jim's father has a successful barbershop in a small Iowa town, but he is not happy with his choices in life and decides to uproot his family and move during the Great Depression to an uncertain future in Colorado. While struggling with this move, Jim falls in love and tries to protect his little sister Cathy from all that is going on around them.

The second story is about Cathy who struggles with love during World War II. Cathy falls in love and has a secret romance with a young soldier heading off to war. However, Cathy has to cope with love lost and fear and shame when she is sent to a home for unwed mothers.

The third section is about Jim's daughter Jill who comes of age during the 1960s. Jill experiments with drugs and rebellion until her father sends her to live with her adopted older sister Mary Suzanne who teaches at Kent State University. While there, Jill gets a little too close to the dangers of the riots at Kent State in 1969.

The final section is about Jill's daughter Mona in 2006. Mona travels back to Iowa for her Great Aunt Cathy's funeral and becomes reacquainted with her extended family and discovers their secret past. The neat thing about this book is that Mona brings it all together and all the characters come together at the end of the story. It is interesting to see how the characters face some of the same problems at 16 years of age even though they face them years apart.

Taken by Edward Bloor

It is back to school time! Things are starting to settle down, so I thought that I had better get back to putting books on my blog. I didn't have as much time to read this summer as I thought I would, but I did read some fun books and some interesting books. One of them was Taken by Edward Bloor.

Taken is set in the year 2036 where the world has changed in many ways. One major change is that one of the main struggles for prominent families is to protect their children from being kidnapped and held for ransom. This is an everyday occurrence and the main character Charity has been trained in what to do if she is every taken. So she is prepared when she is held for ransom at the beginning of this book. She knows how crucial the first hours are and how important contact with her family is.

While Charity is held, she has time to reflect on her life so far and her family which consists of her father, a famous dermatologist, her step-mother, a famous TV personality, and Victoria, her cook/maid, and Albert, her butler. Victoria and Albert are the people who are responsible for Charity’s day to day raising since her parents are always busy and gone and Charity feels closer to them than she does to her parents.

This book has some interesting commentary about race and social issues in the future. However, the best part of the book is the surprise at the ending. You will not expect what happens.

Deadline

Okay, enough girl books! Its seems I have been reading a lot of a “girl” books lately, and I needed to branch out and read something different. So I decided that Chris Crutcher’s new book Deadline would be just the right change! I love Chris Crutcher! He visited our school three years ago and gave fantastic presentations! He knows how to relate to teenagers in both his speaking and his writing.

Deadline is about Ben Wolf who is told at the beginning of the book that he has about a year to live. Ben is a senior in high school and 18 years old and with the help of his doctor he decides not to pursue treatment that probably wouldn’t work anyway and he decides not to tell anyone about his condition. Ben wants to live his senior year to the fullest without everyone feeling sorry for him. So he sets out to make changes in his life. The first change is that he decides to go out for football. Ben weighs 123 pounds soaking wet, but he has always wanted to try football and this is the time in his life to do everything he always wanted to do. He also finally gets the courage to talk to Dallas Suzuki, the girl of his dreams. Ben discovers that hiding the truth from people he cares about is harder than he thought. This book hits hard Crutcher’s message of Life is short, live it to its fullest. Ben learns to tell people the truth and show them you care. Crutcher does a great job describing the action of the football games and he keeps the humor going in the book so it doesn’t feel too dark despite the subject.

Running Loose by Chris Crutcher is one of my all time favorite books. The main character Louie Banks goes through a series of struggles in this book when he refuses to purposely injure another player and is kicked off the football team. Louie finds comfort in running. Louie is one of the greatest characters in young adult literature. I was thrilled to learn that Louie returns in the book Deadline. He has returned to his hometown and is now the football coach at Trout High school in Trout, Idaho. He is also a father figure to Ben and his brother Cody. This is just another great part of this book.