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#QP2019 Nominees Round Up, October 23 Edition

Published October 23, 2018

Attucks!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City by Phillip Hoose
Macmillan / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: October 23, 2018
ISBN: 9780374306120

This book tells the true story of a high school basketball team from a racially segregated school who became the first all-black team in the history of the United States to win a racially integrated state sports championship in 1955. Crispus Attucks Tigers team member Oscar Robertson would go on to be a star in college basketball and then the NBA.

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Marvelous Meta-Horror for Halloween Season

Published October 23, 2018

Horror is at its scariest when it puts you into the perspective of its terrified victims, but if you’ve read or watched widely in the genre, it can be harder to feel those vicarious thrills, especially when you’re busy yelling at the characters to stop being so stupid. Enter meta-horror: where your extra knowledge of the genre is part of the fun. In meta-horror, the characters may realize that events are happening like in a horror movie; or the story may break the fourth wall and deconstruct horror tropes to do something unfamiliar. It may be as simple as including “wink-wink” references that a horror fiend may be delighted to recognize. Either way, these meta-horror books, movies, and games can be scary, clever, or funny, or all three. You can recommend these titles to your high school teen horror buffs who are looking to put their horror knowledge to good use.

BOOKS

Alone, by Cyn Balog (Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers 2019 nominee)

Seda’s mother inherits a crumbling mansion that was once a murder mystery hotel. Her mother is supposed to renovate and sell it, but she seems more interested in keeping it in the family. Seda likes all of the secret passages and macabre decorations at first, but it turns oppressive when a blizzard strands a group of teenagers at the house. To keep their new guests entertained, her mother decides to host a murder mystery like in the old days.

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#BFYA2019 Nominees Round Up, October 19 Edition

Published October 19, 2018

Lifel1k3 (Lifelike) by Jay Kristoff
Knopf Books for Young Readers / Random House
Publication Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 9781524713928

Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland after the robot uprising, humans and robots co-exist as best they can. Evie navigates this world by fighting robots in the WarDome. After a public display of her robot destroying abilities, she must flee for her life. On the run, she stumbles upon a “Lifelike” android that holds the secrets to her past that she could never remember. When the fight of human versus machine ensues, she fights to survive, and to find the truth.

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#AA2019 Nominees Round Up, October 17 Edition

Published October 17, 2018

The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik by David Arnold, narrated by Michael Crouch
Audio published by Books on Tape, Listening Library
Publication Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-0525625698

Noah’s about to start his senior year of high school, and he’s got his whole life figured out; except it isn’t the life that Noah wants anymore. He is a star swimmer, but he doesn’t want to swim in college, so he is faking an injury to get out of swimming this season. Then, one night at a party he tells a near-stranger that his life feels like a sweater that no longer fits. Noah goes home drunk after that same stranger attempts to hypnotize him. Then, Noah’s life changes – his friends now want to go to different colleges, his mom has a scar that he’s never noticed, everything is just slightly off. The only things that haven’t changed are his strange fascinations – a YouTube video, a photograph, and an old man with a goiter. Noah ends up on an emotional, and physical, journey to find out why his fascinations have stayed the same when nothing else has.

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#QP2019 Nominees Round Up, October 16 Edition

Published October 16, 2018

Moonrise by Sarah Crossan
Bloomsbury / Bloomsbury YA
Publication Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN:  9781681193663

Joe hasn’t seen his brother Ed in over 10 years, before he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. With just a few months to go until Ed’s execution date, Joe moves to Texas to spend as much time as he can with his brother. In the meantime, Joe is grappling with some big questions: Did Ed do it? Is Ed still the same brother that Joe grew up admiring? What are the limits of forgiveness, and how do you say goodbye to someone forever?

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, October 11 Edition

Published October 11, 2018

Stephen McCranie’s Space Boy, vol. 1 by Stephen McCranie
Dark Horse Books
Publication Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1506706481

Amy has lived her life on a far away mining colony, but when her dad loses his job, the family must return to planet Earth, a place Amy has only read about and seen through the media. To do this she must be in cryogenic sleep for thirty years. When she and her family arrive, they must navigate a new and different world, and one that does not contain Amy’s best friend Jemmah, who is now an adult back on the mining colony. Amy also has synesthesia, which gives her the ability to attach flavors to people. Her mom is mint and her dad is like hot chocolate. At her new school she meets a boy who has no flavor. She is both scared and curious. How will she survive in this strange new Earth? Will she ever be able to reconnect with Jemmah?

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#AA2019 Nominees Round Up, October 10 Edition

Published October 10, 2018

Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J. Mass,  narrated by Julia Whelan
Audio Published by Listening Library
Publication date: August 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0525595410

I have never been a fan of DC Comics, home of the Batman universe.  While my fellow second graders idolized Adam West from the campy 1960s television show featuring the Caped Crusader, I was small but my scorn was huge; the only Batman movie I have seen more than a half hour of is the Lego version.  Similarly, while I know the teens who talk to me about their favorite books clamor for more Sarah J. Maas, I have to admit I have only read (listened to) one title, as a professional assignment.  So I popped the first disc of Catwoman: Soulstealer, written by Sarah J. Maas and narrated by Julia Whelan, into my car CD player with minimal expectations; it was the only new audiobook I had with me for a long drive.   What I discovered was a production that had me sitting at the gas pump with the car running for an extra minute or two, just to get to the end of a chapter.

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#QP2019 Nominees Round Up, October 9 Edition

Published October 9, 2018

Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition, An Up and Out Collection by Julia Kaye
Andrews McMeel Publishing
Publication Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 9781449489625

Some people chronicle their lives in written journals, but for artist Julia Kaye expressing her emotions on the page came in a different form. When she started her gender transition in 2016, she found a way to chronicle her journey through the art of webcomics. This inspirational true life adventure follows all the ups and downs she went through during that time.

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#BFYA2019 Nominees Round Up, October 5 Edition

Published October 5, 2018

Isle of Blood and Stone by Makiia Lucier
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0544968578 

King Ulises has been on the throne for one year, the throne intended for his older brothers who were murdered years ago, along with his father, by emissaries of a rival kingdom. His friend Elias lost his mapmaker father in the same attack. When Ulises’ cousin Mercedes comes across a strange map that seems to have been drawn by Elias’ father, the three friends suspect there is more to the story than they have been told, and leave on a quest to uncover the riddles hidden in the map.

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