Tag: selected lists

#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, April 12 Edition

Speak: The Graphic Novel by Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll
Farrar Straus Giroux
Publication Date: 01/09/18
ISBN: 978-0374300289

After attending a disastrous party before the beginning of her freshman year in high school, 13 year-old Melinda starts school as a pariah. She finds herself ostracized, alienated, and bullied because she was the one who called the police to break up the party. She faces the year mostly friendless at school and unable to talk to her parents at home, unable to confide in anyone to tell them what really happened that night. Art becomes the one outlet for her to express growing her loneliness, depression, and fear. As the year progresses, she must learn how to find her voice, to tell others what happened to her on that summer night, and to stand up to the one person who continues to haunt and threaten her.

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#AA2019 Nominees Round Up, April 11 Edition

WaR: Wizards and Robots by Will.i.am and Brian David Johnson
Narrated by Brian David Johnson, Daniel Weyman, Ray Panthaki, Iwan Rheon, and Becca Stewart
Audio Published by Penguin Books Ltd.
Publication Date: January 25, 2018
ASIN: B06XWZ1W7G

WaR: Wizards and Robots is a complex story taking place across several different time periods as humans, robots, wizards, and aliens fight to make their vision of the future a reality.  Ada Luring is struggling to cope with the death of her father, the fact that her best friend has a new best friend, and that her ex-boyfriend is moving on. The arrival of Gellar, a wizard who warns her that other wizards are coming to kill her, her mother, and destroy her mother’s robot, Hawking, makes all of these other concerns trivial by comparison.  Can a robot hating wizard and a budding robotic engineer work together to save the world?

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#QP2019 Nominees Round Up, April 10 Edition

Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers / Hachette
Publication Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN:  978-0316440776 

Marvin’s twin brother, Tyler, goes missing after a party and is later found shot and killed. A video surfaces that shows Tyler being shot three times as a victim of police brutality…prompting Marvin to find ways to speak up and resist.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, April 5 Edition

The Aeneid: A Graphic Novel by Diego Agrimbau
Stone Arch Books
Publication Date: January 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1496561138

This is a graphic novel retelling of Virgil’s ancient classic, The Aeneid. After the Trojan War ends with the fall of Troy, Aeneas and his men wander the Mediterranean where they fight monsters and enemy soldiers. They find romance and tragedy, culminating in the founding of Rome.
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#AA2019 Nominees Round Up, April 4 Edition

The Belles, by Dhonielle Clayton, narrated by Rosie Jones
Audio Published by Blackstone Audio
Publication Date: February 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1538540589

Dhonielle Clayton’s The Belles starts out with an ever-so-brief history of Bellehood and we are instantly set on Camillia, a brown girl living with her adopted sisters, trained from the very beginning to bring Beauty to a world where people are born ugly and gray. Clayton created a world where Belles are trained for years in order to transform those that could pay, into beautiful creatures. Camillia not only wants to be a Belle; she wants to be the Favorite, chosen by the queen to live in the royal palace and to tend to the royal family and those at Court. However, Favorites must be recognized as the most talented Belle in Orleans. However, things do not go as planned as Camillia and her sisters arrive at court. When her sister Amber is chosen as the Favorite, Camillia’s world seems to teeter.

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#QP2019 Nominees Round Up, April 3 Edition

The Wood  by Chelsea Bobulski
Imprint / Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publication Date: August 1, 2017
ISBN:  9781250094261 

Winter’s family has been sworn to protect the Wood for generations. The Wood holds secrets, including portals to other time periods that people accidentally fall through sometimes. There are only three rules to protect the Wood: Do not travel from the paths. Do not linger after dark. Do not ignore the calling. A few years ago Winter’s father strayed from the path and was lost to the wood. Now a strange boy named Henry has fallen through one of the portals. Unlike other travelers, he knows about the Wood and Winter’s father. She must work with this boy to solve the mystery of what happened to her father, and why it appears the Wood is dying.

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#BFYA2019 Nominees Round Up, March 30 Edition

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
Freeform Books
Publication Date: February 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1484728499 

Camille is a Belle, one of a select few blessed by the Goddess of Beauty with the ability to restore beauty to the cursed people of Orleans. On their sixteenth birthday, she and her sisters must compete for the privilege of being chosen the Queen’s favorite, to live in the the royal palace and serve the royal family and their court. Camille’s journey to attain this coveted position is a riveting one, bursting with twists and intrigues at every turn. However, once she finally achieves what she’s worked her whole life for, she begins to discover that not everything is as it seems on the surface. Beneath the glimmering facade of Orleans’ stunning opulence and obsession with beauty lie dark secrets and ominous forces that threaten to topple to kingdom and unbalance Camille’s world.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, March 29 Edition

Shade the Changing Girl 2: Little Runaway by Cecil Castellucci and Marley Zarcone
Young Animal / DC Comics
Publication Date: February 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1401275457

When Loma swathed herself in a coat of madness to escape life on Meta, taking over the body of Megan Boyer was merely a means to an end. However, inhabiting the skin of a narcissistic high schooler comes with consequences. In this second installment of the series, Shade the Changing Girl, Loma decides to trade in the high school drama for her bucket list of Earth adventures. First up: meet her idol, the 1950’s sitcom star, Honey Rich.

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#AA2019 Nominees Round Up, March 28 Edition

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert, narrated by Rebecca Soler
Audio Published by Macmillan Audio
Publication Date: January 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1427293534 

Alice Crewe and her mother Ella have moved all her life, and Alice has never been sure what exactly her mother is searching for–or running from. All she knows is that no matter what happens, her mother won’t let them return to the Hazel Wood, Alice’s grandmother’s vast estate. Alice has never met her grandmother, the infamous recluse Althea Proserpine, whose one book of fairy tales, Tales from the Hinterland, is an out-of-print cult classic–a classic Alice has never read, having her copy stolen. All she has is the table of contents, which includes “Alice Three Times,” a story she is certain she has a connection to. When Ella disappears, Alice’s classmate Ellery Finch, an Althea Prosperpine fanboy, teams up with Alice to find her, his ability to retell the stories from Althea’s book crucial to their search. Alice soon realizes that the Hinterland is real–and it’s after her.

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#QP2019 Nominees Round Up, March 27 Edition

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
HarperTeen/HarperCollins
Publication Date: March 6th, 2018
ISBN: 9780062662804 

Xiomara can’t be the perfect Dominican daughter that her parents expect her to be, so she pours out her frustrations in a secret poetry journal. Her mother expects her to be confirmed and marry a good Dominican boy. Instead, she questions the teachings of her church and falls in love with her chemistry lab partner, Aman, who is definitely not parent-approved. But she can’t hide her secrets from her parents forever.

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