Goodbye, Stranger by Rebecca Stead Booktalk

Bridge is a middle school girl who got hit by a car which she was younger and she almost died. That's her on the cover with a friend of hers. She's fine now, and she has two best friends whom she loves and trusts: Tab and Em. Tab is very headstrong and opinionated: she's a bit of a tomboy, and she loves history and politics. You'd never catch Tab putting on makeup or showing an interest in it. Emily is more traditionally "girly" and the boys notice her; she's good at sports and knows more of the "popular" kids. Emily also has a boyfriend but doesn't want to call it that.

When you look at the three girls' personalities, they're actually fairly different, but they get along well and support one another loyally. Yet something changes when someone - we don't know who - gets Em's boyfriend's phone and finds a personal photo of Emily. This person forwards the photo to someone who then forwards the photo, and so on and so on. It's not a naked photo, but it's not a photo that Emily wants "out there." You'll have to read the novel to see the description of the photo!

So who did this? Can we trust Em's boyfriend? And more importantly, will Em survive the mean words and harsh words headed her way? And will her two best friends understand what she is going through? Will they stand by her? And who is this mysterious stranger alluded to in the title, "Goodbye, Stranger?" Read and find out.

Goodbye, Stranger by Rebecca Stead. 304 pages. Wendy Lamb Books, 2015. Booktalk to middle school and high school. 

Book talk: The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel

Imagine you are going to ride the longest train in the world -- the Boundless: she's seven miles long and holds over six thousand passengers. Think about it: seven miles long. There are entire cities shorter than that! Anyhow, some people claim the Boundless is too big, and there's one creepy fact you should know: she carries her dead founder's coffin in a locked and guarded room. Creepy, huh?

Will is our young hero, and he needs to get into that locked coffin room. His family used to be poor, but thanks to the Boundless and its creator, they are now rich. Life is good.

Did I just say Will's life was good? Strike that. At one point, he got off the Boundless, went into the woods, and barely made it back to the departing train -- he got on the caboose on the very end. So why is that a problem? First of all, the Boundless is seven miles long, and it's not easy to travel between cars. Many of them are locked, and there are different classes of passengers on the train: the rich are at the front, the middle class are somewhere in the middle, and the poor are crammed together in over-crowded cars at the end. Will's dad is at the front, and Will is at the very back.

Will stinks, and there are men on board trying to kill him. He stinks because he doused himself with the urine -- that's pee -- of a supposed sasquatch, a huge, monstrous, ape-like creature. That stuff stinks. The men trying to kill him stink as well, only not literally. What kind of a crazy train is this? Read Kenneth Oppel's The Boundless to find out.

The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel. Simon & Schuster, 2014. Booktalk to grades 5-9.

Booktalk: Vintage Veronica by Erica S. Perl [Teen Chick Lit; 2]

If you saw 15-year-old Veronica walking down the street, you’d notice her clothes first. She might have on a bright pink poufy skirt from the 1950s, men’s bowling shoes, cat-eye glasses, and a vintage guayabera shirt. You’d also notice that, besides being pretty, she’s on the heavy side. At school, Veronica has been both picked on and ignored due to her weight. Let’s just say she has trust issues with other teens. But Veronica is talented, and she’s got a really cool job at this vintage clothing store called The Consignment Corner, secluded away from the public in her little corner two flights up, deciding on which clothes get sold to the public and which ones get trashed. It’s actually a really important job there. The owners noticed that she has a real eye for clothing: she knows her styles, cut, materials, and details. She’s an expert on vintage clothes, unlike the other employees. Speaking of the other employees, they’re starting to notice Veronica. The two alpha girls who work retail, Zoe and Ginger, will now actually talk to Veronica and seek her out, even though she’s a little afraid of them both. They’re charismatic, self-confident, and mean. And then there’s this boy called the Nail (real name: Lenny) . He’s a stockboy whom Zoe and Ginger make fun of. But Veronica starts to think he’s kind of cute, and he’s actually really nice to her: that’s a first, with Veronica and guys. But Zoe and Ginger hate Lenny, and he doesn’t exactly like them, either. Remember that Veronica is vulnerable – she’s got practically no dating history, and she’s hungry both for female friends and a little male attention. Whom will she chose? Or will Veronica screw it up and lose them all? Vintage Veronica by Erica S. Perl.

Vintage Veronica by Erica S. Perl. Knopf, 2010. 279 p. Booktalk to high school, adult.

Just Write: Booktalk 1

Teens mostly e-mail, text, IM, or call each other nowadays, right? Dash and Lily are completely different. They met by notebook, and it stayed that way for a while. Let me explain. Dash, short for Dashiell, is in his favorite bookstore in New York City, and on the shelves he finds a red moleskin notebook with handwritten instructions involving a challenge, and not an easy one. The challenge – if done correctly – will get the notebook back to its owner. The challenge involves writing, intelligence, willingness to make a fool out of himself, and some luck. And so the game starts. Dash and Lily don’t actually meet for a while. They couldn’t tell you what the other one even looks like: they’re both blanks to each other, in that respect. They start sharing through writing: thoughts, memories, aspirations – you know, the kind of stuff it’s easier to write that to say out loud. But both harbor a desire to meet in real life, yet the signs are there that they won’t and can’t have the type of relationship that they had through the notebook. What if meeting in real life ruins everything? Read Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. 260 p. Knopf, 2010. Booktalk to high school.

Take a Second Look: Booktalk 4

What if you didn't know your parents? That's Delana's story: she's an only child who lives with her Grandpa and her Aunt Tilley in West Virginia. Aunt Tilley likes to show Delana old-fashioned photographs of Delana's relatives -- descended from slaves -- and make them come alive through stories. So Delana _thinks_ she knows her family, but once Aunt Tilley dies, Delana gets a secret visit from one of her relatives disguised as a scrawny peddlar -- Cousin Ambertine. Ambertine is on a mission: to tell Delana part of the truth. As it turns out, Ambertine was really close to Delana's mom, and has news which shocks Delana, who finds she must take a second look at her mysterious family. Finding Family by Tonya Bolden.

Finding Family by Tonya Bolden. 172 p. Bloomsbury, 2010. Booktalk to intermediate grades and middle school.

Take a Second Look: Booktalk 3

 [Booktalker's note: I personally would only booktalk this one to high school students due to some subject matter. I'll do another title suitable for middle school on this "take a second look" theme.]

New kids at a school often have difficulty fitting in, but not Jake. It’s as if he came out of nowhere and just fit in perfectly, especially with the cool, football player set. When Rick first meets Jake, he finds him almost annoyingly cool: his clothes, his smile, his Friday night parties, and his one-mindedness. But Rick comes to like Jake anyway, and they grow closer. It soon becomes obvious that Jake’s true interest lies in Didi, a beautiful girl who is already “taken” as the official girlfriend of the school’s popular quarterback, Todd. Disturbingly, the more that Rick finds out about Jake, the more disturbed Rick is by two basic facts: one, Jake seems incredibly un-bothered by Todd’s hatred of Jake; and two, Jake seems ignorant of the fact that Didi is just toying with Jake’s affections. At first look, Jake seems to be golden. At second look, he is amazingly ignorant of the truth of his own personal situation. Jake, Reinvented is by Gordon Korman.

Jake, Reinvented by Gordon Korman. 213 p. Hyperion, 2003. Booktalk to high school.

Your Medical Diagnosis Is ... : Booktalk 3

[Unless you have a t-shirt that says, "Buddha Burger," you don't need any props for this one.]

Excuse me [run hands through your hair, look disheveled and wild-eyed, confused.] Have you seen a talking garden gnome and / or a Mexican-American dwarf clutching an inhaler? The dwarf might have asked you if he could use your cell phone to call his mom. Which way did they go? [Wait for response.] That is _not_ helping me. Why the funny looks? Okay, sorry, I'll slow down, but if you see anything resembling fire giants or a Wizard of Reckoning -- you'll know him when you see him -- tell me immediately. So, I'm Cameron, and I've been diagnosed with mad cow disease. Those last two wusses who booktalked to you got nothing on me. See, their diseases were just physical: blindness and leukemia. Mine is BOTH physically and mentally degenerative: yeah, both my body and my mind are going to hell in handbasket. I won the sickness lottery. But I'm on a quest, too. I'm trying to find Dr. X, who learned to travel through both space and time. I'm trying to fight this dark energy that is attacking both my brain and this world of ours [hence those nasty fire giants]. Yes, I'm crazy but I'm also not. You have to be a little crazy to live in this world, and you have to be even crazier _not_ to search for meaning. So even if I don't find Dr. X, I hope to find out what all this _means_ before I die. Don't look so glum. I'm funny as heck, trust me. So are the gnome and the dwarf, when they're not being pains in the you-know-what. Read Going Bovine by Libby Bray, and don't forget to suspend your disbelief.

Going Bovine by Libby Bray. 480 p. Delacorte Press, 2009. Booktalk this only after reading every single page, seriously. Upper high school, college, adult.

Fight Back: H.S. Booktalk 3

When you’re the younger brother of an alpha male, you have to fight to maintain your sense of identity, especially when it’s an identity less respected and understood by others in your small town. Although Frankie is smart, quirky, decent looking, and funny, his older brother Steve is much, much cooler; unlike Frankie, Steve is highly respected both by the popular kids at school and by the local “cholos” he hangs out with. Steve’s a varsity athlete who will get a college scholarship, and Frankie likes to blow up anthills [they’re fire ants, relax] with his best friend, Zach, who likes to take out his glass eye and gross out his friends with it. Frankie’s fine with being his own person, until he and his brother have escalating conflicts with John Dalton, a rich, white boy who has it out for both of them, due in large part to the fact that Frankie managed to steal John’s girlfriend out from under his nose [way to go, Frankie!]. Unfortunately, the rivalry with John Dalton has now expanded, and it’s become a racially divided one. Frankie will have to decide at what point fighting back is actually worth it, because anger has a way of erasing your true identity. The Brothers Torres by Coert Voorhoes is thoughtful and laugh-out-loud funny.

The Brothers Torres by Coert Voorhees. 316 p. Hyperion Books [Disney], 2008. Booktalk to high school, adult.