Booktalk: The Red Necklace (Virginia Readers' Choice for 2011-2012)

A good horror movie keeps you on the edge of your seat. Although this book is not a horror movie – in fact, it’s set during the French Revolution – it’s got a character named Count Kalliovski who would fit in fine to any horror movie.

There are signs that the Count is the devil in human form. The count is incredibly wealthy, seems ageless, lends people money, and in exchange, gets their deepest, darkest secrets. In other words, he’s extremely powerful. He can get people to do virtually whatever he wants. His private motto is, “Have no mercy, show no mercy.” This is a dangerous sentiment to have during the French Revolution, a time of great upheaval, violence, murder and instability in France.

And the Count is going after a young gypsy boy named Yann who can read people’s minds. The Count is pretty relentless, too, when he wants someone dead. His victims are found wearing a red necklace which resembles drops of blood. It’s sort of his own personal way of saying, “I did this.” Can the devil be successfully evaded?

The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner. 378 p. Dial Books: 2007. Booktalk to high school. Virginia Readers' Choice for 2011-2012.

Booktalk: Chasing Lincoln's Killer (Virginia Readers' Choice)

If you’re going to murder someone as famous as a U.S. president, you need to PLAN and plan well. You need to plan how you’re going to murder the person, how you’re going to get away successfully from the crime scene, and how you’re going to stay hidden or safe for the rest of your life. So basically, your planning involves three parts, right? If any of those parts go wrong, you’re in big trouble.

John Wilkes Booth hated President Abraham Lincoln. He hated him with a passion. John Wilkes Booth believed in slavery, was a racist, and wanted to see President Lincoln dead. Booth was a really good-looking, self-confident actor who was quite skilled at getting people to do what he wanted them to do. Along with some other like-minded Confederates, Booth set up a plan to kill Lincoln while Lincoln was watching a play with his wife and some friends. Unfortunately, Booth was successful. The day he shot President Lincoln was one of the saddest days in American history.

Booth’s getaway plan had a lot of holes, but it also had a lot of successes and plain old good luck, both in the immediate getaway and in the manhunt that followed. For example, when Booth made his way onto the stage right after he murdered Lincoln, the actor on stage was just too stunned to grab Booth, even though he physically could have. The guard who should have stopped him from crossing a bridge to leave Washington, D.C. on horseback after dark actually did let him cross … even though he wasn’t supposed to! And in the thrilling, crazy national manhunt which followed, John Wilkes Booth did crazy, desparate things. He really had not planned for an extended campout under the stars with a badly broken leg, for one thing. And he really hadn’t anticipated the extent to which people would see him as an evil assassin to be hunted down, and not a hero to be lauded. Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson.

Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson. 194 p. Scholastic Press, 2009. Booktalk to middle school, high school. Virginia Readers’ Choice 2011-2012.