Summer Reads

The Summer Reads series includes books recommended by students, staff and faculty from Avonworth Middle and High Schools. This week we feature Looking for Alaska, recommended by Madison Deen, recent 8th grade graduate, and The Accidental Empress.

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Miles Halter decides that he needs to go on a journey to find his Great Perhaps. He leaves his home in Florida and enrolls in Culver Creek, a boarding school in Alabama. There he meets the Colonel, Takumi, Lana (who develops a crush on him) and Alaska Young. Alaska is mysterious, daring and exciting, and Miles is enthralled. The group become fast friends, and when tragedy strikes Colonel and Miles find themselves trying to answer unanswerable questions. 

John Green writes some fascinating adolescent characters, and Looking for Alaska's are some of his best. The story is both heartbreaking and uplifting, in part because the characters seem so real.

Thanks to Madison Deen for the recommendation!!

The Accidental Empress by Allison Pataki

I'm a sucker for historical fiction. It's so broad, so sweeping, and so epic. This is especially true when the setting is the Austrian Empire during the Habsburg reign. Allison Pataki tells her story from the perspective of Empress Elisabeth, a Bavarian duchess known to her family as Sisi. Empress Sisi's story (as told by Pataki) is ever-hopeful but ultimately tragic. The young Sisi was brought to the Habsburg court by her mother at her aunt's request. Sisi's aunt Sophie had married into the Habsburg family and was the mother of Franz Joseph, the current emperor. Sophie is cold and distant, especially compared to the relative closeness and warmth Sisi experience growing up in her remote Bavarian royal home where rules and protocol were much more relaxed. Sisi spends much of her life fighting against Sophie and her ironclad rule of the palace and its court. Though Sisi is rarely triumphant (which makes this novel different from many of the other historical fiction books with a strong female protagonist) she eventually finds her way, her voice and her place in the Habsburg empire.