Weekend Reads

After a brief hiatus, Weekends Reads is back for 2016! Our New Year's resolution is to feature as many student reviews as possible, and this week we are starting off strong with a student review from Kyra Carlson!

Unwanteds reviewed by Kyra Carlson, Class of 2021

Unwanteds by Lisa McMann

Twin brothers, Alex and Aaron Stow, live in the dullest of the dull, Quill. When a child in Quill turns 13, they go through the Purge, where they are told whether they are lucky Wanteds, fortunate Necessaries, or Unwanteds. Wanteds go to the University. They learn and they are educated. Necessaries simply stay alive, getting servant jobs in Quill. Unwanteds go to the Death Farm, where they are executed. Aaron has been declared a Wanted. Alex has been declared an Unwanted so he will have to report to the Death Farm for execution...or so he thinks. What I like about this book is that it is third person omniscient, which explains more and makes the book more dramatic! Happy Reading! This is a series so if you like this first book the second is Island of Silence!

Find it in Fiction under F MCM

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Melinda Sordino is struggling during the beginning part of her freshman year. Lost in a huge school while trying to struggle to understand and deal with a horrible trauma, she is beginning to fall apart. Speak is a beautifully-constructed story of a young girl who is trying to make sense of herself and her world. Anderson does an amazing job of creating Merryweather High School and the students who populate it. As a reader, it's heartbreaking to watch as Melinda goes further and further into herself but it's also amazing to follow her as she begins to put herself back together. Melinda's story is based on an episode of violence, but the action and the message focuses on how she overcomes that event and what happens when she is finally able to find some peace.

Find it in Fiction under F AND

A Step Towards Falling by Cammie McGovern

Emily is a good kid. She's active in the Youth Action Coalition at school and she gets good grades in her three AP courses. But when she is a bystander to a horrible situation, she makes the wrong decision and has to deal with the consequences of that. Like Emily, Lucas witnessed the situation and chose to ignore it as well. Belinda is a young woman with a developmental delay, and suffered the consequences of Emily's poor choice to freeze when she should have looked for help. As these three students evaluate what happened, they start to look past their initial assumptions about each other and realize that it is possible to forge meaningful connections with people who, on the surface, seem very different from them. Cammie McGovern does a great job of telling this story from multiple perspectives as she makes both Emily and Belinda first person narrators, allowing them each to tell their story. 

Find it in Fiction under F MCG