Kate's Tales of Books and Bands

Lucky isn't that Lucky. He is relentlessly bullied and his parents are powerless to intervene and advocate for him because they are paralyzed by their dysfunctional marriage. A social studies assignment to design a survey and chart the results goes horribly wrong when Lucky decides to poll students about which method of suicide they would choose. Not a good idea. After a particularly brutal attack, Lucky's mom takes him away to visit family in Arizona, and give them both a break from the pressures of home. Three weeks lead to a lot of self-discovery, and a highly satisfactory conclusion. A.S. King , author of the Printz Honor Book Please Ignore Vera Dietz , took a lot of risks with this novel. The ants serve as a comic Greek chorus and work well in providing a counter-balance to the bleakness of Lucky's life. The dream sequences in which Lucky tries to free his long lost grandfather from a Vietnamese prison camp are also effective, if a bit of a stretch at times. However, ...

A National Book Award finalist, How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr , is simply stunning. Jill is a senior in high school still reeling from the tragic death of her father. She has emotionally closed herself off from her friends, her boyfriend, and her grieving mother. She is stuck in her grief, and is horrified when her mother announces that she is going to adopt a baby. Mindy has dropped out of school and agreed to give her baby up for adoption. She climbs a bus in Nebraska and arrives to meet Jill and her Mom in Colorado. She is carrying more than an unborn baby. She is also running from a past that includes secrets she can never share. Through two very distinct voices, details emerge and eventually, the pair establish a rapport. Friendship, romance, and the meaning of family are all explored in a fresh and authentic process. The conclusion is exceptionally satisfying. Emotionally complicated girls with messy life-situations is Zarr's strength, as she displayed in her 2007 book  S...

By Mary Losure This is the charming story of a little girl who sees fairies. However, her mother and her aunt and uncle don't believe her. Her cousin Elsie does. So they make a couple of paper cut outs of pained fairies (Elsie's an artist). It follows the story of the pair as the pictures they took took with their 'fairies' are taken too seriously. Several important people including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, believed in fairies and at that period in time, people wanted to try and prove the existence of fairies. As the whole deal got more and more out of control, they get really guilty and don't like the direction their joke went in. It was a really interesting book overall. I would not have imagined that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have believed in fairies. Also, I thought it interesting that scientists wanted to classify fairies into a species and such and document them. I think that this book should get a 3.5 or something a...

By Brandon Sanderson And so comes the conclusion of the really good Mistborn trilogy. The final book comes with more surprises and sadness and happiness and emotions. Attention: There may be some spoilers. So, like, yeah. Read at your own risk (?). It is yet another year after the last book ended, and Vin is 20-21. She and Elend work on helping their empire and surviving and trying to help their empire survive. And Ruin, this really powerful force of destruction that like, affects a whole bunch of people and manipulates them to do his bidding, is out to destroy the world. You know, the usual sort of thing for this kind of book. So, it follows them connecting the dots of Ruin's plan, and their friends off doing other stuff, and Sazed battling his depression. Everyone is desperate and such and they have to figure out how to save the world. And so they have a bunch of fun almost dying and seeing people they know get killed and trying to survive tons of koloss attacks. And it's lik...

By Brandon Sanderson Hello one and all! Welcome back to the second installment of my reviews on the Mistborn  trilogy. Yes, this does mean I'm going to be reviewing the third book, The Hero of Ages . But they are just such good books!  Well, moving on.      In this book, it is one year after the fall of the Survivor, the death of the Lord Ruler. We rejoin the old crew ( - Kelsier, + Elend) and some new friends we just meet. The plot twists and turns as always, leaving the reader on the edge of their seat, or reading in class under the desk. In this new book, Elend Venture, now king, struggles to keep his city and his kingship, under control. On top of this, his relation ship with Vin is strained. For the first time, he must stand up to his post and act who he is. Meanwhile, in Vin's life, she tries to figure out who she wants to be and who she needs to be. Not helping is Straff Venture's Mistborn, and son, Zane. She also has to make herself comfortable with her ...

C.K. Kelly Martin My Beating Teenage Heart is saddled with an unfortunate cover and an even more unfortunate title. I got more strange looks when I pulled this book out of my backpack than I usually get, which I believe is mainly due to the title. In addition, the cover is a fairly uninspiring tan, black, and gray. While the color scheme fits the book, the picture needs to be more interesting. *There will be a few spoilers in here, especially when I talk about the ending, so read at your own risk!* My Beating Teenage Heart follows the fairly common premise of a central character who is dead and looking down on the living from whatever state of afterlife they are in. Martin breaks the mold a little bit here in how her dead girl character, Ashlyn, is tied to a living boy, Breckon, dual narrators of the novel. Now, it does take Ashlyn a little bit of time to figure out that she's dead, but chances are good that the reader will figure it out beforehand (especially given the quotes on ...

By Brandon Sanderson Truthfully, I have nothing but hight praise for Brandon Sanderson. He builds flawless worlds and intricate magic systems that are (in truth) somewhat confusing but oh so awesome. His characters are engaging and his story lines are just epic. The first book in the Mistborn Trilogy has been incredibly fun to read. We meet Vin, a paranoid street urchin with abandonment and trust issues, who is living in Luthadel, the capitol of the Final Empire and home of the Lord Ruler. Soon, she gets recruited by the Mistborn Kelsier, who tells her that she is also an all powerful Mistborn. Vin get caught up in a world of rebellion and lessons about Allomancy, the basis of the power of Mistborns. It is also part love story. It is an awesome book and everyone should read it. This is one of the best books I have ever read (almost better than Harry Potters 1-6!). I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy or sci-fi or stuff like that. It gets a 5 and then some on a number...