Princess Ben, by Catherine Murdock, is yet another on the School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list. 
This is a quick read with lots of action and I enjoyed it, but I found the ending somewhat abrupt. This story reminded me of all those romantic comedies (think "You've Got Mail") where the two leads start out hating each other but fall madly in love by the end of the story, except in Princess Ben I wasn't quite sure what had changed their minds. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, this conceit works beautifully, I think because Austen gives the characters so many opportunities to meet, both in the company of others and, by happenstance, alone. I suppose most stories will suffer if they are compared to Pride and Prejudice, though. I just wanted a bit more from this story. Even so, I would not hesitate to recommend it because Benevolence (Ben) is a great, flawed heroine. I enjoyed sharing her adventures and watching her grow.
I am still working through the books on School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list. I can definitely see Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow, showing up on next year's most challenged books list.
This is a left-leaning, heavily political book. It seems to be set sometime in the near future, and the main character is 17-year-old Marcus, known in cyberspace as "w1n5t0n" (say, "Winston"), who lives in San Francisco. Marcus is a super-smart techno geek who is not averse to a little light-hearted hacking. He's not a bad kid, but he is a lot smarter than most of his teachers and enjoys getting away with what he can.
Enter the terrorists: one day while Marcus and some of his friends are ditching school, terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge, and Marcus is arrested by the Department of Homeland Security. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so he is considered a suspect in the bombing. Here is where it gets really political and controversial. Marcus is taken to a secret prison (that Marcus later calls Gitmo-by-the Bay), interrogated, tortured, and held without charges, all in the name of "national security." He is finally released, but then the rest of the story tells of Marcus's unconventional political activism. He is so incensed by what happened to him that he is determined to fight the DHS in order to win back his, and every other American's, civil rights. The debates that raged just after 9/11 come back in full force in this book: how do we balance privacy and security? Do we have to throw the Constitution out the window in order to feel safe from terrorists? Or is compromising our civil rights tantamount to letting the terrorists win? I read this one aloud to my boys, and I'm glad I did because it gave us the opportunity to discuss these issues together.
I read Impossible, by Nancy Werlin, in just two days.
Wow! I really liked this book. This one reminds me of Tithe, by Holly Black, and Wicked Lovely, by Melissa Marr, because the faerie folk cause trouble for the heroine in this story, too. In Impossible, Lucy Scarborough is a 17-year-old woman who grew up living with foster parents because her mother was mad. She soon learns that an evil Elvin Knight has been playing games with the women of her family for many generations, forcing them to have a female child when they are 18 years old and then possessing them (literally taking ownership of them) just after they give birth. It sounds kind of out there, but the author bases the story of the old folk song, "Scarborough Fair", and she makes it work, partly because so many people try to look at the situation rationally and are reluctant to believe that Lucy is cursed. This is another that is on the School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list.
Rumors, by Anna Godbersen, is the sequel to The Luxe, 
and, like the first book, it is set in the year 1899. This second book in the series continues the story of Diana and Elizabeth Holland, two young women who are part of the elite social set of turn-of-the-century New York City. I liked this book just fine -- until the ending, that is, which made me sad and angry. There is a third book, Envy, due out next month, but right now I don't think I'll bother to pick it up because I was so disappointed with the events in Rumors.
The Night Tourist, by Katherine Marsh, is about a 14-year-old boy named Jack Perdu who unwittingly follows a girl named Euri to the New York underworld.
In this book, people who died in New York are sent to this underworld and allowed above ground at night. Jack's mother died several years before, so he tries to find her among the thousands of ghosts who inhabit this world. This book is like the Percy Jackson series in that it encorporates Greek mythology into the story. For example, "Euri" is short for "Eurydice." Orpheus, Eurydice's husband, visits the underworld after her death and tries to bring her back to the land of the living. A sequel to this book, The Twilight Prisoner, is due out in April, and I am looking forward to reading more about these characters.
Swift Rivers, by Cornelia Meigs, was a Newbery Honor book in the 1930's. 
The author writes about Native Americans using dated, insulting stereotypes, but I don't think this fault should keep kids from reading the book because this is a great adventure story. Chris, the teen protagonist, decides to transport by river a load of logs he and his grandfather chopped down on thier property in Minnesota. His destination is about 100 miles downstream to St. Louis. Along the way he suffers setbacks and has adventures that kept the pages turning so quickly for me that I finished the book in one day. I bought this for my son and I feel confident that he will enjoy this well-written, exciting book.
My One Hundred Adventures, by Polly Horvath, is another of those on School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list. 
12-year-old Jane tells the story of her summer adventures, which include meeting several of her mother's old boyfriends, delivering Bibles with her eccentric pastor, and babysitting the Gourd children. Jane and her family live at the beach and often eat off the land -- fishing and gathering muscles from the ocean and gathering wild berries that grow near their home. It seems as though Jane would lead a peaceful life, but her neighbors have other plans for her, at least for this summer. My favorite scene is where Nellie, the pastor with whom Jane devilers Bibles, steals a hot air balloon and sends Jane off in it by herself, instructing her to drop the Bibles out of the balloon as she travels. Another funny scene is where Mrs. Parks, who is convinced she is very ill with thrombisis, becomes huffy because the local doctor decided to put another woman in the hospital instead of her. This is a touching story of a girl coming of age, and I enjoyed it very much.
School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list also includes John Green's Paper Towns. 
This is a mystery/detective story where Margo Roth Spiegelman, a high school senior, disappears after taking her neighbor and fellow senior, Quentin Jacobsen, on a nighttime adventure. Margo has disappeared before, more than once, so her parents are so fed up that they decide to lock her out of the house and forget about her. Quentin (also known as Q) cannot let go of the mystery of Margo's disappearance, though, partly because he has secretly admired her from afar for years, and partly because he feels that she has left clues meant just for him to find. His friends are occupied with traditional end-of-the-year activities such as prom and graduation, but Q keeps thinking about Margo. His investigation leads him to Walt Whitman's poem, "Leaves of Grass," and to a series of "paper towns," or places that are on maps but do not really exist.
I found this book fascinating. The usual teen lit standards seem to be kind of knocked about in this story. Green makes sure that his readers see all the kids -- nerds, jocks, cool kids -- as just people in the end, people who are not always who or what they seem to be. This is a suspenseful mystery but also a philosophical, thought-provoking novel. I liked it a lot.
School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list includes The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. 
I really liked this story. It's a dark tale of a future civilization where each year two "tributes," one boy and one girl from each of 12 districts, are chosen to compete in the Hunger Games. These games are sort of a cross between the Olympics and gladiator battles. The twelve kids are placed in an enclosed arena and have to fight to the death. The Gamemakers manipulate the weather and generally create brutal challenges for the players, all in an effort to make the show more entertaining for the viewing audience. I found myself wondering why the kids didn't just refuse to participate, but the author makes it clear that this civilization is ruled by a brutal regime that would not hesitate to punish the kids' loved ones for their disobedience. This is a fast-paced thriller, with a little romance thrown in for good measure. I can't wait for the next book in the series!
School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 includes Siobhan Dowd's The London Eye Mystery, so I decided to read it.
My interest in autism and Asperger's syndrome usually leads me to books in which this disorder plays some kind of role in the characters' lives, but I was surprised to find that one of the two main characters in this book is an aspie. Ted, who has Asperger's, and his sister, Kat, decide to solve the mystery of why their cousin, Salim, disappeared during a ride on the London Eye, which is a ride built like a giant bicycle wheel in which passengers ride to the top in pods in order to take in the view. One of the characteristics of Asperger's is an intense interest in one subject, and Ted's interest is weather. In the story, Ted's talking about weather sometimes annoys his family because he discusses it so often and in such detail, but his ability to focus so intensely plays an important role in the story. He describes having Asperger's this way:
" 'It's like the brain is a computer,' I said. 'But mine works on a different operating system from other people's. And my wiring's different, too' " (p. 37).
I really liked this description of Asperger's, not just because it seems accurate but also because it stresses that Asperger's is a difference, not a defect. I also like how the author portrays the the positive side of Asperger's: Ted's brain gives him important insights into the mystery of his cousin's disappearance that other people miss. Ted narrates the story, so we also hear about his struggles with social situations, his difficulty understanding idioms, and his tendency to flap his hands when he is stressed, but since it is his voice and his point of view, we are able to sympathize. I am always happy to see books that portray autism and Asperger's syndrome accurately and sympathetically, so of course I liked this book very much for that reason.
There is much more to like here, though. The clues that Ted and Kat discover kept the pages turning and I was eager to finish the book to discover what had happened to Salim. This is a darned good mystery!
Other books about autism that I like include Al Capone Does My Shirts, by Gennifer Choldenko, Rules, by Cynthia Lord, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.
I finally read the fourth book of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth. I just love this series. The stories are full of adventure and suspense, and they are very funny. What's more, kids will learn about Greek mythology as they read. It seems clear that Riordan plans a fifth book, so I'm happy to have another in this series to look forward to.
My friend Bekki recommended Avalon High, by Meg Cabot, 
and I'm glad she did. In this book the main characters are Avalon High School students Will, Lance, Jennifer, and Elaine, all of whom may be characters from the King Arthur legend reincarnated. Each chapter begins with a few lines from Tennyson's poem, "The Lady of Shalott," the idea being that Elaine, the book's narrator, is this lady reincarnated, doomed to look at the world only through a mirror and to weave what she sees into a tapestry. The story is actually very similar to the other Meg Cabot book I read, Jinx, because the main character falls in love with a young man who is unavailable to her, but I liked this story a lot better, probably because I find the Arthurian legend much more interesting than the witchcraft in Jinx. I liked that Cabot based her story on the legend but did not go overboard with it. Perhaps it's time now to re-read The Once and Future King!
