Sadie by Courtney Summers My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’m part of the White Pine Steering Committee this year for the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading. Part of my role was to read Sadie, and develop teaching resources for it. I enjoyed it on so many levels. Did you ever see that episode […]
The Pain Eater by Beth Goobie My rating: 4 of 5 stars Maddy is gang-raped by her masked classmates when she is alone and vulnerable but she knows another person was witness to it. At first, she is only able to calm her traumatic thoughts through self-harm. Going to school each day everyone notices the […]
Exo by Fonda Lee My rating: 5 of 5 stars I loved this book. I know as a secondary school teacher-librarian that I’m supposed to remain neutral at all times, but I loved this book. Through this universe in which current generations of humans have joined forces with alien governance, Fonda Lee is able to […]
Subject to Change by Karen Nesbitt My rating: 4 of 5 stars Declan’s family is falling apart as his single mother works beyond her limits to keep the family together, and his brother struggles with addiction as a way to avoid confronting responsibility. Declan battles with which of his family’s secrets to keep and which […]
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline My rating: 4 of 5 stars I chose this book as it is nominated by the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading program in the White Pine selection this year. …and I think it is a strong contender for the winner, but teachers aren’t allowed to vote. I’m not […]
The Orange Grove: A Novel by Larry Tremblay My rating: 4 of 5 stars This little book (just 157 pages) is not for the faint of heart and is not a light read. It spans the life of Amed, who makes the horrible choice to swap places with his brother as a child, rather than […]
Dan vs. Nature by Don Calame My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is a light read but darker than Don Calame‘s previous works. Dan and his Mom’s fiance venture into the wilderness with a motley crue of tag-alongs. Dan is intent on breaking the fiance until he starts to really struggle with the […]
The Art of Getting Stared At by Laura Langston My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read this book as it is nomineed for an Ontario Library Association White Pine Award. I have been criticized for praising books too highly but honestly, the White Pine selection committee does such great work. I loved this book […]
Delusion Road by Don Aker My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is nominated this year for an Ontario Library Association White Pine award and It is hopping off the shelves in my secondary school library. At first I found the book to feel very abrupt as the chapters interchange between the two essential […]
Rush by Eve Silver My rating: 4 of 5 stars Eve Silver‘s book Rush is a sure fire winner with the strong young adult readers in my secondary school library. It begins with the life of an otherwise ordinary girl who gets pulled through dimensions into a ‘game’ but it turns out that she actually […]
The Troop by Nick Cutter My rating: 3 of 5 stars As The Troop is nominated by the Ontario Library Association’s for the White Pine award, I picked it up in audiobook. This book is seriously scary….I have an 11 year old boy named Maximilian (weird coincidence) and the idea of him going anywhere overnight […]
The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston Give me a book about dragons in the White Pine section of the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading http://www.accessola.org/web/OLA/Fore… and I am your girl. Now if you set that book in my area of Ontario and revise Canadian history to include all sorts […]
The Silent Summer of Kyle McGinley by Jan Andrews My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is my first read of the 2014-15 Ontario Library Association’s White Pine picks for this year and based on this book alone, I’m very hopeful. Like last year’s Old Man by David A. Poulsen, our main character Kyle McGinley […]
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman My rating: 5 of 5 stars Absolutely fabulous. You’ve got to really like dragons (and luckily I do) but Rachel Hartman will have a fan in me forever after this. I hope she’s busy writing a sequel as after I was done I immediately looked for the next one. This is […]
threadbare beauty 