Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Three teenagers meet at a treatment center called Aspen Springs in Reno, Nevada. Each of them has attempted suicide. Vanessa cuts herself whenever she is stressed. Her mother is Bipolar and she has inherited her disease. She finds her mother on the floor after her mother has committed suicide. She cuts her wrist severely and almost dies. Connor is a preppie. His mother and father are wealthy, but his father has always been gone and his mother has never loved him. They have always pushed him to be the brightest, and the best. He has had an affair with his English teacher. When she confesses, he tries to shoot himself and is sent to Aspen Springs. Tony is a street kid. He thinks he is gay. He has been forced to have sex with his mother's lover and killed him. After six years in juvenile detention, he is taken in by Phillip, a gay man who is dying from AIDS. After Phillips death, Tony is devastated. He takes a half bottle of Valium. The three meet at Aspen Springs and become good friends. Vanessa and Tony fall in love. Connor ends up committing suicide.

Night of the Howling Dogs by Graham Salisbury

Dylan and his scout troop live on the island of Hawaii. They are going on a weekend campout at Halape, a remote beach campground on the southern flank of Kilauea volcano. While they are there, there is an earthquake and tidal wave. Their entire campground is gone, and all of the boys and scout leaders are lost and injured. Dylan and his enemy Louie must team up to find the rest of the troop and rescue them. They finally locate everyone. Some of them are so badly injured that they can't hike back up the trail. Louie and Dylan decide to hike out to get help. When they are about to give up, they are rescued by the Coast Guard. Everyone survives and they are all very glad to get home. This book is based on a true story of a scout troop that experienced just such an event in 1975. In the real tsunami, one of the scouts and one of the leaders was killed.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Winner of the Newbery Award 2009. As a toddler, Bod's entire family is murdered. He wanders out of the house and escapes. He ends up in a nearby graveyard where he is adopted and protected by the ghosts and witches buried there. He is adopted by a husband and wife ghost who always wanted to have children. A vampire becomes his guardian and a werewolf his tutor. He is educated by the entire graveyard and learns the ways of the dead. He meets only one other human, a girl named Scarlett, who becomes his friend. He is captured by ghouls and makes friends with a witch. As he gets older, he wants to attend school, but finds that his life is in danger. The man Jack who killed his family is still after him. Eventually, Jack finds him and tracks him to the graveyard where the ghosts and witches help him to destroy Jack and his friends. When he becomes 15, he loses his powers to converse with the dead and enters the world of the living.

Bonechiller by Graham McNamee

Danny and his father live in Harvest Cove in far northern Canada. One night after Danny and his friends, Pike, Howie, and Ash (short for Ashley - a girl) start home for the night, Danny is attacked by a huge monster animal. It's white, larger than a polar bear, with rows of razor sharp teeth. The monster stings Danny with its tongue, then let's him go. Danny comes to realize that the sting has affected him. He starts having dreams about the monster. His friend Howie is also attacked. As the boys start researching, they find that many teenagers have disappear suddenly from the area through the years. They come to realize that the monster is the Bonechiller of ancient Indian legend and has been killing young people for hundreds of years. Danny and Howie's dreams become stronger and stronger. The monster is pulling them to himself. As Danny and Ash's relationship develops, Howie and Pike come up with a plan to kill the monster, with Danny as bait. Will their plan work or will the monster kill them all?

Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? a mystery in poems by Mel Glenn

This mystery novel in verse begins with Mr. Chippendale, an English teacher at Tower High School bumping into a student as he gets ready for his morning run. A few minutes later, Mr. Chippendale is shot as he runs around the track. The rest of the novel/poems are written by different students and teachers, explaining how they feel about Mr. Chippendale. Some students felt like he was a great teacher, some hated him. Angela Falcone, the guidance counselor, is a major character as she interacts with students, teachers, the police detective, and the principal. The book climaxes in a memorial service for Mr. Chippendale after which one of the students confesses to Ms. Falcone that he was the murderer. There is an epilogue poem at the end telling where the characters are 13 years later as a new English teacher enters the building.

Elephant Run by Roland Smith

This is a great book. It was hard to get started, but once I got into the book, it was hard to put down. Nick is a teenage boy living with his mother in England during World War II. When the bombings got too bad in England, his mother decided to send him to live with his father on his plantation in Burma. Nick was safe there for a while, but then the Japanese invaded and captured his father and the plantation. His father was captured and sent to a prison camp. Nick was also captured and kept locked in his room and treated as a slave in his own home. He manages to escape and after hiding, tries to find and rescue his father. His friend Mya has a brother who has also been captured. She goes with him to try to free her brother along with the help of Hilltop, a buddhist monk who helps them. The first two or three chapters were slow and I almost didn't read the rest of the book, so don't give up on it. Keep reading! You'll love it.

Counting on Grace

I recently read Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop. The book was about a girl named Grace and her family who lived in Vermont and they worked in the mill. Grace meets a boy named Arthur and they become friends. They went to the same school on Sundays and were taught by Miss Lesley because during the week, they worked in the mill. A photographer comes to the mill, and he takes pictures of the kids because they are doing dangerous work and they shouldn't be working there. I thought the book was good, although it was hard to get into, and the vocabulary was sometimes challenging because of the use of foreign words. Knowing what they had to go through because they needed money was interesting. People who like history or fiction would probably enjoy this novel which is based on a true story.
Review by Madison Alexander