Verse Novel: "Who Killed Mr. Chippendale?"

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Glenn, Mel. Who Killed Mr. Chippendale?: A Mystery in Poems. New York: Lodestar Books, 1996.

A murder mystery told in free verse poems answering the question: who killed Mr. Chippendale?

The end of Robert Chippendale, English teacher at Tower High, is the beginning of this tale. A tale told by the reactions of the students and faculty who knew him, the detective pursuing the murderer, and Angela Falcone, the guidance counselor who loved him.

According to the students:

He was the best teacher I ever had.
He was the worst teacher I ever had.
No, I'm not goin' to the funeral.
Why did he have to die?
Hey, this school is scary.
I remember that creep Chippendale saying
That the whole world is waiting for us.
I remember that wonderful Mr. Chippendale saying
That the whole world is waiting for us.

As shock turns to grief, the students at Tower High School are drawn to the door of Angela Falcone. Can she help them deal with their feelings while at the same time bowing to her own grief? Is it Angela Falcone, after all, who has the knowledge to draw the killer out and discover Who Killed Mr. Chippendale?

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults. YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers.

Verse Novel: "one of those hideous books where the mother dies"

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Sones, Sonya. One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2004.

Ruby's mother dies and she is forced to leave Boston for Los Angeles to live with a father who abandoned her before she was born. A father who was too busy being a big Hollywood star to look her up before now.

Ruby was raised on the east coast by a mother that loved her and an Aunt she adores. When her mother dies, she finds herself on a plane to Los Angeles leaving behind her first real boyfriend, Ray, and her best friend in the world, Lizzie. Leaving her "whole entire life" behind to live with a father she's never met. A movie star father. An A-lister. A big star. A "scumbag" who divorced her mother before Ruby was even born.

"A billion flashbulbs are exploding all around us
and people are shouting and pushing and shoving
and sticking cameras in our faces
and crowding so close
that it feels like we're in a mosh pit.
"Whip! Whip!" they're calling
"Is that your long lost daughter?"

Whip may be an Oscar winning actor, but Ruby intends to make this role the most difficult he'll ever play. Will she come to terms with the past and forgive him? Will she fit in at her new school? Will next door neighbor, Cameron Diaz, who keeps breezing in borrow things, be her new stepmother? Read these heartfelt words of a girl whose life turns serious and who doesn't want her life to be just like one of those hideous books where the mother dies.

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults. YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Rhode Island Teen Book Award. Iowa Teen Award. YALSA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults - What Makes a Family?

Verse Novel: "Crashboomlove"

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Herrera, Juan Felipe. CrashBoomLove: A Novel in Verse. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.

A Mexican American navigates high school amidst racial tension, drug offerings, and blackboards swirling with words he can't read. Only when everything crashes around him, can he begin to redesign his life as a life with a future.

César Garcia is hungry. Hungry for something besides the chaos that is Rambling West High School. Hungry for more than the Welfare can provide. Hungry for an end to smashing fists and smashing words. Hungry for love, even crashboomlove.

César's world is closing in on him. He is being drawn into using drugs, the Hmongs are fighting the Chicanos, and his friends are upping their illegal activities. Is this what a migrant workers' son can expect out of life? Or is there a better place for him?

El agua es blanda, la piedra dura,
pero, gota a gota, hace cavadura.

Water is soft, rocks are hard,
but, drop by drop, water finds a way.

Will César find his way?

YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers.

Verse Novel: "A Bad Boy Can Be Good For a Girl"

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Stone, Tanya Lee. A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl. New York: Simon & Shuster, 2004.

Three high school girls are manipulated by a bad boy with some good lines. Tables are turned when they get a revenge that's "by the book".

Who are Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva? And why are they acting so stupid? This novel is a confidential look at high school life through three girl's experiences as they cross paths with an irresistible "big jock" on campus.

Josie is a jock herself and is confident in all things until she starts her freshmen year. Doubts set in, and big jock knows just how to manipulate her. Nicolette? Well she's the girl who knows what she wants and knows how to get it. She'll take her pleasure where she finds it without ever looking back. Until big jock that is. And finally there's Aviva, the least likely to be taken in by big jock. A hippie by-product of enlightened parents. Did I say the least likely to be taken in?

Just who are Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva? You'll find out when they discover a peculiar pulpit from which to deliver their new insights on love. Insights gained from a bad boy who in the end probably did do them some good.

YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Texas Tayshas Reading List.

Verse Novel: "Sweetgrass Basket"

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Carvell, Marlene. Sweetgrass Basket. New York: Dutton Childrens Books, 2005.

A father is convinced to send his two daughters to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to give them a better future. Their days at the school are bleak with rare moments of hope.

Mattie and Sarah, two Mohawk sisters, are sent away from their home to a boarding school back east. A school of unrelated individuals plucked from their Indian homes, promised opportunity, and delivered more cruelty than comprehension. But in between the harsher lessons, there are lessons in friendship, and a teacher's kindness, and what it really means to be a sister in your heart.

When Mrs. Dwyer shames Mattie, accusing her of stealing a brooch, she is stripped of her dignity, her strength, and the respect of her fellow students. Will Mattie and Sarah be defeated by Mrs. Dwyer, turncoat Ida, and the Carlisle Indian School? Or are there resources to be found tucked away in a basket? A basket full of hopes and dreams and made with the love of a mother. A sweetwater basket.

ALA Notable Children's Book.

Verse Novel: "Frenchtown Summer"

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Cormier, Robert. Frenchtown Summer. New York: Delacorte Press, 1999.

As Eugene comes of age in the tenements of Frenchtown, he comes face to face with tragedy, love, excitement, and mystery.

Summer is a time of maturity, a time of harvest, and for twelve year old Eugene it is a time of tremendous growth. In this story, an older Eugene is taken back to the way it was in his memory. A memory steeped in sweltering heat and the emotional conditions that capture the mind of a twelve year old dreamer.

"That was the summer of my first paper route,
and I walked the tenement canyons
of Frenchtown
delivering The Monument Times,
dodging bullies and dogs,
wondering what I was doing
here on planet Earth,
not knowing yet that the deep emptiness
inside me
was
loneliness."

But Eugene finds he is not alone in this world. There are enemies to battle, friends to find adventure with, and first loves to dream upon. And there is Uncle Med, gone suddenly. And in the middle of sadness there is an orange airplane with lightening streaks of white on the fuselage set down in the middle of a Frenchtown backyard. Impossible you say? Read Frenchtown Summer to discover for yourself.

Los Angeles Times Book Prize. School Library Journal Best Book.

Verse Novel: "Street Love"

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Myers, Walter Dean. Street Love. New York: Amistad, 2006.

Two households both alike in dignity,
In urban Harlem, where we lay our scene,
Love holds all promise if she'll let him in,
our Junice Ambers and her Damian.

Two star-crossed lovers sigh in Harlem. What forces conspire to keep them apart? Rival gangs, rival mother's, their own rival imaginations? Imaginations that keep them at cross purposes?

Damian Battle is headed to Brown where he competed for and earned a spot at one of the most prestigious colleges in the country. Junice Ambers is headed to the Bedford Hills Prison where her mother has been sentenced to and earned (according to the courts) her place of despair.

This tale, breathtakingly told in elegant verse, is both tragedy and love story. Will the sadness of impoverished Harlem undue them? Or will love conquer all as Junice turns to Damian and their hearts become full and the darkness of the street is illuminated.

YALSA Best Book for Young Adults. YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers.

Verse Novel: "Out of the Dust"

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Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic Press, 1997.

A young girl comes of age in Oklahoma as dust storms combine with the Great Depression to create a mountain of hardships.

Dust can be angry and dust can be mean, and the dust storms that settled on Oklahoma during the great depression could break a family's heart. This is the story of one such family- a man, a woman, and a girl. A story of challenges faced when the soil dries up and partners with the wind and becomes an aggressor in a war without end.

"On Sunday,
winds came,
bringing a red dust
like prairie fire,
hot and peppery,
searing the inside of my nose,
the whites of my eyes,
Roaring dust,
turning the day from sunlight to midnight."

When Billie Jo's mother is killed, she must not only weather the storms outside, but she must also weather the silence of being neglected and overlooked by her father. This is their story. A story of dust and rain. But also a story of blossoming hopes.

Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award. Booklist Editors' Choice. YALSA Best Book for Young Adults. ALA Notable Children's Book. Newbery Medal. School Library Journal Best Book.

Science Fiction: "Mind of My Mind"

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Butler, Octavia E. Mind of My Mind. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977.

Second in the patternist series, this book features the struggle between an immortal and his creations.

Octavia Butler's chronicle of a 4000 year old Nubian and his chosen disciple will take you into a world where flesh is fleeting but the mind is for the millennia. A world where force and compassion, and caprice and justice collide. The world of Mary who will fight her father/lover/master for control of a people whose very existence may depend on her.

"She was like a living creature of fire. Not human. No more human than he was. He had lied to her about that once- lied to calm her when she was a child. And her major weakness, her vulnerable, irreplaceable human body, had made the lie seem true. But that body, like his own series of bodies, was only a mask, a shell. He saw her now as she really was, and she might have been his twin. But, no, she was not his twin. She was a smaller, much younger being. A complete version of him. A mistake that he would not make again."

As Mary learns her true power will she be able to bring others into her pattern of minds to form a unified whole? Or will Doro manage to separate the threads, unraveling their plans and securing his place? A place he's held for 4000 years. Read Mind of My Mind to see who finds freedom in this unfree world.