Reviews

Staff Review Sep 16, 2009

Although Williams is primarily a triathlete, her book is really for anyone looking for inspiration on their journey to fitness. According to her, this book is for “real people with jobs and kids and love handles”. As a plus-sized athlete, she advocates concepts like abandoning self-consciousness, being slow, embracing bodily fluids, and becoming an active wear advocate. She asks her readers to examine their motivations for losing weight and to change their focus to being fit.

Teen Review

Fire

By Kristin Cashore
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Sep 14, 2009

Over the mountains from the land of Graceling is the Dells, an equally enchanting land. Fire's life has been very sheltered, and for good reason, she is a monster. With a wild beauty and hair the color of flame, her namesake, Fire has the unique ability to control the minds of humans and animals. But Fire guards her power, afraid to misuse it like her father, Castrel, the monster adviser to the previous King who used his powers to almost destroy the kingdom.

Teen Review

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

By Beth Fantasky
Star Rating
★★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Sep 2, 2009

Jessica is looking forward to her senior year of high school in small town Pa. This is supposed to be the best year of her life, hang out with friends, get into a good college, and possibly get her first kiss. But everything goes horribly wrong on the first day of school when she is surprised by a creepy guy hanging out at the bus stop, crazy hippie parents won't give her a car. She swears she can hear him whisper her name before she gets on the bus, but it isn't the name Jessica, it is Antastasia, the name she was given as a baby by her birth parents.

Staff Review Aug 31, 2009

Kuffel offers interesting insight into her weight loss, different from a how-to diet book or even an account of how she did it. Her focus in on why she did it, and how her own journey transformed her relationships and her life is an engaging read about one woman’s struggle to overcome a lifelong addiction.

Teen Review

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

By Bandai Entertainment
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Aug 26, 2009

I have been watching quite a bit of anime lately to get ready for the anime festival coming up on November 7th (mark your calendars). There was one anime which I loved but just didn't seem to fit the festival, so you won't get to see it on the big screen but I would recommend checking it out from the library and watching it at home. Makoto is having a bad day. She woke up late, and just barely made it to school on time.

Staff Review Aug 18, 2009

The character of Charles Strickland, an eccentric painter who deserted his family to paint, is based on the Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. The narrator, after a knowing Strickland intermittently over a period of years shares what he knew of the man. The book was published in 1919, so the language took a little getting used to. But what makes the book a gem, are the generalizations about women that were assumedly accepted during that time.

Teen Review

Uglies

By Scott Westerfeld
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Aug 17, 2009

Tally is painfully aware that she is hideously ugly. But she is about to turn the much anticipated 16, and where Tally lives your 16th birthday marks the day you get full body plastic surgery. This is surgery unheard of in modern science, it isn't just some botox and a face-lift. This alters you forever. The doctors can change you hair, eye and skin colors, your bone structure, your curves, your muscles, your teeth, and more. It is a full body overhaul. Tally is looking forward to her 16th birthday and imagining how pretty she will be once the surgery is over.

Teen Review

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

By Sherman Alexie
Star Rating
★★★★★

Rated by Helen H.
Aug 14, 2009

When Junior announces that he wants to attend the white school off the reservation he is not only ostracized, but tormented by his own people. As he dips one foot into the strange world of white people and keeps the other firmly planted on the reservation he feels torn between the better life he glimpses at his new school and the life he has always known.

Teen Review

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

By Seth Grahame Smith
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Aug 11, 2009

The romantic classic with ultra violent zombie mayhem! Think, jaded boyfriend forced to read sappy, period love story by (now ex) girlfriend and wants to get back all all women for upholding unrealistic ideas romance, inspired by the original Pride and Prejudice.

Pride and Prejudice = Awesome. Zombies = Awesome. Pride and Prejudice + Zombies = Really Awesome.