Mockingjay

 Katniss Everdeen has been through a lot: two hunger games, destroying an arena while being electrocuted, hearing the news of Peeta Mellark's capture... The list goes on and on. But when she ses a Capitol propo with Peeta, she feels like a game of  Crazy Cat, a game her family plays with the rest of District 13and their ugly cat, Buttercup.  She thinks seeing Peeta dead would be better than seeing him in the Capitol. So she decides to get him out. But when he's rescued, Peeta has been tortured so his memories of Katniss have been warped. Katniss remembers her first Hunger Games, distrusting Peeta's motives then pretending to be madly in love with him, then actually falling in love during her second games. Now the roles are reversed. Suddenly Katniss feels like more is at stake than the rebellion/revolution war and her own life.

Slice of Life #1

We walked into a model home called The Dorado. Joel talked a bit with the guy that was in charge there. He was mentioning the other houses and slipped into the furniture. I wasn't paying much attention.  I heard the other guy say," Oh yeah. The island's over there." I walked over to a room and sketched a  lamp. Then I met up with Selah and Joel in the basement. I said, "I think we should visit The Island next." I had really wanted to find a tropical model home. Selah agreed. I met up with the man as we were walking out and asked where The Island was. He started talking about the architecture of the house. It turned out he had meant the kitchen island! Strangely enough, the next house we visited, The Cimarron, was designed in tropical style.

The Nazi Hunters

       When you think "evil people in Holocaust," you think," Adolf Hitler". But Hitler wasn't the only war criminal in charge of killing 6 million Jews ( and about 5 million others, though the antagonist of the book just killed Jews), a man named Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of German (and French, Italian, Soviet, ect) Jews, but disappeared after the war. Fifteen years later, the  daughter of a Argentine Holocaust survivor dates a boy named Nick Eichmann, who claims his father was a high-ranking SS official ( Adolf Eichmann's oldest son was named Nicholas). The hunt to bring Eichmann to trial in Jerusalem begins.

My book group is Lord of the Flies.



The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell

                                                                    By Chris Colfer
  Alex and Conner Bailey are twins, which is one of the only things alike about them. Alex is the best student in literature class, Conner sleeps through literature class. Alex wants to explore what might not even exist, Conner is convinced Earth is all there is. For their birthday, their grandmother gives Alex an old book that sometimes glows and hums. When it does that, it acts like a trapdoor for anything dropped in it. Conner and Alex manage to get sucked into the book and find themselves in another world, The Land Of Stories, where all original Brothers Grimm fairy tails are real. They look for a way out, and find an old journal belonging to a man who "found love on a distant word" and found a spell to return there. They then embark on the greatest scavenger hunt of their lives for components to a spell that, when united, will grant one wish to whoever unites them, but the spell can only be done twice and was successfully done once before.

House of Ivy and Sorrow

     Being a witch, Josephine Hemlock has seen her share of strange things in the seventeen years  she's been alive. But when a strange man appears outside her front door, asking for her dead mother, Jo realises that this situation is even out-of-the-ordinary for her. Soon, she ends up with her best friends in the know, her long-lost father found, and more clues on how her mother really met her end. But when she and her grandmother figure out who might be responsible, they are in greater danger than they feared.

The Mark of the Dragonfly

      Piper lives in Scrap Town 16-a place where broken objects from a parallel world land. Her father died when she was younger, poisoned by the smoke in a factory belonging to Aron, king of the Dragonfly Territories. Her best friend Micah has a crazy idea- hide under shelter, wait until the storm is over, then get the first pick. As she hustles to save Micah, she sees a caravan wrecked by a gigantic meteor. Inside it, she finds a small girl with a dragonfly tatoo that means she's protected by Aron. When she touches the girl, she realises she's breathing...

     Anna has no memory. The only clues to her past are flashbacks of pain and a tatoo on her arm. She and an older girl who she saw making stew when she woke up plan to stow away on the 401, a train bound for Noveen, the capitol of the Dragonfly Territories. The day of their departure, a strange man shows up, the sight of whom brings back many feelings of pain for Anna. The walk to the 401 turns out to be a run...

     Gee is a chamelin, a shapeshifter with two forms: a green-eyed boy of thirteen, and a huge monster with leathery wings and green eyes. He's been the head of security on the 401since he was seven or eight, and he's sure that the two girls he found mean trouble: the ten or eleven year old with the mark of the Dragonfly, and the scrapper his age who claims to be her protecter, although there might be something cute about her...

Eleanor and Park

           Many people spend years dating to find the right one person. But what if you meet them in high school?
    
           Eleanor just moved to Omaha. Within minutes of her arrival, she becomes the class fat girl. She has been gone for a year because her stepfather kicked her out. He calls her names and regularaly abuses her, her mother, and her four younger siblings. Her life is comepletely misreble. And then there's this weird Asian kid who sits next to her on the bus...

     Park has lived in Omaha all his life. His mother is Vietnamese. His father is often upset with himfor not being able to parellel park a "stick". He is fairly popular. He's average just about everything, actually. Then, on the first morning of high school, a weird chubby girl with red hair fills the seat next to him...

     Eleanor and Park know that first love rarely lasts, but that doesn't stop them from trying.
This book contains mature topics and language.