HIT: Part I--YA summer favorites

[Mary Ann Bell <mbell@main.com>]

I am really enjoying responses to my question about favorite summer YA
reads. Here goes the first installment--Mary Ann
**********************
Because of all the traffic about it on the list last spring, I read Rats

Saw God.  It was great!!!!!!  One of the best YA books I've read in
years.  Other than that, I took this summer off to have a baby.
***************
There are quite a few, but I enjoyed SLAM! which surprised me because  I
am
not a sports person.
*************
    I was in the same predicament so I went to ALA's YALSA website:
http://ala8.ala.org/yalsa .  Don't know if you have checked it or not,
but
is has all of the picks for 98 and 99.  Good luck!  :-)
************
    I enjoyed Armageddon Summer by Yolen and Coville and it's now out in

paperback too.
****************
Monster, by Walter Dean Myers
Tribute to a Dead Rock Star, (can't remember author)
**************
The best YA reads I've read are Jazmin's Notebook by Nikki Grimes tho'
thats been out a while and The Other Shepards by Adele Griffifn.  I'm in

the middle of Marisol and Magdalena by Veronica Chambers and really
enjoying it, it might be a little young - I'm thinking its great for my
middle school.
*************

If You Come Softly (Jacqueline Woodson)
     Jewish girl, African-American boy, really thought-provoking,
shocking ending

Rules of the Road (Joan Bauer)
     Excellent characters on a road trip

Life in the Fat Lane (Cherie Bennett)
     Beauty queen develops condition that causes her to gain weight
       causing her to reevaluate the person that she was
**************
Well, I can't say "best" because I didn't get to read many, but I'll
list
ones I really liked.

Hindenburg 1936 by Cameron Dokey.
Definitely a historical romance, but it does contain a really nice
section
at the end where Dokey explains how she made her choices about what true

facts to use and what was fiction. In the story, Anna Becker, a
free-thinking young German woman, is about to be sent to live with her
brother, a confirmed Nazi who wants to marry her off to his benefit. She

runs away, using her ticket for the Hindenburg, and finds herself in
conflict between the handsome stranger she's chosen to help her and her
former boyfriend, who she believes to be a Nazi spy.

The Dark Side of Nowhere by Neal Shusterman.
Sci-Fi story in which a teenage boy, who thinks his town and his family
are
average and boring, finds that many of the towns families, his own
included, are actually aliens who settled there in the wake of a failed
takeover of Earth and assimilated into the local culture. One of the
adult
aliens wants to reawaken the conquest of Earth, and gets the towns young

adults involved, training them to fight.

Alias by (sorry, don't remember the author).
A teenage boy discovers the secret of why his mother keeps moving them
unexpectedly and changing their identity.
**************
        The best YA book I read this summer is _A hive for the honeybee_

by Soinbhe Lally. It is short and fascinating.

--
***?***?***?***?***?***?***?***?***
"Try curiosity."--Dorothy Parker
***?***?***?***?***?***?***?***?***
Mary Ann Bell, Librarian
York Junior High School
Conroe ISD, TX
mbell@main.com
mbell@conroe.isd.tenet.edu

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
All postings to LM_NET are protected under copyright law.
 To quit LM_NET (or set-reset NOMAIL or DIGEST), send email to:
   listserv@listserv.syr.edu          In the message write EITHER:
    1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL or 3) SET LM_NET DIGEST
 4) SET LM_NET MAIL  * Please allow for confirmation from Listserv
 For LM_NET Help & Archives see:  http://ericir.syr.edu/lm_net/
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=