The Gun by Paul Langan

I love the Bluford Series books and The Gun is definitely one of my favorites from that series. The Gun lets the reader get inside the mind of a bully (the same one that was described in The Bully) so you start to understand how the mind of bully works and how they feel once they start to lose their power/influence over others. It's a good book to read in middle school because all of you will at some point most likely encounter a bully and I think this book gives you plenty of realistic advice on how to handle yourself.

It's a pretty easy read and it's not too long so even those of you who don't like to read will find yourself enjoying this book. It does deal with some really tough issues of growing up but the ending offers hope. I highly recommend this for boys.

A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass

The cover of this book caught my eye and once I started reading it, I immediately fell in love with Mia (the narrator) and her story. It's a funny, but serious book that deals with growing up but with a twist -- the narrator has a very uncommon, unusual visual disability. Sometimes she sees colors when "normal" people don't. So while you might pick up the Chicago Tribune and see only black-and-white, Mia's letters would be all different colors. This makes it hard for her to learn math and throughout the book you see how having the disability affects her in school and socially.

This book is amazingly well written and the character development is so thorough. I was struck by how much I could connect with Mia (even as an adult). She's an amazing character and felt like I was able to gain a lot of insight into understanding how families cope with differences/disabilities in their children. I recommend this especially to girls because I think you will like Mia a lot, but I think everyone could benefit from reading a book like this.

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska is one of my favorite young adult books! I read it last spring because I heard so much about the book and its author and now I understand why so many people are excited this beautifully written book.

This was a very descriptive story with so many interesting details and very well developed, likable characters. The book is about teenager named Miles "Pudge" Halter who goes off a boarding school in Alabama and falls for a girl named Alaska. Alaska is a complicated girl and Pudge spends most of the book trying to understand her and how he feels about her. The author does an excellent job of describing events, emotions, thoughts, and feelings in a way that makes it easy to relate to the characters. We're learning about developing "voice" in our writing and this book is an great example of writing that has a very strong and appropriate voice.

I don't want to give too much away but in the book Pudge deals with two different kinds of conflict. He struggles with the typical coming-of-age/growing-up kinds of issues that you're all dealing with in middle school and also in high school. He also deals with a much more difficult issue that you will find out about when you read the book.

This is a great read and I highly recommend it.

Welcome to My Blog!

I'm Ms. K and I teach sixth grade reading on the northwest side of Chicago. The purpose of this blog is for me to review and recommend young adult books to my students and for us, as a class, to be able to discuss the books through through the use of the "comments" feature. I encourage students who have read excellent books to e-mail me their reviews and I will gladly post them on the blog.

Happy reading!!