Read Everything!!

  News:   This December, the SSS Library is featuring 12 top picks in the YA Historical Fiction genre. Any of these would make a great holiday read so choose one. Then cozy up with a candy cane hot chocolate and a warm blanket, and have a very merry time! ü Fever (L.H. Anderson) ü The Bone Feud (Wynne McLaughlin) ü Code Name Verity (Elizabeth Wein) ü The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (Avi) ü Witch Child (Celia Rees) ü A Great and Terrible Beauty (Libba Bray) ü Number the Stars (Lois Lowry) ü The Witch of Blackbird Pond (E.G. Speare) ü I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith) ü The Ransom of Mercy Carter (C.B. Cooney) ü Empire of the Sun (J.G. Ballard) ü Witness (Karen Hesse) (from Goodreads Reader’s Choice)

  Book Review:   In Traitor , YA author Gudrun Pausewang gives us a chance to imagine the tensions, upheaval, and horrible cost of WWII from another perspective, the everyday German citizen’s perspective. The protagonist in the novel is Anna, a teenage girl living in Sudetenland near the end of the war. Her family is sharply divided in their attitudes toward Hitler and the glories of the Third Reich, and as Russian forces press relentlessly into the area Anna finds herself in an unimaginably perilous predicament. If you’re curious to know more, you’ll have to read the book. Pausewang employs a straightforward voice in Traitor , which helps one get caught up authentically in Anna’s teenage world. Having said that, her struggles are far from trite or simplistic, and the mounting tension throughout leaves one practically breathless by the explosively crushing ending. This story shows just how completely war twists the everyday world of ordinary people into a senseless, catastro...

  News:   For November, the SSS Library is featuring ten of the most acclaimed Action/Adventure books, plus the greatest War Story and Nonfiction Adventure of all time. So, get ready for a major adrenaline rush!! Here goes. 1.                    Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton) - 1990 2.                   The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) - 2006 3.                   The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) - 2005 4.                  Hunt For Red October (Tom Clancy) - 1999 5.                   The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) – 1844 6.           ...