Things You Either Hate or Love
by Brigid Lowry
Published 2006 by Holiday House

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0823420043

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Jacket Notes:

Georgia has to get to the Natural Affinity concert because she's obsessed with the band's lead singer, Jakob. However, there is one major obstacle standing in her way--money.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 03/06/2006

Readers will instantly relate to funny, honest 15-year-old Georgia. "I like to think of myself as a brilliant creative person, but sometimes I just feel like a sad lonely girl with a big bum." Lowry (Guitar Highway Rose ) covers familiar teen angst territory, from Georgia's tension with her single mom to a seemingly unrequited crush, but she handles the topics tenderly and realistically. Georgia's infatuated with the lead singer for Natural Affinity, and takes a string of bad jobs so she can fly to one of the band's concerts (one job comes to a sudden end when she angrily hits her manager with a loaf of bread). But when she starts working at a grocery store, she falls for a cute clerk who reads her his poem about toilet paper. Meanwhile tension with her mother ebbs and flows, but gradually comes to a head when Georgia learns a secret about her long dead father. Throughout, she writes lists in her diary, full of funny things such as "10 things you can do with a sausage besides eating it" and small heartbreaks (on the list "Ways in which I amlike my mother" she writes: "We both miss the same man"). Ultimately, this is a well-executed story, with a vivid narrator sure to win readers' hearts. Ages 12-up.(Mar.)

04/01/2006 REVIEW: School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up -This story is made up of a series of journal entries and lists compiled by 15-year-old Georgia, who makes several unsuccessful attempts to earn the $500 she needs to hear her favorite group, Natural Affinity. She lives in Golden Bay, Australia, so she'll need a lot if she's going to fly to Melbourne for the May Day concert. Meanwhile, she struggles with her weight and appearance, obsesses over a particular guy, and tries to maintain a halfway decent relationship with her single mom. Lowry is also a poet, which is evident in her different styles of writing and colorful prose. Readers will be drawn in by her ability to paint word pictures of the main character's innermost thoughts and feelings. After reading this quirky, fun novel, teens are sure to request Lowry'sGuitar Highway Rose (2003) andFollow the Blue (2004, both Holiday House).-Kathryn Childs, Morris Mid/High School, OK

Careers with Animals: Exploring Occupations Involving Dogs, Horses, Cats, Birds, Wildlife, and Exotics
by Ellen Shenk
Published 2005 by Stackpole Books

Paperback, English. ISBN: 0811729621

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Jacket Notes:

A much-needed guide to animal-related professions, Careers with Animals is a vital resource for the animal lover looking to plan his or her future. Author Ellen Shenk provides straightforward and accurate introductions to a wide range of potential careers--everything from familiar jobs such as veterinarian and zookeeper to cat breeder, animal chiropractor, dog show judge, and other more unusual pursuits. Also included are numerous fascinating profiles of real-life professionals, who offer honest looks at the many challenges and unique rewards of working with animals.

Defining Dulcie
by Paul Acampora
Published 2006 by Dial Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0803730462

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Jacket Notes:

Quirky, uplifting, and written in a spare prose, this hopeful and humorous debut explores the connections made in life, the resilience of the human spirit, and the absurdities that keep life interesting.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 03/13/2006

Acampora deftly mixes the bitter with the sweet throughout this first novel. Sixteen-year-old Dulcie Morrigan Jones's father, a janitor at her high school, has just died as a result of inadvertently mixing together and inhaling two chemically incompatible cleaning solutions. "Isn't losing Dad enough of a change-" the narrator asks when her mother announces that the two of them will be moving from Connecticut to California. After bidding farewell to her beloved grandfather, Frank, Dulcie and her mother head west in her father's 1968 Chevy pickup. When Dulcie's mother later decides to trade in the pick-up, the prospect of losing this remnant of her father is too much, and Dulcie drives it back to the home she cannot leave behind. She moves in with Frank, also a janitor, and spends the summer working with him and another student, Roxanne. Much of the novel's charm grows out of Dulcie's budding friendship with Roxanne, who is coping with an abusive mother, and the humor bandied about between the two girls and Frank. Dulcie's narrative realistically mixes joy and pain in reminiscences about her father and her solo cross-country journey, which included visits to the Kansas Fainting Goat Farm and the Shrine of Holy Relics in Ohio. Reflecting on her Ohio stop, Dulcie muses that her father's truck, the dictionaries he gave to her, and her grandfather's kitchen table "were my own relics-pieces and fragments of places and people that I could hold and remember." A carefully crafted, impressive debut. Ages 10-up.(Apr.)

04/01/2006 REVIEW: School Library Journal

Gr 7-10 -Strong and quirky characters who see life as an inextricable mix of sadness and humor, sorrow and hope, are the hallmark of this memorable first novel. When 16-year-old Dulcie's beloved dad dies, she and her mom leave her granddad in Connecticut and drive to California to start over. This doesn't work for the still-grieving Dulcie so she takes their truck and drives home to pick up the pieces of her old life and remember her father in all the old places. Her road trip and memories of it, along with events that occur once she arrives home, provide the figurative journey that begins her healing. Rather than being a sad or solemn read, however, the treatment is unexpectedly offbeat and, at times, wonderfully funny. By including details of Dulcie's interesting stops along the way, including her experiences with a field of fainting goats, Acampora demonstrates a Joan Bauer-like knack for making ordinary life worth a second look. Teens will appreciate both the warm security that surrounds Dulcie and the hard truth that life can be painful.-Faith Brautigam, Gail Borden Public Library, Elgin, IL

The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
Published 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0375831002

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Jacket Notes:

Liesel Meminger, a foster child living outside Munich during World War II, scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist--books--in this unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul. Random House Children's

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 01/30/2006

This hefty volume is an achievement-a challenging book in both length and subject, and best suited to sophisticated older readers. The narrator is Death himself, a companionable if sarcastic fellow, who travels the globe "handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity." Death keeps plenty busy during the course of this WWII tale, even though Zusak (I Am the Messenger ) works in miniature, focusing on the lives of ordinary Germans in a small town outside Munich. Liesel Meminger, the book thief, is nine when she pocketsThe Gravedigger's Handbook , found in a snowy cemetery after her little brother's funeral. Liesel's father-a "Kommunist"-is already missing when her mother hands her into the care of the Hubermanns. Rosa Hubermann has a sharp tongue, but Hans has eyes "made of kindness." He helps Liesel overcome her nightmares by teaching her to read late at night. Hans is haunted himself, by the Jewish soldier who saved his life during WWI. His promise to repay that debt comes due when the man's son, Max, shows up on his doorstep. This "small story," as Death calls it, threads together gem-like scenes of the fates of families in this tight community, and is punctuated by Max's affecting, primitive artwork rendered on painted-over pages fromMein Kampf . Death also directly addresses readers in frequent asides; Zusak's playfulness with language leavens the horror and makes the theme even more resonant-words can save your life. As a storyteller, Death has a bad habit of forecasting ("I'm spoiling the ending," he admits halfway through his tale). It's a measure of how successfully Zusak has humanized these characters that even though we know they are doomed, it's no less devastating when Death finally reaches them. Ages 12-up.(Mar.)

03/01/2006 REVIEW: School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up -Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book-although she has not yet learned how to read-and her foster father uses it,The Gravedigger-s Handbook , to lull her to sleep when she-s roused by regular nightmares about her younger brother-s death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayor-s reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesel-s story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA