Fabulous Freshman Reads
Your Guide to Choosing An Amazing Book (Summer 2020)
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GETTING GRAPHIC
Maggie Thrash
Graphic Novel/Coming-of-Age
Maggie Thrash has spent basically every summer of her fifteen-year-old life at the one-hundred-year-old Camp Bellflower for Girls, set deep in the heart of Appalachia. She's from Atlanta, she's never kissed a guy, she's into Backstreet Boys in a really deep way, and her long summer days are full of a pleasant, peaceful nothing . . . until one confounding moment. A split-second of innocent physical contact pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counselor named Erin. But Camp Bellflower is an impossible place for a girl to fall in love with another girl, and Maggie's savant-like proficiency at the camp's rifle range is the only thing keeping her heart from exploding. Pages: 267
George Takei
Graphic Novel/Memoir
Takei, best known for his role on Star Trek, relates the story of his family’s internment during WWII in this moving graphic memoir. Japanese-Americans were classified as “Alien Enemy” after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and were forced to relocate to camps. Takei, who was five years old, along with his father, mother, and young siblings, was held from 1942 through January 1946. As much as possible, Takei’s parents took pains to ensure their children were shielded from the reality of their situation, though Takei still relates traumas and humiliations (and a few funny stories). It was only years later, during talks with his father, that Takei was given insight into his past. Pages: 208
TAKE YOUR BREATH AWAY
Paul Griffin
Thriller/Survival Story
Five friends who attend the prestigious Hartwell Academy in New York decide to take a last-minute camping trip to Idaho before beginning their sophomore year. Cassie, Tim, Emily, and Brandon have been close friends since kindergarten. Their families are wealthy, and they are used to having a private jet at their disposal. Jay, who recently transferred to Hartwell, is just a regular kid who must work to help his mom since his dad passed away. He is trying to have a good time but feels that he doesn't really fit in. The return flight home is anything but normal. There is a substitute copilot, they notice that the plane is flying west instead of east, and suddenly, Cassie becomes violently ill. Eventually, the kids realize that their plane has been hijacked—but by whom? And why? Pages: 240
CLASSIC COOL
Bram Stoker
Classic/Horror
Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he can find new blood and spread the undead curse, and of the battle between Dracula and a small group of people led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Dracula established many conventions of subsequent vampire literature. Pages: 368
THIS COULD HAPPEN...NO REALLY
Julie Buxbaum
Realistic Fiction/Contemporary Romance
Abbi cherishes her anonymity, and hopefully, as she spends this summer as a camp counselor out of town, no one will recognize her as Baby Hope. Even 15 years after 9/11, people still recognize her from the iconic photo of her one-year-old self clutching a balloon as she was rescued from day care at the World Trade Center complex. So much for plans, though: classmate Noah turns up as a fellow counselor. He not only knows who she is but also pressures her into working on a school journalism project identifying others shown from the back in the photo. In spite of Abbi’s wishes for privacy, the two develop a partnership and eventual romance. Noah’s real reason for pursuing the project and suspense over Abbi’s worrisome cough drive this emotion-filled story. Pages: 320
Brittney Morris
Realistic Fiction
When teen Kiera Johnson creates a virtual reality game called SLAY as a safe space for black gamers, she knows she must keep her identity as its developer secret. Her boyfriend Malcolm insists that video games are “a distraction promoted by white society,” her parents will disapprove of her embracing certain aspects of black culture, and the students at her predominantly white school just won’t understand what a game by and for black people really means. But when the massively popular game’s existence is threatened after a dispute results in a player’s murder and the media stirs controversy, a new player emerges, forcing Kiera to wager the game’s control in a duel to maintain her secret identity and avoid a discrimination lawsuit. Pages: 336
OUT OF THIS WORLD
Samira Ahmed
Dystopian Fiction
Layla was a regular American teenager until the new Islamophobic president enacted Exclusion Laws. Muslims are being rounded up, their books burned, and their bodies encoded with identification numbers. Neighbors are divided, and the government is going after resisters. Layla and her family are interned in the California desert along with thousands of other Muslim Americans, but she refuses to accept the circumstances of her detention, plotting to take down the system. Pages: 400
BE INSPIRED
Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey
from the KIlling Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
Lopez Lomong
Autobiography
Lopez Lomong chronicles his inspiring ascent from a barefoot lost boy of the Sudanese Civil War to a Nike sponsored athlete on the US Olympic Team. Though most of us fall somewhere between the catastrophic lows and dizzying highs of Lomong's incredible life, every reader will find in his story the human spark to pursue dreams that might seem unthinkable, even from circumstances that might appear hopeless. Pages: 240
HISTORICAL FACT OR FICTION
Ruta Sepetys
Historical Fiction
In her latest historical novel, Sepetys illuminates dark secrets about Francisco Franco's fascist rule of Spain. In 1957 Madrid, 18-year-old aspiring photojournalist Daniel Matheson is staying at the luxurious Castellana Hilton Hotel with his Texas oil tycoon father and Spanish mother. Daniel befriends Ana, a hotel employee, whose attraction to Daniel is constrained by fear about losing her job and by silence about her family tragedies. When Daniel turns his camera lens on local people and places, he gradually discovers that beneath the bustling tourist and business vibe of Madrid lurks the dark realities of Franco's regime. Pages: 512
Thanhha Lai
Realistic Fiction
***Author visiting NBPS in September -- bring your copy to be signed!***
After the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War, hundreds of children were airlifted from Vietnam to the United States. Hang saw to it that her three-year-old brother Linh was one of these children, though at the airport she's shocked to discover she's too old to accompany him. Six years later, 18-year-old Hang arrives in Texas, where her uncle and his family live, carrying an address, the only connection she has to her brother. Although her uncle promises that he will take her to the address in Amarillo, she cannot wait. She catches a bus and eventually a ride with LeeRoy, who is headed to Amarillo to meet his rodeo hero. When they arrive, Linh does not remember her and wants nothing to do with her. LeeRoy and Hang get jobs at a neighboring ranch where she tries to connect with her brother and LeeRoy tries to learn how to be a cowboy. Pages: 304
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