Read This!: THE LAST FIFTH GRADE OF EMERSON ELEMENTARY by Laura Shovan

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The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson ElementaryThe Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary

by Laura Shovan

 

 

Summary:

Eighteen kids,
one year of poems,
one school set to close.
Two yellow bulldozers
crouched outside,
ready to eat the building
in one greedy gulp.

But look out, bulldozers.
Ms. Hill’s fifth-grade class
has plans for you.
They’re going to speak up
and work together
to save their school.

You will fall in love with the kids of THE LAST FIFTH GRADE. Each one emerges as an individual, and the class dynamics becoming achingly clear as each poem brings new perspectives. You’ll pull for these kids to succeed in saving their school.  Shovan creates authentic voices for these kids individually and as a group, and each poem resonates within the whole.

THE LAST FIFTH GRADE OF EMERSON ELEMENTARY is out now.

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Deleted Scene from SWORD AND VERSE

Extras, Sword and Verse, Young Adult Fantasy,

Those of you who participated in the YA Scavenger Hunt got to see this deleted scene from the book already, but now that the hunt is over I am posting it for everyone!

This is the story of Raisa’s Selection and first day in the Adytum, the sacred courtyard where the language of the gods is taught.

Raisa dreams of learning to write the language of the gods so that she can finally understand her heart-verse, given to her by her father long ago.  But if anyone finds her heart-verse, she could be immediately executed.  When the Tutor-in-training is executed for treason and a new girl must be chosen to take her place, Raisa’s greatest desire and her greatest fear lead her down the same path.

Alterations: A Story from the World of SWORD AND VERSE

More extras from Sword and Verse

Stay tuned for even more in the upcoming months!

Read This!: DON’T GET CAUGHT by Kurt Dinan

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Don't Get CaughtDon’t Get Caught by Kurt Dinan

Summary: When Max receives a mysterious invite from the untraceable, epic prank-pulling Chaos Club, he has to ask: why him? After all, he’s Mr. 2.5 GPA, Mr. No Social Life. He’s Just Max. And his favorite heist movies have taught him this situation calls for Rule #4: Be suspicious. But it’s also his one shot to leave Just Max in the dust… Yeah, not so much. Max and four fellow students-who also received invites-are standing on the newly defaced water tower when campus security “catches” them. Definitely a setup. And this time, Max has had enough. It’s time for Rule #7: Always get payback.  Let the prank war begin.

Most of the time, when a book is touted as ____ meets ____, I am disappointed at the result. Usually the story only holds the vaguest of resemblances to the well-known movies or books it’s being compared to. In this case, however, the tagline of “Ocean’s Eleven meets The Breakfast Club” is dead-on. Dinan’s high school caper novel delivers all the intricate fun of Danny Ocean’s schemes and all the self-revelatory teenage relationships of the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal, with all the heart of both.

Max doesn’t intend to turn the school on its ear when he and four other random students are framed for painting a lewd message on the school’s water tower. But he and his new crew quickly determine that the Chaos Club – a long-standing and secretive group of pranksters – is behind it, and they use everything they’ve learned from a million heist movies to plot their revenge. Max wrestles with just who he wants to be – Just-Max, the guy who coasts along and stays out of trouble? Or Not-Max, the guy who shakes things up? Along the way, he has to reevaluate everything he knows about his friends, his family, and himself. All while pulling some pretty epic pranks.

DON’T GET CAUGHT is out now.

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Read This!: SOUTH OF SUNSHINE by Dana Elmendorf

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South of SunshineSouth of Sunshine by Dana Elmendorf

Summary: In Sunshine, Tennessee, the main event in town is Friday night football, the biggest party of the year is held in a field filled with pickup trucks, and church attendance is mandatory. For Kaycee Jean McCoy, life in Sunshine means dating guys she has no interest in, saying only “yes, ma’am” when the local bigots gossip at her mom’s cosmetics salon, and avoiding certain girls at all costs. Girls like Bren Dawson. Unlike Kaycee, Bren doesn’t really conceal who she is. But as the cool, worldly new girl, nobody at school seems to give her any trouble. Maybe there’s no harm if Kaycee gets closer to her too, as long as she can keep that part of her life a secret, especially from her family and her best friend. But the more serious things get with Bren, the harder it is to hide from everyone else. Kaycee knows Sunshine has a darker side for people like her, and she’s risking everything for the chance to truly be herself

Kaycee is such a likeable, relatable, realistic character. She wants to survive high school in a small Southern town, she wants to keep her friends and her place as a relatively popular senior…but when the new girl, Bren, starts flirting with her, she can no longer deny that what she wants more than anything is to finally, unashamedly, be herself. Elmendorf populates Sunshine, Tennessee with an intriguing variety of folks of all stripes – far beyond the usual stereotypes – from the eccentric newspaper editor who played a role in the Civil Rights Movement, to the homophobic jock out to sabotage anyone different from himself, to an array of characters willing to step out of their comfort zones to support Kaycee once her secret is out. My favorite character is Van, Kaycee’s best male friend, who despite his flamboyant style and lectures about being proud of who you are, gets by with his Johnny Depp obsession and secret boyfriends by carefully staying within the lines the small town creates for him. Kaycee’s determination to not only live her life out loud, but to make it easier for other gay teens to do so, shines through. Readers will be pulling not only for Kaycee to come through her struggles and find herself, but also for Kaycee and Bren’s sizzling romance.

SOUTH OF SUNSHINE is out now.

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Read This!: DIG TOO DEEP by Amy Allgeyer

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Dig Too DeepDig Too Deep by Amy Allgeyer

Summary: With her mother facing prison time for a violent political protest, seventeen-year-old Liberty Briscoe has no choice but to leave her Washington, DC, apartment and take a bus to Ebbottsville, Kentucky, to live with her granny. There she can finish high school and put some distance between herself and her mother– her ‘former’ mother, as she calls her. But Ebbottsville isn’t the same as Liberty remembers, and it’s not just because the top of Tanner’s Peak has been blown away to mine for coal. Half the county is out of work, an awful lot of people in town seem to be sick, and the tap water is bright orange–the same water that officials claim is safe to drink. When Granny’s lingering cold turns out to be something much worse, Liberty is convinced the mine is to blame, and starts an investigation that quickly plunges her into a world of secrets, lies, threats, and danger. Liberty isn’t deterred by any of it, but as all her searches turn into dead ends, she comes to a difficult decision: turn to violence like her former mother or give up her quest for good.

This is the story of Liberty, a teenage girl sent off to live with her grandmother in rural Kentucky while her activist mother faces criminal charges for a protest gone wrong. Two idioms come to mind when I think about Liberty’s story:

1) Fish out of water: That’s what this girl, far from her Washington DC prep school, is. Liberty doesn’t look down on her new home; on the contrary, she loves the mountain and her grandmother and just wants to find a place, as far away from her neglectful mother as she can. But finding acceptance is complicated by the fact that…

2) The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: Much as she rails against her mother’s focus on causes instead of her daughter, Liberty shares that stubborn resistance to injustice and willingness to stand up for what she believes in. So when it becomes clear that her grandmother and many other residents are being poisoned by runoff from the local Mountaintop Removal Mining facility, Liberty is determined to do something. With the whole town scared to go up against the wealthy mine owner for fear of losing their jobs or even their lives, Liberty faces an uphill battle.

This book will stay with me for a long time. Liberty is such a believable, passionate character, and the descriptions of her experiences in Appalachia are absolutely visceral. The forces she was up against were so great, I wasn’t sure a satisfying ending was going to be possible. How could she hold to her nonviolent principles when she was literally going up against a murderer? But she cleverly finds a way, and, like most struggles against injustice, it is not complete, but it’s a step in the right direction.

DIG TOO DEEP is out now.

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