Summer Reading 2024 (Polson)

5 stars

When Xiomara Batista, who pours all her frustrations and passion into poetry, is invited to join the school slam poetry club, she struggles with her mother's expectations and her need to be heard.

2 stars

Fifteen-year-old Emily has six siblings, but she was also close to her best friend, Lizzie Porter, who died nearly a year ago, and she is still grieving; but Lizzie's family are also grieving, so much so, that they use Lizzie's younger sister, Chloe, as a lure and kidnap Emily, forcing her to dress, talk, and act like Lizzie, and threatening to go after Emily's family if she does not become the replacement for the daughter they lost--and Emily is...

4 stars

Based on the life of Jack Gruener, this book relates his story of survival from the Nazi occupation of Krakow, when he was eleven, through a succession of concentration camps, to the final liberation of Dachau.

4.7 stars

It is 1943, and thirteen-year-old Michael O'Shaunessey, son of the Irish ambassador to Nazi Germany in Berlin, is also a spy for the British Secret Service, so he has joined the Hitler Youth, and pretending that he agrees with their violence and book-burning is hard enough--but when he is asked to find out more about "Projekt 1065" both his and his parents' lives get a lot more dangerous.

Robie lives with her family on the Midway Atoll, a group of islands in the Pacific. After visiting her aunt on Hawaii, she catches a return cargo flight at the last minute. The plane hits nasty weather and goes down. Max, the only other survivor pulls her onto a raft and the real terror begins. How long can they survive?

4.3 stars

Mare Barrow's world is divided by blood -- those with common, Red blood serve the Silver-blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own. To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess...

4 stars

Five years. That's how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation. It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash. Coyote hasn't been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished---the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box---she devises an elaborate plan to get her...

3 stars

When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.