Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs (2011)

I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.

Fifteen-year old Jacob Portman lives in Englewood, Florida.  Unlike him, his grandfather has had an adventurous life and he liked to tell Jacob stories about his experiences.  As Jacob grew up, he felt cheated when he realized that his grandfather's stories couldn't be true.

I stopped asking my grandfather to tell me stories, and I think secretly he was relieved.  An air of mystery closed around the details of his early life. 

Grandfather was born in Poland and shipped off to Wales when he was only 12 years old.

When I would ask why he had to leave his parents, his answer was always the same: because the monsters were after him.

Grandfather was the only member of his family to escape Poland before World War II. 

In a panic, Grandfather calls Jacob.

"They're coming for me, understand?  I don't know how they found me after all these years, but they did."

Jacob goes to see his grandfather at his home.  What he finds changes Jacob's life forever. 

"Go to the island, Yakob.  Here it's not safe."

His grandfather has been severely wounded.

"Find the bird.  In the loop.  On the other side of the old man's grave.  September third, 1940...Emerson - the letter.  Tell them what happened, Yakob."

Grandfather dies and Jacob sees something in the woods, a tentacle-mouthed monster.

Jacob blames himself for his grandfather's death.  No one believes that he saw a monster, and instead he receives a medical diagnosis:  acute stress reaction.  He takes lots of prescriptions and sees a psychiatrist, Dr. Golan.  His grandfather's last words are eating away at him. 

As a part of his treatment, Josh's dad takes him to Cairnholm Island in the United Kingdom, to see the children's home.

Why did you send me here?  What was it you needed me to see?

As Jacob learns more about his grandfather, he also learns about the other peculiar children and their secrets.  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a refreshing, exciting read!  Ransom Riggs has crafted a truly original story with old photos and a lot of imagination.  Be sure to check out his website!

Rating:  1o out of 10 stars
*language

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Never Fall Down, by Patricia McCormick (May 2012)

At night in our town, it's music everywhere.  Rich house.  Poor house.  Doesn't matter.  Everyone has music.  Radio.  Record player.  Eight-track cassette.  Even the guys who pedal the rickshaw cycle, they tie a tiny radio to the handlebar and sing for the passenger.  In my town, music is like air, always there.

The Khmer Rouge was a radical Communist regime in Cambodia (1975 - 1979).  They herded the entire population of Cambodia into work camps in the countryside, the Killing Fields.  One in four people died during this horrific genocide.

April 1975

Arn Chorn Pond is 11 years old. He lives in Cambodia.  His family used to be wealthy and educated, but since his father's death, they live in poverty.  Arn and his two sisters and younger brother live with their aunt. 

April 1975.  Thousands and thousands of people are marching by the city on the main road.  They carry various baggage as they trudge along.  The men in the Jeeps blast their message:

"We are Khmer Rouge," they say.  "We are Red Cambodia."

The Khmer Rouge say that the Americans are coming to bomb the city.  Everyone needs to leave the city for three days.

Arn and his family join the parade.  Marching for days, Arn becomes accustomed to death and he starts to learn the truth about the Khmer Rouge.

I learn a lesson already.  Be invisible around these Khmer Rouge guys.

Finally Arn and his family arrive at their destination.  A field.  Everyone is expected to give information to the Khmer Rouge about their neighbors.  No one is safe.

"Now you grow rice," they say.  "We all the same now.  No more elite.  Even city people have to grow rice."

People can no longer own any personal belongings.  Everything belongs to the Angka now.  There is no need for money, education, shopping, or religion.  Listen closely and obey because the Angka has many eyes.

"In Cambodia, now it's Year Zero."

New work units are created and Arn's family is divided.  He is forced to move away from everyone he knows and loves. 

"No crying," my aunt says, very strict.  "You cry only in your mind."

"Do whatever they say," she whisper.  "Be like the grass.  Bend low, bend low, then bend lower.  The wind blow one way, you bow that way.  It blow the other way, you do, too.  That is the way to survive."

Never Fall Down is a gripping emotional novel that is based on the life of Arn Chorn Pond.  It is raw and gritty and impossible to put down. 

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars
*graphic violence, language, sex

The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse, by Steven C. Schlozman, MD (2011)

The enclosed documents are highly classified.  They are exact replicas of the recently recovered handwritten notes of Dr. Stanley Blum, the last scientist sent to the United Nations Sanctuary for the study of ANSD and "zombie" biology.  After careful examination, World Health Organization and United Nations officials have reason to believe that these writings may contain ground-breaking data regarding the nature of the ANSD pathogen.  Furthermore, it is possible that this information represents both a key to a viable cure, as well the most definitive evidence to date that the ANSD virus was artificially manufactured - human-made - and therefore did not occur naturally.  The importance of these potential conclusions cannot be overstated.

One-third of humanity has perished from the plague.  Imagine 2.3 billion people have died.  All attempts at a vaccine or cure have failed.  Experts estimate that civilization can only last another ten years before total destruction.

ANDS, Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome, is present on every major land mass.  Most of the world is under martial law.  The disease is indestructible, untreatable. 

In July 2012 the United Nations set up a study site to study ANSD.  Those who live in the bunkers call it the Crypt.  Three months later the UN received it's last message from the Crypt from Dr. Blanca Gutierrez, resident microbiologist.

Status...gent.  Hype........new.  Diff...virus.

Vaccine...ble

Dr. Blum's orders were to record the findings of the team.  Members of the team left on separate transports, but only Dr. Blum arrived to the Crypts safely.  Only Dr. Blum's notes survived.

I'm writing this because I need to believe that there is hope.

Food has not been delivered for five days.  Water is scarce. 

Dr. Gutierrez still suspects an additional pathogen.

Something makes them live when they ought to die.  Something makes them eat when they ought to stop.  Something makes them able to tolerate some of the worst infections on Earth and keep going.  If this something is one thing, one pathogen, one protein, one change in the way we understand the zombie sickness, then maybe we could take that one thing away.  Maybe we could treat it, vaccinate against it, get rid of it.  Maybe we could cure it.  Cure us.

The Zombie Autopsies is for the extreme zombie enthusiast.  There are a lot of medical descriptions and illustrations to logically explain zombies.  This book is not for the light-hearted...

Rating:  6 out of 10 stars
* Language

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Pandemonium, by Lauren Oliver (March 2012)

** PLOT SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ DELIRIUM!

Alex and I are lying together on a blanket in the backyard of 37 Brooks.  The trees look larger and darker than usual.  The leaves are almost black, knitted so tightly together they blot out the sky.

With Alex's help, Lena escaped Portland, Maine; Alex did not.  Lena found herself 60 miles southwest of Portland, near Rochester, New Hampshire.  She's half-dead, fevered, bruised and broken.  

Lena is saved by a group living in a free zone.  Raven, now 21 years old, came to live in the Wilds when she was 15.  

"Everything you were, the life you had, the people you knew...dust...There is no before.  There is only now, and what comes next." 

Lena finds herself lost without Alex.

Love, the deadliest of all deadly things.

Love, it kills you.

Alex.

Both when you have it...

Alex.

And when you don't.

Alex.

Overcome with grief, she struggles to figure out how to live in this new life without Alex. 

Alex was the one who understood things here.  He could have built up this collapsed street for me, turned it into a place of sense and order.  He was going to lead me through the wilderness.  With him, I would have been okay.

Lena soon finds herself in Brooklyn, New York.  She is now Lena Morgan Jones.  Her mission:  watch and blend in with the Deliria-Free America (DFA).  She is told to keep a close eye on Julian Fineman, son of DFA founder Thomas Fineman.  At the March 23 rally, Lena receives strict orders to watch Julian.

"Don't take your eyes off him, no matter what...

No matter what, okay?"

Lena is captured by Scavengers, people who don't stand for anything, people who want to destroy everything.  They also capture Julian.  Lena and Julian are forced to work together to survive.  Secrets are revealed.

You.  Must.  Escape.

Pandemonium is even more exciting than Delirium!  In the end, Lena is faced with a shocking revelation.  Unfortunately, readers will have to wait until Lauren Oliver finishes the third book. 

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars
* Language

Not available at NOLS...yet!!

Delirium, by Lauren Oliver (2011)

It's been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.  Everyone else in my family has had the procedure already.  My older sister, Rache, has been disease free for nine years now.  She's been safe from love for so long, she says she can't even remember its symptoms.  I'm scheduled to have my procedure in exactly ninety-five days, on September 3.  My birthday.

Seventeen-year old Magdalena Ella Haloway lives with her aunt.  She shares a room with her cousin's children, Grace and Jenny.  All of the girls have lost their parents.

Lena is nervous about her upcoming evaluations.  Her senior year is almost over, and the evaluation is the final test.  The academic assessors analyze her strength and weaknesses, assigning her to a major and a school.  The evaluation determines her list of 4 - 5 approved matches.

It's critical that I get paired with someone good.  Jenny and Grace are years away from their procedures.  If I marry well, in a few years it will mean extra money for the family.  It might also make the whispers go away, singsong snatches that four years after the scandal still seem to follow us wherever we go, like the sound of rustling leaves carried on the wind: 

Sympathizer.  Sympathizer.  Sympathizer.

Lena's best friend Hana begins to ask some serious questions.  Questions that could get her into trouble.  She's stopped caring about school, started talking back to her teachers.

"You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?" she whispers, and her voice is hoarse, as though she's just been crying.

Lena disagrees.  She's glad the choice will be made for her. 

As Lena goes through her evaluation, she can't help but think of her mother.  Despite three separate procedures, her mother remained uncured.  When she was six-yeras old, Lena was told her mother committed suicide. 

I remember only the hot pressure of her fingers on my face in the nighttime and her last whispered words to me.  I love you. Remember.  They cannot take it.

Suddenly, things begin to change for Lena.  Her evaluation is disrupted by Invalids, people who live in the Wilds - the unregulated land that exists between recognized cities and towns.  They don't see love as a disease.  And they aren't supposed to exist.

This doesn't make any sense, but as long as no one mentions the Invalids, everyone's happy.  We're not supposed to know about them.  They're not even supposed to exist; supposedly, all the people who live in the Wilds were destroyed over fifty years ago, during the blitz.

Delirium is an exciting read that reminded me of many other books, like Uglies, Matched, The Giver, Divergent, Forest of Hands and Teeth.  The imagery is gorgeous and it's an entertaining read!

Rating:  8 out of 10 stars
*Mild language

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

The second book is: