Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip, by Jordan Sonnenblick (2012)

The very first thing I can remember is this:  I am really, really mad at my mom for some reason.  I'm sitting in the middle of the living room, arms crossed, pouting.  At this stage, I am a world-champion pouter.  There's an old guy - my grandfather - kneeling in front of me, trying to cheer me up.

Peter Friedman is going to be a high school freshman.  He lives and breathes baseball.  He and his best friend are the best players in the league.  When Pete pitches, AJ catches; when AJ pitches, Pete catches.  Pete knows that he'll be popular in high school because he's a baseball star.  He has no worries...

But the summer after 8th grade, Pete keeps a secret.  He has an ache in his left elbow.  He doesn't a single person.

Pete is forced to have elbow surgery.  He learns that he will never play baseball again.

Pete is forced to figure out what kind of person to be in high school since he can't be the star athlete.  His grampa offers a suggestion.

"Pete, your mom and dad are both concerned about you.  They wanted me to tell you that we're here for you if you need anything...Oh, and...well...you need to join a club."

Pete's grampa is a professional photographer, and ever since Pete was three years old, photography has been a private thing between he and his grampa.  Pete relishes the time he's spent with his grampa learning about photography and how to take a perfect picture. 

Pete's mom forced his to sign up for Introduction to Photography for his art elective.  Pete isn't sure about this.

Then he meets Angelika Stone.  And gets moved to Advanced Photographic Techniques.  With Angelika Stone.

Curveball is an excellent read that shows how Pete learned to be ready for "the decisive moments" in life.  I loved the humor and serious nature of the book. 

Rating:  9 out of 10 stars
*Teenage humor about relationships, mild language

To check this book about at NOLS, click HERE!

Fallout, by Ellen Hopkins (2010)

[from Goodreads.com]

Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.

Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe. Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.

Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.

My rating:  6 out of 10 stars
* Parent guidance recommended - language, sex, drug and alcohol abuse, serious issues

The other two books in this series:

First:

Second:

Insurgent, by Veronica Roth (2012)

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

I wake up with his name in my mouth.

Starting exactly where Divergent left off, Tris is filled with guilt about Will's death.  Tris, Tobias and other members of Dauntless are staying at the Amity headquarters.  Amity is offering safe houses for members of all factions, even for some Erudite who attacked Abnegation.

Tobias' father, Marcus, knows secret information that will change everything.

Tris will do anything to find the truth.

I know this information will change everything.  Everything we have done, and everything we are about to do.

Insurgent is a thrill sequel to Veronica Roth's first novel, Divergent.  It's exciting, breath-taking, and well written.

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars
This book is not at NOLS...yet!

Countdown, by Deborah Wiles (2010)

I listened to the audio version of this book and I loved it!  Twelve-year old Franny Chapman lives in Washington, DC in 1962.  John Kennedy is the president, kids prepare for the atomic bomb, and the Cuban Missile Crisis accelerates.  The audio version has clips of various speeches from JFK, Nikita Kruschev and other historical figures.

Franny lives her life with the "duck and cover" philosophy until things fall so far apart that she finally  finds courage to stand up.

Rating:  8 out of 10 stars
To check this out at NOLS, click HERE!

Okay for Now, by Gary D. Schmidt (2011)

Joe Pepitone once gave me his New York Yankee baseball cap.

I'm not lying.

He gave it to me.  To me, Doug Swieteck.  To me.

Doug hid the hat for 4 and a half months before his brother finally found out about it.  His big brother forced him to give the hat to him so he could trade it for cigarettes.  And Doug can't tell anyone about it, especially his dad, because there aren't any right days to talk to his dad.

My father's hands are quick.  That's the kind of guy he is.

Doug's dad is fired from his job and he announces that the family is moving to Marysville, upstate New York.  His friend, Ernie Eco, is going to help him get a job at the paper mill.

"Ernie Eco," said my mother quietly.

"Don't you start about him," said my father.

"So it will begin all over again."

"I said -"

"The bars, being gone all night, coming back home when you're - "

Doug's oldest brother, Lucas, was drafted and sent to Vietnam.  He doesn't write home much, so he doesn't know the family is moving.

After the family moves the Marysville, Doug realizes he hates the small town.  He feels like he sticks out like he doesn't belong.  He winds up at the library.

And so what if I've never been in a library before?  So what?  I could have gone into any library I wanted to, if I wanted to.  But I never did, because I didn't want to. 

He follows the stairs to the top floor of the library and finds a square table with glass on top.  What he sees changes his life forever. 

I went over to the table to see how come it was the only lousy thing in the whole lousy room. 

And right away, I knew why. 

Underneath the glass was this book.  A huge book.  A huge, huge book.  Its pages were longer than a good-sized baseball bat.  I'm not lying.  And on the whole page, there was only one picture.  Of a bird.

I couldn't take my eyes off it.

This book has prints by John James Audubon, worth thousands of dollars each.

Doug makes a few friends, starts school, and continues visiting the library.  He learns that the library is only open on Saturdays, and the city of Marysville has been cutting plates out of the book and selling them.  The book is missing 9 plates.

Doug realizes that he wants to make the book whole again.  Actually, he'll do almost anything to accomplish this goal, and in the process, Doug himself becomes whole again. 

Okay for Now is a lovely book, filled with interesting characters that will make you laugh and cry.  I loved every single word in this book.  My favorite book this year!