AHS+Summer+2014

2014 ASHS SUMMER READING
**The Adventures of Superhero Girl** by Faith Erin Hicks  A young woman is trying to make a living as a superhero, but things like poor finances, an overshadowing superhero brother, a desire to be her own person, and the lack of an arch-nemesis keep getting in her way.
 * GRAPHIC NOVELS **

**Boxers and Saints** by Gene Luen Yang A story of the Boxer Rebellion in China through two vantage points in a 2 volume set. Boxer follows a young man who is trying to preserve the traditional Chinese way of life by fighting the European / Catholic presence in China. Saints follows a young woman who is trying to secure a more positive identity through her affiliation with the Catholic clergy.

**Mind Management Volume One** by Matt Kindt A female journalist uncovers the secret Mind Management program and tries to find a man who went missing from a plane where everyone's memories were wiped.

**March** by John Lewis Follows the life of Georgia congressman John Lewis, focusing on his youth in rural Alabama, his meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., and the birth of the Nashville Student Movement.

This Star Won’t Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl by Esther Earl In full color and illustrated with art and photographs, this is a collection of the journals, fiction, letters, and sketches of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16.
 * NON-FICTION/BIOGRAPHY **

**127 Hours : Between a Rock and a Hard Place** by Aron Ralston One of the most extraordinary survival stories ever told -- Aron Ralston's searing account of his six days trapped in one of the most remote spots in America, and how one inspired act of bravery brought him home.

**Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans during World War II** by Martin W. Sandler <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Drawing from interviews and oral histories, chronicles the history of Japanese American survivors of internment camps.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**DYSTOPIAN** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**The Lord of Opium** by Nancy Farmer <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In 2137, fourteen-year-old Matt is stunned to learn that, as the clone of El Patron, he is expected to take over as leader of the corrupt drug empire of Opium, where there is also a hidden cure for the ecological devastation faced by the rest of the world.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Maggot Moon** by Sally Gardner In an alternate, dystopic UK: a repressive 1950s regime that calls itself the Motherland, consigns undesirable citizens to the derelict housing of Zone Seven. When his friend Hector disappears, Standish sets out to rescue and avenge him and uncovers a grotesque government hoax.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Cloak** By Gina Damico <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A delinquent sixteen-year-old girl is sent to live with her uncle for the summer, only to learn that he is a Grim Reaper who wants to teach her the family business.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">HUMOR **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Freshman Year and Other Unnatural Disasters** by Meredith Zeitlin <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Smart, occasionally insecure, and ambitious Brooklyn fourteen-year-old Kelsey Finkelstein embarks on her freshman year of high school in Manhattan with the intention of "rebranding" herself, but unfortunately everything she tries to do is a total disaster.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Bucking the Sarge** by Christopher Paul Curtis <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Deeply involved in his cold and manipulative mother's shady business dealings in Flint, Michigan, fourteen-year-old Luther keeps a sense of humor while running the Happy Neighbor Group Home For Men, all the while dreaming of going to college and becoming a philosopher.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**HISTORICAL FICTION** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Out of the Easy** by Rita Sepyts <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Josie, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a French Quarter prostitute, is striving to escape 1950 New Orleans and enroll at prestigious Smith College when she becomes entangled in a murder investigation.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**The Invention of Wings** by Sue Monk Kidd <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The story of Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid and follows both women over the next thirty-five years of their lives <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein When young American pilot Rose Justice is captured by Nazis and sent to Ravensbruck, the notorious women's concentration camp, she finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery, and friendship of her fellow prisoners.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**In Darkness** by Nick Lake <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, Shorty, a poor, fifteen-year-old gang member from the slums of Site Soleil, is trapped in the rubble of a hospital and as he grows weaker, he has visions and memories of his life of violence, his lost twin sister, and of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who liberated Haiti from French rule in 1804.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">MULTICULTURAL FICTION **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Golden Boy** by Tara Sullivan Habo <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An Albino boy in Tanzania is shunned and feared by most in his family and his village. As he leaves his home for a new one in Mwanza, he finds himself in danger. Albinos are hunted because their body parts are thought to bring good luck. To survive, Habo must not only run but find a way to love and accept himself.(

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**A Moment Comes** by Jennifer Bradbury As the partition of India nears in 1947 bringing violence even to Jalandhar, Tariq, a Muslim, finds himself caught between his forbidden interest in Anupreet, a Sikh girl, and Margaret, a British girl whose affection for him might help with his dream of studying at Oxford.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Eleanor and Park** by Rainbow Rowell <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">REALISTIC FICTION **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**The Beginning of Everything** by Robyn Schneider <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ezra Faulkner's life is irreparably transformed by a tragic accident which shatters his knee, his athletic career, and his social life. No longer a front-runner for Homecoming King, Ezra finds himself at the table of misfits, where he encounters new girl Cassidy Thorpe. Cassidy is unlike anyone Ezra's ever met, achingly effortless, fiercely intelligent, and determined to bring Ezra along on her endless adventures.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**FAMILY MATTERS** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Impossible Knife of Memory** by Laurie Halse Anderson <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hayley Kincaid and her father move back to their hometown to try a 'normal' life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Fangirl** by Rainbow Rowell <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Feeling cast off when her twin sister outgrows their shared love for a favorite fictional character, Cath, a dedicated fan-fiction writer, struggles to survive on her own in her first year of college while avoiding a surly roommate, bonding with a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words, and worrying about her fragile father.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe** by [|Benjamin Alire Saenz] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Winger** by Andrew Smith <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Two years younger than his classmates at a prestigious boarding school, fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West grapples with living in the dorm for troublemakers, falling for his female best friend, and playing wing on the Varsity rugby team with some of his frightening new dorm-mates.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">SPORTS **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Foul Trouble** by Joel Feinstein <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Bestselling sportswriter John Feinstein exposes the big money and back-room deals that pervade college-basketball recruiting in this fast-break young adult novel.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America** by Karen Blumenthal <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although we take it for granted that girls play high school and college sports, this wasn’t always the case. Who was responsible for the passage of Title IX, and at what cost? This fascinating chapter in the history of feminist equality is a story that should not be forgotten.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Coldest Girl in Coldtown** by Holly Black <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Living in a world of walled cities where quarantined monsters and humans endure dangerous predatory existences, Tana, one of three survivors of a horrifying massacre, safeguards their lives by visiting the evil heart of her city.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Midwinter Blood** by [|Marcus Sedgwick] Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined—this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Scarlet** by Marissa Meyer (Lunar Chronicles 2) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Scarlet Benoit and Wolf, a street fighter who may have information about her missing grandmother, join forces with Cinder as they try to stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana in this story inspired by Little Red Riding Hood.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Seraphina** by Rachel Hartman <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> In a world where dragons and humans coexist in an uneasy truce and dragons can assume human form, Seraphina, whose mother died giving birth to her, grapples with her own identity amid magical secrets and royal scandals, while she struggles to accept and develop her extraordinary musical talents.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Living by Matt de La Pena After an earthquake destroys California and a tsunami wrecks the luxury cruise ship where he is a summer employee, high schooler Shy confronts another deadly surprise.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ADVENTURE/SCIENCE FICTION **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**The Maze Runner** by James Drashner <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better** by Clive Thompson <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Technology doesn’t own us; we own technology. Thompson delves into how we use technology to better ourselves, our memories, and our society more broadly.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">OUR WORLD **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein—Colossal Mistakes from Great Scientists that Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe** by Mario Livio <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Even the greatest scientists had bad days. In this book, Livio explores how some of the world’s greatest scientific minds missed the mark, but led to greater discoveries.