CLP Teens Blog

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Saenz

“The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.” — Aristotle, 15

Aristotle and Dante are the most unlikely pair to form a friendship. Aristotle, or Ari, has a hard time articulating his feeling and is withdrawn and angry. Dante is self-assured, artistic, and open. Ari and Dante, both 15, meet on a typical summer afternoon at the local swimming pool, when Dante offers to teach Ari how to swim. During their lessons, the two learn that they have much in common and form special bond.

As Dante and Aristotle grow older and are separated by schools — and distance, when Dante moves away at one point — their friendship perseveres. Both boys are on the cusp of becoming men and are facing their own particular demons. While both are Mexican-American, they have very different realities. Ari has a brother in jail and a Vietnam veteran for a father, and he is a loner at heart. Dante’s father is an English professor, and his parents are openly affectionate and loving. However, Dante struggles with his own sexual identity and worries about the repercussions of revealing the truth to those closest to him.

Aristotle and Dante is a beautifully written coming-of-age tale that will resonate with any reader, regardless of age, gender, religion, or ethnicity. Ari and Dante discover and share a friendship that transcends time and distance and changes their lives forever. This is an extraordinary novel that will restore your faith in humanity. Pick it up and be prepared to laugh, cry, and share with a friend.

Review by Maddie, CLP-Squirrel Hill

Crogan’s Loyalty by Chris Schweizer

I must admit, my knowledge of United States history is pretty abysmal.  I grew up in a different country, so when most of you were learning about Christopher Columbus, George Washington and the Civil War I was learning about James Cook, Maori culture and the Treaty of Waitangi (bonus points if you can figure out where I grew up!).  Lately, I’ve been trying to brush up on my US history by reading Doris K Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” and Shelby Foote’s “Civil War”.  While both of these books are fantastic and informative, they are admittedly incredibly long and somewhat of a chore to plod through (I’m 300 pages into “Team of Rivals” and Lincoln has just been elected, sheesh!).

Enter Chris Schweizer’s “Crogan’s Adventure Series”.  Not only are his books far shorter than the tomes mentioned above (under 200 pages instead of well over a thousand pages) they are also in my favorite format: the graphic novel.  “Crogan’s Loyalty” is the first book I’ve read in the series.  It is about two brothers, Willam and Charles Crogan, who are on different sides of the American Revolutionary War.  Charles is still loyal to the British Crown, fighting the American rebels while Will has joined forces with those very rebels, fighting for an independent America.   Their paths cross and they both need to decide what is more important: fighting for their beliefs or fighting for each other.

Obviously, in a book that is only 175 pages and filled with more pictures than words there is only a snippet of information about the actual Revolutionary War in here.  But what “Loyalty” lacks in facts it makes up for in telling a great story and putting the reader in the shoes of those fighting the war.  Previously, I had always thought of the anti-revolutionary forces as being purely British and as the “bad guys.”  Schweizer dispels this image, demonstrating that the war was not purely good vs. evil, that even some Americans believed that America should stay a British colony.  They feared that if the rebels succeeded the country would be thrown into lawless chaos, a justifiable belief as many rebels tarred and feathered those who disagreed with them (a much more painful and fatal type of torture than what cartoons may lead you to believe).  War is never as simple as Good vs. Evil, and the Revolutionary War is no exception as both sides thought they were fighting for what was right.

I thoroughly enjoyed Crogan’s Loyalty and look forward to reading his other books on history: Crogan’s March about the French Foreign Legion and Crogans Vengence about pirates (arr!). If you’re interested in history, or like a good graphic novel, you’re sure to love this series as much as I did!

Fat Kid Rules the World by K. L. Going

Seventeen-year-old Troy Billings — 300-pounds, isolated, and unhappy—is ready to end it all by stepping off a NYC subway platform when he is saved by the mysterious Curt McCrae. Curt is the stuff of high-school legends: a drop-out, drifter, and punk rock legend. While on the surface Curt and Troy couldn’t be more different, they share similarities that cause them to form a bond.

Both Troy and Curt come from dysfunctional homes. Troy’s isolation and weight issues began after his mother passed away from cancer years ago. His former military father is withdrawn and strict, and his younger brother, Dayle, is embarrassed of Troy’s weight, openly mocking him both at home and at school. Curt comes from a broken home, and his stepfather is mentally and physically abusive. Curt spends most of his time living on the streets, stealing food, money, and prescription medications. Despite these obstacles, Curt is a genius guitar player and has played music with some of Troy’s favorite bands. So when Curt appoints Troy as the drummer in his new band—despite the fact that Troy can’t play the drums—Troy is willingly swept up into Curt’s wild world.

While Fat Kid Rules the World is a book that will make you laugh, it also will pull at your heartstrings. This novel is full of raw emotion and will surely speak to anyone who has ever felt isolated or unaccepted. If you like the book, be sure to check out the movie version that was released on DVD this year!

Review by Maddie, CLP-Squirrel Hill

Looking For Alaska by John Green

Miles has a boring life, no friends and a penchant for memorizing the last lines of famous dead people. Inspired by Francois Rabelais’ last words “I go to seek the Great Perhaps,” Miles chooses to ship himself off to boarding school to change the dull life he’s lived up until now and find his very own Great Perhaps.

The first person he meets is his roommate who goes by the nickname The Colonel. The Colonel swoops up Miles into his clique of fun, friends and pranks, and introduces Miles to the girl he falls in love with: Alaska. Alaska is sexy, intelligent, beautiful, emotional and impulsive. Miles has never known someone like Alaska; he never knew someone like her could exist. And he falls hard. There are many problems with falling in love with Alaska, the most glaringly obvious is that she has a boyfriend that she loves. And he’s not just some doofus. Alaska’s boyfriend is a really cool guy and as much as Miles tries to hate him, he can’t help but like the guy.

John Green doesn’t use traditional chapters in Looking for Alaska. Instead he tells the story in “Before” and “After.” Obviously something major happens in the middle of Before and After, but you have to read the book yourself to find out. No spoilers here!

If you’re in the mood for some realistic fiction – no vampires or special powers, just normal people like you and me, well, if we went to boarding school and smoked a lot of cigarettes, and buried wine in the school yard to dig up and drink later, and played ridiculous and borderline dangerous pranks – then pick up this award winning book!

Review by Anicca, CLP-West End

Through the Ever Night by Veronica Rossi

Aria and Perry are back in the sequel to “Under the Never Sky” by Veronica Rossi, and they are officially a couple…sort of.

Aria and Roar have set out after a disastrous attempt at life in the Perry’s home village. He is now Blood Lord of the Tides but the tribe is not happy about him bringing an outsider into their midst. So much so that at the marking ceremony Aria is poisoned by her tattoo to the point where she almost dies.

Perry’s nephew, Talon, is still a prisoner in the world of Realms where Aria has been banished. The Aether storms are becoming more and more frequent occurrences rather than anomalies and are upsetting the pods or the world of the realms. Director of Security Hess, who initially banished Aria, is in need of her help. There is said to be a world that is Aether free and the only hope for the existing pods. If Aria can locate it, he will let Talon go free. Aria’s mother was lost in one of the pods and time is running out for her friends and the realms. Perry wanted to go with her but he would have lost the respect of the tribe if he would have abandoned them to be with that ‘dweller ‘. However, he still wants to rescue his nephew. If that wasn’t enough motivation for her, her attacker is back with a new twist. He was banished but only to a different realm. He seems like an unlikely ally for Aria, but in this complex novel, you never know who you can trust.

“Through the Ever Night” by Veronica Rossi is the 2nd book in the trilogy. It is part Hunger Games, part Matched and part Uglies all rolled into one. A great read that will keep you wanting and waiting for the final installment.

Review by Andrea, CLP-Hill District

In Darkness by Nick Lake

In Haiti, the Site Soley is one of the poorest and most dangerous slums in existence today. Residents in the area often are starving and have little or no access to formal education, hospitals or even proper running water. Formal government does not exist within the Site Soley, and the area is ruled by violent gangs that distribute weapons and guns. It is truly a terrifying existence and one that only has gotten worse since the devastating earthquake of 2010.

In Darkness follows the parallel stories of “Shorty,” a Haitian teenager who is trapped in a hospital following an earthquake, and Toussaint l’Ouverture, the leader of the rebellion that freed the slaves and forced the French out of Haiti. Shorty grew up in the Site Soley and has been exposed to violence at young age. Finding few options, he becomes wrapped up in gang life which is how he ends up in the hospital. Toussaint was born into slavery but educated himself and became a great leader.

Nick Lake has done an extraordinary job providing his readers with access into the lives of people who live in one of the most impoverished areas of the world. Lake also does a great job of highlighting Haiti’s difficult and often tragic history by providing the perspectives of both Shorty and Toussaint who, while existing centuries apart, face similar adversities—violence, corruption and devastation.  While it certainly is a difficult and emotional read, it is certainly worth reading.

Review by Maddie, CLP-Squirrel Hill

The Future Of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

When I was a teenager, long ago during the 1990s, the internet was a much different place than it is today. To connect to the World Wide Web you had to use dial up modems: small plastic boxes which made weird eeeeeeeebingdingbingdingchshhhhhh sounds when connecting, were incredibly slow and tied up the phone line. Instead of search engines like Google, to find a website you had to scroll through pages of directories: long lists of websites sorted by topic. And social media was non-existent: no YouTube, no Facebook, not even MySpace…just email. Online was truly a dark and lonely place.

“The Future of Us” is based in this bleak past, 1996 to be exact, where the internet was just beginning to take form. But Emma is about to get a glimpse into the future. When she receives an American Online free trial CD-ROM (these disks were everywhere) all she intends to do is create her first email account, instead she notices something called “Facebook” and opening it she discovers her own Facebook page…from 15 years in the future.

Immediately she has to share this discovery with her longtime neighbor and once-best friend (it’s complicated) Josh, and they proceed to look up their future selves. Only problem is, while Josh seems to have a great future, married to uber-popular and attractive Sydney Mills and living in a mansion, Emma does not seem very happy. She’s married to some guy named Jordan Jones whose apparently never home (Emma suspects he is cheating on her). To fix this Emma does the unthinkable: tries to make sure she never meets Jordan Jones thus altering her and everyone elses future forever.

I loved the concept of this book. Being able to see your future Facebook account is an appealing and frightening idea. I liked how Emma would jump to conclusions based on intentionally vague Facebook statuses, something I think often happens in our own everyday use of Facebook. Also, writing about time-travel can be very tricky, but I think that the authors did a great job here. Even the slightest change to the present significantly alters the future, such as how many kids Emma and Josh have, so every time they check their Facebook their lives are significantly different. This was a fun read that you should definitely check out!

Review by Simon, CLP-East Liberty

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

If you can picture a perfect world in the future where you only need to envision a place and you can go to it in the bat of an eye or actually through your “smarteye” which is wearable computer, you would see life the way Aria does in the book, Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi. She lives in a place called Reverie.

Aria has never known life any other way. Her food, shelter, education and health care have all been taken care of for her entire seventeen years. However, all of that is about to change. She has not been able to communicate with her mother, Lumina, for a long period of time. So, Aria enlists the help of other Reverie dwellers to leave the safety of their POD and try to get in contact with her mother who is a geneticist in one of the Realms called Bliss.

Soren was the driving force behind them leaving the Realms in the first place. It was his desire to break the rules of the Realms by disengaging their Smarteyes and going on an adventure for a few hours. Aria went along with it so she could sneak away to find her mom. Her best friend, Paisley and Soren’s lackeys, Bane and Echo accompanied them. As she and her friends disengage their contact from the world of Realms by shutting off their Smarteyes, an Aether storm was simultaneously building in the forest surrounding their Pod. The storm is no ordinary storm. It has the ability to not only destroy the landscape, but bring out the primal barbaric nature of human beings. Aria is attacked by her “friend” and fellow Reverie citizen, Soren. Soren’s father is in charge of security in Reverie. After they illegally ditched the POD it basically came down to Soren’s word against Aria’s. Bane, Echo and Paisley are all dead. Aria was exiled from her home, Reverie, and the other PODS or realms as well. For the first time in her life, she has nothing. She had a message from her mom stored on her Smarteye, but she had no way to retrieve it. She also had no food, no shelter, no protection as Soren ripped her Smarteye from her and she is abandoned in the forest.

Not everyone lives in the ideal world of the realms. Peregrine, or Perry as he is known, is an outsider. There are whole tribes of people whom the dwellers call savages who make their home on the outskirts of the Realms. They fight against the dwellers and against neighboring tribes. Perry’s beloved nephew, Talon, was captured by dwellers and taken to the Realms world.

Aria and Perry, the most unlikely couple in the world, are brought together through circumstances that neither one understand or have control over. Aria is not alone and neither is Perry but can they work out their differences and outright distrust and disgust of each other to help rescue the people they love most in the world? Read Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi.

Review by Andrea, CLP-Hill District

Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

I just read the first two volumes of Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and I am EXCITED! It’s been awhile since a book has caught me so fully and I’m ready to blaze through the whole series of 13 volumes! Here’s what we know so far:

Light Yagami is a smart, handsome, & clever academic king who is boooored.

Enter Shinigami death god Ryuk who is so bored (note: the first volume is fittingly called Boredom) with his job of killing people with his Death Note, that he’s ready to drop it in the human world to see what they might do with it. What’s a Death Note? It’s a book where any person whose name is written in it DIES according to the wish of the writer. Ryuk’s Death Note gets picked up by our hero (or anti-hero?) Light, who figures out the purpose of the book in no time flat. Who does he decide to kill? A mean teacher? A bully at school? A rival? Nope. He decides to kill criminals. Light wants to rid the world of evil by killing off everyone who is evil. Sounds great! No harm, no foul—sounds like a kind of superhero to me.

Enter L. “L” is the un-named, un-faced, world-famous detective renowned for being able to solve any crime and catch any criminal. But wait, who’s the criminal here? Isn’t Light the good guy catching criminals himself? Not in L’s opinion. L is ready to take down Light and his vigilante justice, and figure out what force is making Light the unstoppable judge, jury, and prosecutor he is without having to touch a single victim.

The cat and mouse mystery begins! Who is L? Where is Light? Who will catch whom, and what will be the price? This story gets so good so fast. I was totally captivated by the ever ingenious ways Light and L moved to outwit each other. This story has one-up after one-up and each time it just gets more suspenseful and tense. Who IS the greater brain between the two, and more importantly, who will win? I loved it.

Death Note is a slightly older series (2006), but if you haven’t read it yet (like me), it’s gonna be like opening a brand new caffeine-filled surprise of a book that will keep you on your toes, watching a battle of wits to the death between seriously smart characters. (Heads up: anime and video games involving these characters exist as well—look out for ‘em and enjoy!)

Review by Gigi, CLP-Brookline

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

The daughter of smoke and bone, Karou, lives in a world hidden within our own. While her world is full of magic, wishes, angels, demons and war, it’s plain secrecy and cautiousness that keeps her world a secret from us. Karou was raised as a human by Brimstone, a feared wishmonger, in his magic shop. The wishmonger’s shop is accessible from our world through a series of doors scattered throughout the world. When one of us opens the door, it may lead to an abandoned basement in Prague, an apartment in Paris, or a shop in Marrakesh. But when the door is opened from the inside, it leads straight to Brimstone in his magic shop.

Karou, whose hair grows out of her head blue, by the way, is an art student in Prague. Her job, if you can call it that, is collecting teeth for Brimstone. While Brimstone has never told Karou what he does with the teeth, he pays her in wishes – small wishes, and a lot of them. When Karou is travelling between cities and Brimstone’s shop collecting and delivering teeth she notices that some of the doors to the shop are being marked with a black handprint seared into the doors. This mark is the warning of the angels that the ongoing war is coming to Brimstone and the demon world. Karou is ready to protect her family when a complication arises – she falls in love with an angel.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a rich and lyrically written book that confuses what is “good” and “evil,” taking and remolding the best of Romeo and Juliet, fantasy, and beautiful prose. This book blew me away and I can’t wait to read the sequel!

Review by Annica, CLP-West End