The Talent Thief

Thayer, Mike. The Talent Thief. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9781250771025.

Tiffany and her father are neighbors of the local planetarium, and her father has been working there for years hoping to increase its popularity. They are not well off, but they have each other. The problem is that Tiffany is cursed, and anything that can go wrong will. At school, Tiffany has a habit of putting her foot in her mouth (not literally) by ruining any special moment, such as loudly farting on the cutest boy in her class on accident. As a result, Tiffany has learned to thrive in the shadows, hiding from the popular people so that they can't bully her and pick on her. And as a stage hand, being in the shadows suits Tiffany, even though she sometimes craves the limelight.

But the planetarium is in danger of closing. A lack of funding can only be solved through a large fundraiser, but if that fails, Tiffany and her father will find themselves without a home. A wealthy philanthropist is willing to donate a large sum, but only if the fundraising show's ticket sales are satisfactory. How can Tiffany help?

One night, two meteors collide over her backyard, and Tiffany finds herself with the amazing ability to steal someone's talent. Whether it be shuffling cards, dancing, or singing, Tiffany only has to touch someone's prized possession to acquire their talent for the rest of the day. She discovers this ability when she accidentally steal mean girl Candace's voice, the one she was planning to use for the musical audition, and uses it for her own. 

Soon she attracts the attention of Brady, one of the most popular boy in school, who appears to have an axe to grind. Together, they begin planning to "borrow" talents for the fundraising competition, so that they can defeat Candace, avenge Brady's humiliation, and, for once let Tiffany stand in the spotlight. But Tiffany will have to decide for herself if it's ever okay to steal someone else's talent to reach her goals.

A light and fast-moving middle school novel, The Talent Thief explores what happens when you suddenly find yourself able to keep up with the best, and the impact it can have on your life. The characters are realistic, even as the mean girl is only portrayed in one dimension. Readers who would enjoy knowing what it's like to possess someone else's talent will enjoy this story!

Hans Christian Andersen Lives Next Door

Fagan, Cary. Hans Christian Andersen Lives Next Door. 2023. 160p. ISBN 9781774880159.

Andie (with an e, thank you very much) very much feels like an outcast in her own skin. Her parents are weird, and ever since they moved to the countryside, they've been in search of a project to do. Now they're raising crickets to sell to pet stores (crickets make great lizard food). The school bully, Myrtle Klinghoffer, loves to pick on her but always does it in a way that makes Andie feel like she's not even there, since Myrtle never addresses herself directly to her. And the other kids don't really talk to her.

When a new neighbor moves next door, Andie swears she recognizes him. She has seen the man's picture on a book somewhere in her collection. Ah, yes, her uncle gave her a book of fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen, and the picture looks very much like her neighbor, aside from being black and white and the old-fashioned clothes. When the initials H.C.A. go on the mailbox next door, Andie is convinced that Andersen just moved in.

Andie begin writing her own poems based on the classic fairy tales her neighbor wrote, and she soon finds herself sharing them with him. HCA patiently listens to her, and find that the poems are actually quite good. When he tells Andie he works at the ministry of agriculture, Andie reasons that he must want to stay incognito.

New kid Newton moves to the school, and Andie finds him fascinating. And he's willing to sit with Andie and listen to her poetry. Soon the two of them become fast friends. At the same time, however, Myrtle continues her bullying, and Andie decides to take revenge. Plus, there's the big secret of Hans Christian Andersen living next door ...

Based on the flawed assumption that Hans Christian Andersen, who died in 1875, moved in next door, Andie compounds her beliefs until everything comes crashing down around her, and she is forced to admit that their neighbor is not Hans Christian Andersen. But along the way, she learns a lot about friendship, about herself, and about the fact that her little town is not as boring and dull as she thought it was.

The New Girl

Sutanto, Jessi Q. The New Girl. 2022. 350p. ISBN 9781728215198. Available as an ebook from Overdrive.

Born to a Chinese father and an Indonesian mother, Lia Setiawan has never felt like she fitted anywhere. Her extended family in Indonesia makes fun of her for her accent, and her Chinese is not that much better. Living in California with her mother, Lia is a star track athlete, and she receives a full scholarship to Draycott Academy, a private school attended by the children of West Coast elite. 

On her first day, Lia is immediately lost in this new environment. Everyone is rich and has money to blow, and Lia stands out like a sore thumb. She hasn't even moved in her dorm yet that she witnesses a girl being hauled away by security. Beth, her guide, tells her that this is Sophie, a former student who was expelled for doing drugs. 

Lia is fast on the track, fast enough to take away someone else's spot. That girl, Mandy, and her cronies begin to make Lia's life miserable online. An app called Draycott Dirt is used to post anonymous messages, and many of them harass and make fun of Lia. Luckily for her, however, she's made a few friends, including with Danny, the school's pretty boy, who also turns out to be part Chinese and part Indonesian. 

When Lia's scholarship becomes threatened by a corrupt teacher who is selling As for $20,000 a pop, Lia doesn't know what to do. Thinking of finding incriminating evidence that will let her rejoin the squad following her academic probation, she instead discovers a dead Sophie in that teacher's office. Then things get worse, much worse. but when things turn deadly, and as Lia sinks further into trouble, she realizes this is not a problem she can run away from....

Filled with snark and bad decisions, Lia is a fallible character and narrator. She keeps on making the wrong choices, making a bad situation even worse, but, much like a train wreck in slow motion, it is impossible not to read on to see whether she manages to extricate herself from the situations. Fans of murder mystery will appreciate this convoluted guilty pleasure.

Cardboard

TenNapel, Doug. Cardboard. 2012. 288p. ISBN 978-0-545-41873-7.

Cam lost his mother a few years ago, and ever since it's been him and his father. Mike is a carpenter by trade, but work is hard to come by, and Mike is barely able to keep him and his son fed. Today is Cam's birthday, and Mike can't even afford a present. Then he runs into a strange stand on the side of the road, and he decides to take a look. The salesman offers him the most unique item ever, a cardboard box. There are two rules. Mike must bring back any scrap, and he can't have more. Priced at 78 cents, the box costs the exact change that is in Mike's pocket.

Back at home, Cam is watching Marcus and his friend Pink Eye race their remote-controlled cars. Marcus' parents are wealthy and he has no trouble getting anything he wants. He mocks Cam when Mike comes back with a cardboard box. Cam and Mike ignore him, and soon they decide to build a cardboard boxer. During the night the cardboard becomes alive, and Bill joins their family. Marcus is jealous, and he and Pink Eye use water guns to try to hurt Bill. The cardboard melts, and Cam is crestfallen as Bill slowly drifts towards death. In desperation, Mike builds a cardboard maker with the remaining scraps, and soon he's producing new cardboard and he saves Bill's life.

Marcus is jealous of Cam and his cardboard friend, and he steals the cardboard maker. Soon, he's making himself an army of cardboard monsters, but quickly realize that they have a mind of their own. As their cardboard empire begins to grow, it will be up to Mike, Cam, and Bill to save the world!

Becoming Nicole

Ellis Nutt, Amy. Becoming Nicole. 2015. 297p. ISBN 9780812995435. 

Wyatt and Jonas were adopted twins who joined their parents' life in New York. Despite being identical twins, Wyatt and Jonas quickly diverged, with Jonas enjoying activities perceived as male and Wyatt gravitating towards activities perceived as female. Soon it was obvious to their mother that Wyatt was only happy when given the opportunity to dress like a girl and act like one. Over the years Wyatt struggled with social roles that mandated boy roles, and their parents found it difficult to help them deal with the pressures to conform.

Becoming Nicole chronicles Wyatt's transformation into Nicole over eighteen years, and discusses the struggles and challenges that Nicole and her family encountered along the way to make her body match her gender identity. From lawsuits to harassment, from growing up to becoming an adult, the path was filled with roadblocks but Nicole and her family persisted and overcame, become stronger as a family as a result.

Easy Prey

Lo, Catherine. Easy Prey. 2018. 352p. ISBN 9781419731907. Available at FIC LO on the library shelves.

Last year, a scandal rocked the high school. Jenna's topless pictures were posted on a social media. A junior at the time, Jenna bitterly complained to the school's principal and anyone else who would listen, but ultimately was told that it was her fault those pictures existed in the first place. She never got justice. The pictures came from her boyfriend Kyle's phone, but he says he didn't post it, so the two of them broke up.

Drew is Kyle's best friend, and one of the star basketball players at school. Unlike most of the other jocks, he also happens to be a good student, but won't need to rely on his smarts to get a full ride to university. An attractive guy and a smooth talker, Drew is suave and manipulative, and he often able to get nude pictures from girls at his school. Most of the boys on the team collect them and share them with the team in a twisted contest, but Drew is by far the champion. Until the Jenna incident, Drew had never been able to score naked pictures of her.

Mouse has been in love with Jenna forever. A computer nerd hoping to get into MIT on a scholarship so he can escape his overbearing father, he programmed a nifty database that allows the jocks at school to catalog all of the nude and topless pictures of girls they receive. In exchange, Mouse gets paid a decent amount of money, which will help him move out.

Now in the last semester of their senior year, all three of them are assigned to work on a project together in a law class where they will study the violation of privacy that happens when nude pictures are distributed. Jenna feels she's been punished. Mouse is thrilled to work with the girl he loves. Drew finds Jenna fair dating game, since she and Kyle are no longer together. 

While working on their project, they elaborate a plan to see if they can obtain nude pictures of their law teacher, to demonstrate how easy it is to get them. To their surprise, it doesn't take long before they get racy pictures. When those are also leaked, however, all three of them are hauled in the principal's office for conferences with the police. Who leaked the photos, and why?

Told from three different perspectives and moving back and forth in time, the story is confusing at first, but soon grows into a psychological thriller and mystery. Several hot topics are combined, including drug use, sexting, and exploitation. The characters are all realistic, and as the book careens towards the reveal, readers will be on the edge of their seats trying to figure out who's ultimately responsible.

Hello, Universe

 Kelly, Erin Entrada. Hello, Universe. 2017. 320p. 317mins. ISBN 9780062414151. Available as an audiobook from Overdrive.

Virgil Salinas lives a quiet life. Unlike his athletic brothers, Virgil is not in sports, and not very coordinated. In fact, Virgil has trouble doing his multiplication tables, so he spends some of his school time in the Resources room where he receives support. Valencia Somerset also comes to the Resources room, but issue is that she's deaf, and even the hearing aids don't help her much. Virgil wishes he was courageous enough to talk to Valencia, but being shy, he can't muster it. Instead, he tells his guinea pig Gulliver all about the girl of his dreams.

Chet Bullens is the school bully, and he enjoys picking on quiet Virgil. He'd pick on Valencia too, but deaf people give him the creeps. Chet would love nothing more than to make the basketball team, but he knows it's unlikely he will. Kaori Tanaka, for her part, knows she has psychic abilities. She can tell the future through star charts and astrological signs. Her friend Virgil often uses her services to divine more information about Valencia.

On the day Virgil makes an appointment with Kaori, everything changes. Chet encounters Virgil in the woods by chance, and he throws Virgil's backpack down an empty well. The backpack contains Gulliver, so Virgil goes into the well to save his guinea pig. Valencia, who was also on her way to Kaori's house to get a reading done, meets Chet, covers the well with its lid so animals don't fall in there, and heads to her appointment. Even though Virgil yelled and yelled, Valencia did not hear him. Kaori, meanwhile, is concerned that Virgil didn't show up for his appointment.

When Virgil is reported missing, the girls begin looking for him. What begins as a search mission turns into a rescue mission, a friendship, and newfound courage to stand up to bullies and parents. 

Four individual perspectives move the story forward as Virgil, Valencia, Chet, and Kaori all deal with challenges and doubts about their lives. As Kaori knows, however, the universe always helps those who help themselves, so in the course of an afternoon all of them will learn valuable life lessons.

Orbiting Jupiter

Schmidt, Gary D. Orbiting Jupiter. 2015. 183p. ISBN 978-0-544-46222-9. Available at FIC SCH on the library shelves.

Jack and his parents live on a farm in central Maine. For years before Jack was born, his mother and father were foster parents, providing a safe place for children who needed out of their family. When Jack came along, the family stopped fostering other children and focused on Jack. Now twelve, Jack is surprised when his parents reluctantly agree to host Joseph, a fourteen-years-old 8th grader who comes from a residential youth prison where he served some time.

Bullied at school, Joseph often retreats within himself. He is quiet and rarely talks. Reluctant to work on the farm at first, he soon finds that he enjoys milking Rosie. The farm provides structure to Joseph's life, and he begins to open up a little. Jack soon learns that Joseph has a newborn daughter named Jupiter. He's never met her, and is dying to do finally holds her in his arms.

As Jack discovers more facts about Joseph's tragic life, outside forces once again threaten to derail the improvements that Joseph has made over the last few months. Can Jack and his family manage to anchor Joseph and help him find peace and Jupiter?

A tragic story with a bittersweet ending, Orbiting Jupiter provides a unique look about teenage fatherhood and mistreatment. Fans of hard-hitting topics will devour this book.

The Disappearance

Chan, Gillian. The Disappearance. 2017. 197p. ISBN 978-1-55451-982-8. Available at FIC CHA on the library shelves.

Mike McCallum has been spending time in group homes ever since he assaulted his stepfather because that vile man had killed his brother in a fit of anger after he had bumped into him and spilled his glass. With no one to look out for him, Mike, or Mutt as his enemies call him, has learned to care for himself. Disfigured by the attack, Mike has a scary face that repels or fascinates strangers. Now in this new group home in Hamilton, Ontario, Mike makes the acquaintance of Jacob Mueller. Jacob is very quiet and never talks. He lays in bed and stares at the ceiling all night. No one quite knows what’s wrong with him, only that he was found in the woods with only one shoe and missing most of his clothes. Unwilling or unable to defend himself, Jacob is mercilessly harassed and picked on by the bullies in the group home and at school.

Not intimidated by Pat, the resident group home bully, Mike violates his oath to only protect himself. When he realizes that Jacob can talk to the dead and has had conversations with his brother, Mike is even more keen on protecting Jacob. Trying to solve the boy’s puzzle, Mike discovers that Jacob is indeed from the area, but from about 130 years ago. Now he has to find a way to send the boy back to his time, before the bullies send Jacob to the hospital, or worse. Will Mike sacrifice himself to protect this strange boy, something he wasn’t able to do with his brother.

Eyes & Spies: How You’re Tracked and Why You Should Know

Kyi, Tanya Lloyd. Eyes & Spies: How You’re Tracked and Why You Should Know. 2017. 135p. ISBN 978-1-55451-911-8. Available at 323.44 KYI on the library shelves.

Whenever you click on a like button, send out an email, walk down the street, or use a cellphone, someone is capturing this information and compiling and storing it somewhere. From governments monitoring communication channels and multiple video feeds to corporations following your online presence and accumulating information on your preferences so they can sell you more products, nothing in the digital world is truly anonymous. How much information is actually collected, however, remains a secret, but Eyes & Spies takes a critical look at several aspects of how information is collected, by whom, and how it is then used.

Six chapters each explore a specific topic, from surveillance cameras to surfing data collection, from online bullying to one’s privacy in their home. The information presented flows in an accessible language, and arguments defending both an increase in surveillance and an increase in privacy are presented after each issue. The reader is asked to reflect on what they read through prompts following specific real-life cases. Finally, controversial cases that have been in the news the last decade are explored.

Ultimately, defending one’s right to keep information private comes down to deciding how much freedom can be traded for security, and being aware of what governments, organizations, and individuals are doing.

Bad Shot

Taekema, Sylvia. Bad Shot. Part of the Sports Stories series. 2017. 126p. ISBN 978-1-4594-1161-6. Available at FIC TAE on the library shelves.

Cody Wallace is the top basketball player at his middle school. He loves shooting hoops and spends as much time as he can practicing. But when Nick Spinelli moves to the area and begins to come to Cody’s school, everything changes. Nick is as good, if not better, than Cody. He’s got real basketball shoes. His family has season’s tickets to the Toronto Raptors. He plays with a ball autographed by LeBron James. And Nick is personable. He quickly assumes the top dog position with Cody’s friends. Cody feels left behind, with his worn shoes and old basketball.

When team tryouts begin, Cody is excited. Nick shows up as well, however, and soon the two of them are in a contest of wills. Nick is always saying the right thing to Cody, but it always comes out in condescending tones. Nick is trying to undermine Cody, and he successfully gets under Cody’s skin when, during a game, Cody scores in the wrong basket. As Nick’s bullying becomes more aggressive, Cody finds himself liking the game less and less. Can he confront someone whom, to all eyes, is always doing the right thing, and regain his love for the game of basketball?

Fans of basketball will enjoy the vivid descriptions of games and practice. For a similar read about a middle school kid and his love of basketball, take a look at Travel Team.

Road Whiz

Pattison, Darcy. Road Whiz. 2018. 178p. ISBN 978-1-6294-4097-2. Available at FIC PAT on the library shelves.

At fourteen, Jamie is already the tallest person in his school, and he keeps on growing. Being tall makes him a target of bullies at his middle school, especially Chan, who excels at everything. His father wants Jamie and his newfound height to play on the high school’s football team, but Jamie is not interested. His father travels a lot for work, and he will be gone off and on for the next nine months in Poland, working on an energy project. This causes tension at home between Jamie’s parents, which does not help Jamie’s mood.

During a presentation at school, Jamie is introduced to a female greyhound named Road Whiz, who is a retired racing dog. Jamie is smitten, and his mother agrees to adopt Road Whiz on the condition that Jamie takes her out on a run at least once a day. Jamie discovers that he enjoys running. He begins training to run a 5K with his mother, but then he discovers that Chan is also running in this race, and he currently holds the title for best runner for his age group in the city, two years running. Tired of being put down by Chan, Jamie decides he will show him by winning the title this year. But being fast is not enough without technique.Road Whiz and him share a similar interest for running, but Jamie wonders, does he run because he likes running, or does he run to defeat Chan? Exploring the reasons for why he runs will allow Jamie to discover truths about himself and about Road Whiz.

Fans of sports literature will appreciate Jamie’s struggles and efforts in determining who he is and what he stands for.

Thornhill

Smy, Pam. Thornhill. 2017. 533p. ISBN 978-1-62672-654-3. Available at FIC SMY on the library shelves.

It is 2016, and Ella and her father just moved to Midchester, in a house abutting the extensive grounds of an abandoned orphanage named Thornhill. Her father works a lot, and Ella often finds herself at home alone. She doesn’t know anyone in town, so she spends a lot of time looking out her window at the ruins that is Thornhill. When she spots a light in the top floor, Ella is curious. Who lives there?

In 1982, Mary is an orphan who lives in Thornhill. Suffering from selective mutism, Mary has no friends and spends most of her time in her top floor bedroom, creating masterful puppets out of fabric and clay. These are her true friends. Unfortunately for Mary, a bully she thought had been adopted for good has been returned to the orphanage for poor behavior. This unnamed bully has been harassing Mary and turning all of the other girls against her. When she was here Mary could not sleep at night and had to watch her every step. Now that she’s returning, Mary confides in her diary that she will never have a moment’s peace.

As Ella investigate the property next door, she finds old broken dolls. She begins fixing them, and eventually she meets Mary. Then Ella discovers that Mary died at Thornhill back in 1982. Mary, meanwhile, tries to deal with her bully but the conditions at the orphanage grow worse as kids are adopted out and the facility readies for closing. When Mary discovers that she and her bully will become roommates in a new institution, it is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She needs to take matters into her own hands. Will present-day Ella assuages past Mary’s ghost and become her friend?

Mary’s perspective is told through a diary, while Ella’s view is presented through images only. The two stories combine in a beautifully written sad tale of bullying and its consequences.

Felix Yz

Bunker, Lisa. Felix Yz. 2017. 282p. ISBN 978-0-425-28850-4. Available at FIC BUN on the library shelves.

Felix Yz (pronounced Is) was spending quality time with his father in his cutting edge laboratory when something went horribly wrong. During an experiment, a rift to the fourth dimension was opened, and an entity fused itself with Felix, provoking intense physical pain and modifying his genetic make up. His father was killed, and Felix was never the same again.

Now thirteen-year-old, Felix does not remember a time before the presence of Zyx, as the family has called the creature. Extremely intelligent and friendly, Zyx can easily communicate with Felix in his mind, but he can only express himself to the outside world through seizures or by using a keyboard to type messages. Zyx’s existence is known to only a few people, and must remain a secret to prevent government agencies from hearing about this new being.

The laboratory where the experiment took place has been rebuilt, and scientists have been working hard on finding a way to separate both entities. Knowing full well that there is a risk he could die during the separation, Felix is nevertheless willing to go through it. He will miss Zyx, but he’s ready to live the rest of his life without another presence in his mind.

So the countdown begins to the Procedure. With only thirty days left, Felix has to prepare for the worst as he hopes for the best. Family truths will be revealed, his interest in another boy explored, he will play chess against a Grandmaster, and he will experience a hint of the fourth dimension where Zyx lives. When it comes right down to it, what are the most important things in Felix’s life?

Written as a blog where Felix document the last thirty days of his life before the Procedure, his feelings and emotions are raw and uncensored. Fans of introspection will appreciate Felix’ outlook on life and his desire to live to the fullest despite his accident.

Nathan

Ouriou, Susan. Nathan. 2017. 151p. ISBN 978-0-88995-547-9. Available at FIC OUR on the library shelves.

Nathan’s life is changing. Grampa lost his wife last year to a heart attack, and his Alzheimer’s has progressed enough that he can’t live on his own anymore. Adam, the local bully, keeps on trying to hurt Nathan, and even steals his basketball. And, at ten, Nathan is once again heading back to school in the fall without a friend.

Despite his Alzheimer’s, Grampa brings to Nathan a connection to a heritage he didn’t know he had: Grampa’s mother was a member of the First Nations, but as an orphan she was placed in the Canadian residential school system where her culture and language were systematically eliminated. Kids’ heads were shaved, they couldn’t speak their language, and they were transported hundreds of miles away from home so they could never see their families. Nathan didn’t know any of this, and is happy to begin discovering where he came from.

Nathan also makes a new friend, who has just moved in the neighborhood. Max and Nathan have many things in common, one of which is being bullied by Adam who immediately begins chasing Max the first time he sees him. Max is also Jewish, and his people experienced the Holocaust. In a sense, both Nathan and Max’s ancestors suffered at the hands of people bent on exterminating them.

With Adam lurking and with Grampa getting worse, can Nathan learn enough about himself to develop the courage to stand up and be his own person?

Falling into Place

Zhang, Amy. Falling into Place. 2014. 304p. ISBN 978-0-06-229504-0. Available at FIC ZHA on the library shelves.

Liz Emerson has it all. She’s part of the popular crowd at Meridian High, and with her friends Julia and Kendra they rule the cafeteria and the social life of the school. But Liz is unhappy. So much so that she believes the world will be a better place without her. She plans her own suicide and makes it look like an accident when she hurls her car over a bridge during an icy winter day, on the same day her father died falling from the roof ten years ago.

But Liz never really understood the Newtonian laws of physics, and as she lay shattered and broken among the wreck of her Mercedes, she can only contemplate that the sky has never been this blue. And all of this happens right at the beginning of the book. As she lays dying in her hospital bed, unconscious and unaware, her friends wish for her survival, and hope that Liz is fighting as hard as she can. But they don’t know that Liz gave up on herself a long time ago. As the narrator eloquently points out, some people die because the world didn’t deserve them. Liz, however, feels like she does not deserve the world.

Liz is mean. She destroys lives because she can. She doesn’t like who she became, and she’s not sure where she went wrong. But she did, and now she can’t get out of the persona she built herself. Through snapshots and moments told in relation to the wreck, the reader sees previous events and Liz’s evolution from nice girl to monster is outlined, from her own perspective as well as that of her friends and enemies.

This book offers a different perspective on suicide. Generally we see how bullying pushes the victim towards attempting suicide, as in Thirteen Reasons Why. Sometimes we read about the impact of what happens to a relative or a friend of the attempter, like Black Box or Zoe Letting Go. But rarely do we see the road that leads a bullier towards suicide. The hard themes of this book will drop a tear or two and make the reader ponder what Liz never understood: That for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Just because Liz was never called out for what she did does not mean that she did not ultimately suffer from it.

Fans of e. lockhart’s We Were Liars and Gayle Forman's If I Stay will enjoy this book, as any lovers of tragedies.