Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging

Lemov, Doug, Hilary Lewis, Darryl Williams and Denarius Frazier. Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781119739975. 

The smartphone is undermining the mental health and education of our children. It is becoming a plague, causing anxiety, depression, anguish, and thus affecting the learning that children perform in schools. Many schools are now in the process of banning cellphones, from limiting their use to specific times of day to outright bans on campus. In Reconnect, several distinguished educators argue that schools must improve the sense of belonging that students experience when they are present to improve their lives and the learning that occurs.

Drawing on extensive experiences and studies that examined high-performing schools, the authors suggest multiple pathways that can be used to build a learning environment where students feel loved and protected, where they are free to be themselves and socialize with their peers in a risk-free environment. A practical guide for how schools can change how they operate to facilitate the reconnection of their students to the society they live in, Reconnect provides a guide to improving the environment and helping students become more confident and better learners. 

Maximum Ride, the Manga, Vol. 2

Patterson, James and NaRae Lee. Maximum Ride, the Manga, Vol. 2. 2009. 262p. ISBN 9780759529687. Available in the graphic novels section of the library.

Shocked to discover in Maximum Ride, the Manga, Vol. 1 that their father-like figure Jeb is not only still alive but is in fact still working for the School, Max finds herself a captive along with Angel, and witnesses that many others have been experimented on at the School with various animal DNA genetic manipulations. When Jeb tells her that her entire existence is designed to save the world, Max is not only dubious, she really doesn't care. 

Brought outside by Ari, chief of the Erasers, a childhood companion and Jeb's own son, Max and Angel escape with help provided by their friends Nudge, Fang, Iggy and Gassy. Armed with new information on the location of a secret facility in New York City that possesses their demographics, including the family they came from, and spurred on by Nudge, who really wants to meet her birth family, the flock heads east. In New York, Max starts receiving messages in her head that cripple her. A voice is providing her with details and locations, but there's no way she can trust everything it says. 

Several encounters with Erasers lead to the presumed death of Ari, but Max and the flock successfully exfiltrate information about their birth. Noting that all of their families were from northern Virginia, Max decides they should next head to Washington D.C....

The story continues in Maximum Ride, the Manga, Vol 3.

Alive

Sigler, Scott. Alive. Book 1 of the Generations Trilogy. 2015. 345p. ISBN 9780553393101.

M. wakes up in a coffin. Terrorized, the twelve-year-old manages to break out of the confine of her wooden box, only to discover that there are 11 other wooden boxes in the room. Muffled sounds from another box indicates that someone else is trapped, so M. grabs a bar laying nearby and breaks the cover. Inside is another girl, about 15 or sixteen, who is relieved to be free, but who claims to also be 12, and that today is her birthday. Looking at herself, M. realizes she also has the body of a teenager. She doesn't remember much about her life, only having snippets of information. She can't even remember her own name, nor can she recall the faces of her parents.

In the room, they discover four more kids who are alive, and six who died in the coffins. All of the survivors are confused and scared, but M. takes control, and soon the group is roaming the hallway, looking for an exit. The hallway is straight and is inclined upward, indicating they must be buried deep within some sort of structure. When they come across another larger group of kids, M. contests their leader's command, and Bishop, who led the group, reluctantly yields to her. At heart, all of them are still 12, with predictable childish reactions.

As they search for food and water, the combined group encounters a feral pig, and soon come across a room filled with farmland, vegetables, fruits, and pigs. But just as they hunt the pig, the pigs are hunting them, and some of their comrades fall victims to the pigs' voracious appetite.

When one of M.'s new friend is kidnapped by strange monsters in the farmland, they escape back to the hallway, only to return to their point of origin. Suddenly it dawns on them that they are prisoners on a gigantic starship. And the monsters that hunt them are themselves, only adult and deformed by radiation and years spent in isolation in space. Will M and her group discover a way to escape this hell?

The 80's and 90's: Power Dressing to Sportswear

Lomas, Clare. The 80's and 90's: Power Dressing to Sportswear. 1999. 32p. ISBN 9780836826036. Available at 391 LOM on the library shelves.

Following the swinging 1970s, fashion adapted to new materials and designs. The 1980s saw the rise of the supermodel, young and beautiful men and women who showcased the best clothes produced by famous designers. The showing of wealth became ostentatious, with rich people flaunting their prosperity. The world also saw technology enter the fashion world. Items like the cellphone and the pager became fashion accessories. The roles of men also evolved, with more involvement in the family, caring, and sharing.

In the 1990s, fashion moved from the colorful and shiny to the more drab and shabby. Grunge, which evolved out of Seattle, impacted fashion with dark colors, combat boots, and flannel shirts. Simultaneously, girl power with groups like the Spice Girls hit the scene, showcasing female talent and powerful women in a man's world. 

Fashion both followed social evolution and influenced society and as the century came to a close, the best aspects of previous decades became enmeshed in the flavor of clothes circulating.

Bleach, Vol. 2

Kubo, Tite. Bleach, vol. 2. 2004. ISBN 9781591164425. Available in the graphic novels section of the library.

Chad is a student at Ichigo's school, and he is strong as an ox. When he found a talking parakeet in Bleach, Vol. 1, he agreed to protect it against the monster that was chasing him. The strange marks that had just appeared on his body indicated to Ichigo and Rukia the Soul Reaper that Chad might be affected by a Hollow. They encouraged Chad to check in at the clinic run by Ichigo's father.

Unfortunately, when Ichigo finally arrives, Chad has already left the clinic through a window. Ichigo and Rukia begin chasing for him through the streets, hoping to find him before the Hollow does. Up to now, Rukia has had to knock Ichigo unconscious to release his soul so he could hunt Hollows. To assist the process, she purchases a pill he can take to immediately release his soul while a spare soul will inhabit his body and act like him while he's performing his Soul Reaper duties. The soul Rukia purchased was defective, however, and it decides it really likes Ichigo's body.

As Ichigo and Rukia seek Chad, the parakeet, and the Hollow that hunts them both, Ichigo's body has a new personality that seeks to impress the girls at school ...

The story continues in Bleach, Vol. 3.

Give Me A Sign

Sortino, Anna. Give Me A Sign. 2023. 303p. ISBN 9780593533796.

Lilah has hearing loss. She is not profoundly deaf, but she has a hard time following multiple conversations at the same time, or when music is playing, or even sitting in the back seat of a car. But because she can still hear some, she feels like standing on both side of a large divide. She's not deaf enough to fully master American Sign Language or to understand the intricacies of the deaf community. She's too deaf for a society organized for the hearing. 

The spring of her junior high school year, Lilah is observing her friends all making plans for the summer. Due to her poor grades, her mother has enrolled her in a tutoring program, so Lilah is facing eight weeks of struggling with courses that don't really interest her. On a whim, she applies to work as a counselor-in-training and the summer camp for the deaf and the blind she attended when she was a child. To her surprise, she is hired and soon finds herself in the woods with campers. Not fluent in American Sign Language, Lilah has difficulty communicating with the profoundly deaf, including Isaac, the super attractive Deaf counselor.

Though Lilah was not looking for romance over the summer, she finds herself intensely attracted to Isaac. But with many campers to supervise, a non-deaf Youtuber who enjoys a level of notoriety with her sign-language videos, and other counselors who have a serious history, Lilah is soon overwhelmed with the complexities that are present in the Deaf community. Will Lilah finally be able to find her voice?

The diversity of the deaf culture is explored in Give Me a Sign, and all of the characters are realistically written and convey accurate emotions and relationships. Fans of light romance and interpersonal relationships will enjoy exploring a different culture.

Metals and Non-metals

Walker, Denise. Metals and Non-metals. 2005. 48p. ISBN 9781583408223. Available at 546 WAL on the library shelves.

Metals are prevalent in our physical environment and they are an essential part of our society. Used for everything from building to vitamins, metals constitute the largest block of chemical elements on Earth. As chemicals, metals share certain characteristics, but also differ widely in their atomic structure, their ability to conduct electricity, and their capacity to transform into alloys when other chemical elements are added. Some metals have better characteristics when combined with other elements, including steel and titanium, while others are appreciated more for their purity, such as gold and silver.

Metals and Non-metals present information on these fundamental blocks of matter, using effective graphics and diagrams. It also presents ideas for experiments and ways to apply this information in the reader's every day environment.