Rash

Rash by Pete Hautman was a very interesting read. It is set in the future, around 2070's and just about everything is illegal. From french fries to football to verbal abuse. Everything is monitored and if anyone has any outburst or tantrums it is recorded and that person could be sent to jail. But jail in this time isn't like it is today; it is a work camp that helps run the country. With it being so easy to go to jail in this time, a large percent of the country is in jail. So they set up work camps that make the goods and run the country, such as having teenage boys work at a pizza factory or minors work on the road clearing it up. I always find it interesting reading something about a messed up future. But for Bo Marsten he finds nothing about it messed up. That is of course until he gets in trouble and sent to a work camp. He learns how scared he's been his whole life is for no reason, he learns to truly have fun and what he's good at. This is a good book and I recommend it to anyone that likes future books such as these.

Shattering Glass

Shattering Glass is about teenage friends in their senior year who "have it all". Young is the narrator of this compelling story. He and his friends all followed their "leader", Rob, who decided to make the nerd of the school one of their cool new friends. Simon Glass is a geeky, computer loving, anti-social, nerd of the school. He is always being made fun of and getting picked on. Until one day, Rob decides he wants to transform the nerd into prince charming of the school. Rob is already the most liked guy in the school and he considers it a fun challenge for him and his friends to get people to like the unlikeable. Unfortunately, we find out from the beginning and from all the foreshadowing done at the start of each chapter, that Young and his friends killed Simon. But the story goes on and we find out what exactly would cause them to kill Simon Glass. I think the story does a nice job of the foreshadowing by parents, teachers, friends, and police; in the future telling us what happened to the boys after they committed that awful act. I thought this was a good book that was done creatively. I liked the idea of knowing what's going to happen before it does.

The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (author of The Messenger) is one of the best books I've ever read. I've read the book twice in the last two years and it is still one of my favorites. It is a book about a young German girl in Nazi Germany. Liesel Meminger is only nine years old when she is taken to her foster parents. On the ride to them, her younger brother, Werner, dies and leaves a hole in her heart from then on. At his funeral, Liesel takes a book left behind by the grave digger, and this starts a long list of book stealing. The book takes us through five years of Liesel's life on Himmel Street in Molching, Germany with her new foster parents. It is told in the eyes of Death. This is an excellent story about growing up and loving the people around you. I think it is astounding how Zusak uses Death as the narrator in this outstanding book. It's hard not to fall in love with the very realistic characters and to care so much about them. It is kind of a longer read but I promise you once you get started, it's next to impossible to put down.

Glass

Glass is the continuing story of Crank. The book Glass picks up when she has her son Hunter who's father raped her. Now having a baby to take care of, Kristina thinks she will have control over her meth addiction, but she's wrong. She figures out that she needs the monster to get through her everyday life and to do that she needs to give up her baby too. When she gets back into the monster she meets a guy named Trey and ends up falling in love with him. Together they figure out the struggle of being on there own and trying to find money for there addiction. They both find there selves in jail after getting busting with a half pound of meth and also another child in the picture. I thought this book wasn't as good as Crank and I really didn't like the ending, but over all it was a pretty good book and really shows you where drugs can leave you.

In the book A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer, Dave is treated very poorly; many unexpected things happen to him while he is living at his house. In his younger years before the abuse started, his mother Catherine and his father Stephan used to love him and treat him just as if they treated his other two brothers. Soon enough things changed in the household, Dave’s punishment starts out with standing in a corner for many house; quickly switching to vicious things. He had to wash dishes in a time limit which he never seemed to finish in time, the water was scalding hot. That was only the beginning of what has happened to him, his mom smashed his head onto mirrors making him repeat over and over “I am a bad boy”. He would go days without any food, he started stealing food from other classmates lunch boxes; the school realized it was him and called his mother. He always tried to stay a step ahead of her, but things didn’t work out as he had planned every attempt he made to get food; his mother made him throw up the food and knew he had eaten or not. She made him drink spoonfuls of ammonia which Dave thought at those moments that he was going to die, this treatment didn’t last long. She quickly changed it to him having to clean the bathroom with the door closed and a bucket of ammonia and Clorox. Many students picked on Dave for the way he had dressed, smelled, and acted; but he couldn’t help it. He was an easy target for the bullies; his mother decided that she wanted him held back in the first grade, which made him in the same grade as Stan. He never got presents at Christmas; Stan questioned why Dave only had gotten a few presents and that resulted in a lecture. Dave was now treated like the slave of the family, she thought of a new punishment for him quickly. She asked him to take off all his clothes while filling up the bathtub with all cold water, he didn’t quite understand it at first, but soon enough he hated it. His head had to be under the freezing cold water while, she would tell him to get out going outside and sit on a rock for hours. He tried to sit in the sunny part, but she requested in the shade so he did what she said. Dave quickly realized that he had to be stronger then her, but she got him to hate himself. His heart sunk deeper then ever when he finally knew his mother only recgonized him as an "it", not a real person anymore.

Impossible

Impossible is a book about a teenage girl, Lucy, that lives a pretty normal life. She does well in school, she is a good athlete, she is looking forward to her junior prom, oh and she has a crazy mother that gave her up to some friends and haunts her occasionally throughout her life. But she has a great life with her foster parents, they love her as their daughter and she's never thought of them as anything but parents. But on prom night something terrible happens, that leads to Lucy researching her family's history and finding out a terrible secret. She comes to realize that her family is cursed. And it is up to her to break that curse, just like every member of her family has tried before her and failed. Only she has something they never had, she has a family that loves and supports her, and maybe something new with her long time friend, Zach? This is a good book about love and trust and helping the ones that you love and reality or fantasy, whats real or not. It's a great read and I really enjoyed it.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel is a story that is obviously based off the children's story, Hansel and Gretel. Only that this book is placed in the setting of World War 2 in Poland. It begins in 1943 and is a very scary time for the characters in the book, because not only are Hansel and Gretel children but they are Jewish children running for their lives in this scary time. This book tries to explain the reasoning for the things that happen in the children's story and does a good job at it too. This is my favorite book of all time and I've read it a bunch of times, and still each time I learn of something different in the book. It's a great book about survival, war, friendships and family, learning who to trust and when it's most important. I also enjoy this story because it doesn't just follow Hansel and Gretel but also the "witch" they live with and their father and stepmother and we learn the reasons they abandoned their children. Louise Murphy has an interesting way of writing by always changing who's point of view it's in, sometimes by every other paragraph. I love the originality in this book, you really feel for each character you meet and it's an amazing story. I recomed this book to anyone who would like to know the true story.