Desires of the Dead (Body Finder Series #2) by Kimberly Derting
Violet Ambross has a special talent: when somebody or something has died Violet can sense it. Until they are buried properly, vibrations, echoes, colors and more call to Violet. Chelsea, her best friend, and Jay, her boyfriend, are both supportive in different ways. Jay knows about her talent and helps her whenever he can. Chelsea doesn’t know, but knows when to be there for her. Mike and Megan are brother and sister and are new to Violet’s school. Mike is instantly best friends with Jay and dating Chelsea. He invites Jay, Chelsea, Violet and Claire (another friend) up to his cabin. Megan has a crush on Jay, though, and secretly hates Violet. She leaves hurtful notes and phone calls to try and scare her into breaking up with Jay. Nothing works, but Violet knows it’s Megan. When everyone is at the cabin, Violet gets a very strong echo/vibration. It pulls her out of the cabin and she starts digging to try and find a body underground. Someone comes up behind her with a gun. Who will save her? Review by Caitlin
When Genevieve Walsh finds out that her mom signed her family up for a camp out in the Wyoming wilderness, she doesn’t know what to expect. Especially when she discovers that this isn’t going to be an ordinary summer vacation. First of all, there’s no TV or internet and she’s not allowed to bring her new phone. The night before they leave, though, Genevieve can’t resist the urge to bring her phone with her so she can text her friends all about life on the 1890 style camp frontier. When the Walsh family arrives at the camp, most of the people are actually pretending its 1890 and to survive, they must act like it too. This means that they have to wear old-fashioned clothes, live in a one room cabin, and unlike a regular vacation where they would get to relax and take a break, this is quite the opposite. They actually have to do more work than they do at home. They have to grow their own crops although they have no experience, make their own recipes and cook their own food with barely any ingredients, and milk a cow. All through the summer, Genevieve texts her friends about how hard it is to live at a camp frontier. They find her information so interesting that they turn it into a very popular blog with 500,000 readers! When the owners of the camp find out that she’s brought a phone when the rule is no technology, how will she be able to convince them that it was for a good reason? Read “Little Blog on the Prairie” to find out what happens next. Review by Nataniah
101 Ways to Bug Your Parents by Lee Wardlaw
This book is very addictive because the plot is always changing. First it’s about a 5th grade boy inventor names Steve “Sneeze” Wyatt, who has big ideas for his creations. He brings a lot of his inventions to school with him to test them out. Most of his inventions, however, are failures. That doesn’t stop him from creating new ones. His glow-in-the-dark toilet seat ended up giving his teacher a glow-in-the-dark backside for a little bit. No matter what, though, his best and only friend “Hiccup” Denardo never leaves his side. When Sneeze is all excited about going to the Invention Convention his parents tell him that they can’t afford to go. He has to go because he received a letter that says a major professional inventor would like to release the “Nice Alarm,” one of Sneeze’s inventions. His parents send him to a summer writing class instead. Sneeze is so annoyed with them he starts to bug them. So he makes a book that has 101 ways to bug your parents in his writing class. He plans to sell the book to many people to raise enough money to go to the convention with an adult friend of his. Will all go according to plan? Or will everything go haywire? I would recommend this book to anyone ages 10-13.
Review by Brian
