ELLINWOOD — There are new young adult books at the Ellinwood School/Community Library.
“The Amaranth Enchantment” by Julie Berry. Lucinda Chapdelaine was orphaned as a young child, and now toiled away in her uncle’s lonely jewelry shop under the cruel hand of her step-aunt. But now a mysterious woman, a handsome young gentleman, and an unusual gem all enter the shop on the same day. Are her fortunes about to change?
“Dead End in Norvelt” by Jack Gantos. Jack Gantos has great plans for life, but now he is grounded for life by his feuding parents. In fact, his mother has now forced him to help a feisty old neighbor with an unusual chore, type obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his utopian town. Now he discovers all kinds of adventure, including a possible murder.
“Half Brother” by Kenneth Oppel. For thirteen years, Ben Tomlin was an only child. But all that changes when his mother brings home an eight-day-old chimpanzee. Ben’s father, a renowned behavioral scientist, is trying to determine whether champs can acquire advanced language skills. Ben finds himself taking second place in his father’s world, and finds that you can’t always do right by the people and the animals you love.
“Beneath a Meth Moon” by Jacqueline Woodson. A young woman wishes she could undo some of her choices, especially the one where she tried moon, or meth, for the first time. But now all she can do is move forward, and try to face the pain and joy that is the truer part of living or follow the moon to numbness and probably death.
“How To Save A Life” by Sara Zarr. Young Jill MacSweeney wishes everything could go back to normal, back to the way things were before her father died. And nothing in her self-enforced isolation prepares her for her mother’s decision to adopt a baby. Is her mother somehow trying to replace a lost family with a new one?
“Inside Out and Back Again” by Thanhha Lai. This book is the National Book Award Winner, and an Honor Book for the Newbery Award. For all of her life Ha has only known Saigon as home. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home, and she and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls. In America, Ha discovers the foreign world of Alabama, and the strange new culture challenges everything Ha understands.
“Everybody Sees the Ants” by A.S. King. Lucky didn’t ask for all the problems in his young life, especially being the target of Nader McMillan’s relentless bullying. But Lucky has a secret, one that helps him wade through the tortures of his life, a secret that comes alive in his dreams. And he dreams that he is a hero that saves his grandfather in the jungles of Laos.
Sharon Sturgis is the librarian at the Ellinwood School/Community Library.