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This page was created in conjunction with our October 1, 2001 newsletter in preparation for Teen Read Week October 14-20, 2001. Teen Read Week will be celebrated in schools and public libraries across the country. Featured Author, Sonya Sones.
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For more NO FLUFF YOUNG ADULT
The Gospel According to LarryTHE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LARRY
By Janet Tashjian
Young Adult
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Mix one hyperactive seventeen-year-old searching for the meaning of life with one culture-bashing web site, a media frenzy, a change-the-world rock concert, and enough celebrity worship to canonize Princess Di. Bake at 350 degrees for teen’s senior year. Garnish with one frightening, inevitable choice. Serves millions.
Daniel's Walk by Michael SpoonerDANIEL'S WALK
By Michael Spooner
Young Adult
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“Your daddy’s in trouble, boy,” said the Voice.

Daniel’s father is an experienced trapper who knows the Rocky Mountains. So what could have happened to him? Yet Daniel is haunted by the Voice and its message. He decides to leave his home in Missouri to search for his pa.

But it is 1844 and the West is a wilderness. Trouble lurks all along the Oregon Trail, and trouble finds Daniel right away. One stormy night he sees a scar-faced man stealing horses and the thief sees him. Daniel barely escapes being shot. He joins a wagon train headed west, but for him there is no safety in numbers. As surely as he knows that his father is in danger, he knows that the scar-faced man will try again to kill him.

Slowly Daniel comes to understand that he and his father are not the only ones in danger. There are some who will prosper from the westward expansion, but many more—white and Indian alike—will suffer as their land and their lives are destroyed.

--Henry Holt and Company, LLC

The Other Side of Truth by Beverley NaidooTHE OTHER SIDE OF TRUTH
By Beverley Naidoo
Young Adult
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Twelve-year-old Sade’s journalist father is a vocal critic of the corrupt military government in Nigeria. When Sade’s mother is murdered, her family sees in bloody detail the violent risks that come with exposing the truth.

Her father arranges for Sade and her younger brother to be smuggled to their uncle in London for safety. On the streets of London, the plans fall apart and they are abandoned, passed from foster home to foster home. They try to contact their uncle but he is missing. Then they learn that their father has escaped to London to find them but he will be sent back to Nigeria, unless Sade can find a way to tell the world what happened to her family.

--HarperCollins Publishers

Tender by Valerie HobbsTENDER
By Valerie Hobbs
Young Adult
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When Liv was born, her father handed her over to her grandmother "like a bundle of laundry. " Now her beloved Gran has died and Mark Trager is the only family Liv has. All she knows is that he lives in California and dives for something called "abalone." She has to leave New York to live with him, but that doesn't mean she has to forgive him. How can you forgive a father who never wrote—not once in fifteen years-never sent a birthday card? He doesn't even pick her up at the airport, sending his girlfriend, Samantha, in his place. Sam is an unexpected gift, someone Liv can really talk to, but even she can't bring father and daughter together. There's Brian Spinuchi, too. He's her father's tender, responsible for his lifeline as he dives, but he's not the type she could ever fall for. Or is he? When Spinuchi breaks his arm, Liv, a city girl, must become her father's tender. Once the two head out to sea, they find themselves confronting a reality that will change their relationship forever.

Valerie Hobbs's novel about overcoming the fears that isolate us and breaking out of the shells that keep us trapped is a hopeful-and tender-look at growing up and becoming family.

--Frances Foster Books
Farrar Straus and Giroux

Of Sound Mind by Jean FerrisOF SOUND MIND
By Jean Ferris
Young Adult
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High school senior Theo is fluent in two languages: spoken English and American Sign Language. His parents and younger brother, Jeremy, are deaf, but Theo can hear, which has, over the years, cast him in an automatic role as interpreter for his family. It's also become a dreaded duty, especially in the case of his mother, Palma. She is a successful sculptor who, being deeply suspicious of "hearies,” expects Theo to act as her business manager. And Jeremy relies on Theo for company and homework help. Only Theo's father, Thomas, has never taken advantage of his ears.

But everything changes when Thomas becomes ill. Palma, frightened and self-absorbed, cannot bring herself to nurse her husband, leaving Theo with the full burden to bear. Managing the family and caring for his ailing father is difficult enough, but Theo's frustration is compounded by not having enough time to spend with lvy, a fascinating new girl at school with a booming catering business, a wealth of food history facts, and, coincidentally, a deaf father. Though she and Theo have this important element in common, the way they feel about their unusual family situations doesn’t always coincide. It is through his rocky romance with Ivy that Theo is finally able to negotiate his family relationships and begin to page the road to his future.

--Farrar Straus Giroux

What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones

Read ... interview with Sonya Sones