Thousand Words by Jennifer Brown

Ashleigh is a teen who seems to have everything--a circle of good friends, a best friend, good grades,  a place on Chesterton High's cross country team, and a cool boyfriend name Kaleb.  The one problem is that Kaleb is now on his way to college, and Ashleigh is afraid he'll forget her; already he seems to spend more time with his baseball buddies than with her.  So Ashleigh,  drunk and encouraged by her friends, decides to take a naked selfie and send it to Kaleb so he will remember her.

Unfortunately, distance relationships can be challenging, and Ashleigh can't get over her sense that Kaleb is lying about his social life at college.  Her distrust started when she heard that he had either talked about or shared her picture with one or more of his friends, and she just can't shake her doubts and jealousy.  Eventually,  Kaleb has  enough of her accusations and breaks up with her. Ashleigh's friends, in a misguided show of support, spray shaving cream on his house and rub shoe polish on his car windows.  Kaleb's payback --no surprise--is to broadcast the photo.

Thousand Words  is Ashleigh's story of how she is targeted by supposed friends and strangers alike when the picture goes public.  She is bullied both in school and online and  is sentenced to community service as a consequence for texting child pornography.  Ashleigh's family is victimized as well; her father is the superintendent of schools and families challenge his ability to set a good example when his only child is caught sexting.  Through her retelling of events Ashleigh reveals the intense pain she feels from the shame and betrayals and where she finds the support that helps her survive.

The Bear by Claire Cameron

Cameron's book about two young children, five-year-old Anna and three-year-old Stick, orphaned by a bear attack while canoe camping on an island in Algonquin Park, Ontario, is absolutely impossible to put down. The story is based on an actual event--the death of two people in 1991 in the park, and the fictionalized version builds on what was known about the attack and on details of the wilderness environment provided by the author who was once a ranger in the same park.  In this account, Anna is awake in the family's tent, listening to her parents quiet talk by the campfire when her mother starts to shout.  Soon thereafter, her father reaches into the tent, grabs Anna and her brother and throws them into a large cooler that the family carries with them to store food.  Cameron describes the attack and its aftermath through the eyes of the five-year old, who can't figure out why the bear (or large black dog, as she first thinks), is trying to get into the cooler and why her parents don't answer her calls for help.

Eventually the bear leaves and the children manage to get the lid open and crawl out.  Anna's and Stick's dad is not there and the camp is a mess.  Anna doesn't see her father, but she does spot his shoe stuck on a piece of meat like the leg of lamb she once saw in the refrigerator at home.  Why, she asks herself, would Daddy put his shoe on a leg of lamb?  The children's mother is still alive, although motionless.  She whispers to her daughter to "be brave" and to put her brother in the canoe and leave the island, because it's not safe.  The rest of the novel details this bewildered child's efforts to do what her Momma wants--to paddle away and then wait for her parents to come get them.  Anna has to draw on every ounce of will and devotion to her parents and baby brother to combat hunger, thirst and fear of the black dog's return.   She is alternately hot, freezing, hungry, angry, scared and delirious.  I must confess to peeking at the later chapters so that I could keep reading about the children's suffering.  This is a great book, although not recommended for reading before or during Outdoor Ed!

Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum

This award winning book serves as an eye-opener on the care--or lack of care in most cases, of a group of teens with disabilities who are confined to a privately-run  but government-sponsored nursing home in Chicago.  The story is told through the voices of  three of the teens, two of the staff, a recruiter for the company that runs the home and wants beds to be filled, and a smart young woman, also disabled, who is hired as a data-entry clerk, a job which provides access to patient records and prompts her to ask questions.

A variety of relationships emerge from the teens' narrations.  Sad, vulnerable Mia is often stranded in her oversized and broken wheelchair.  Sometimes Teddy attaches her chair to his automated one so he can move her around.  Teddy adores Mia and watches over her until she mysteriously starts to shun him.  Yessie is also wheelchair-bound, but that doesn't stop her from taking on girls that steal from her or call her names. Orphaned and grieving but tough, fifteen-year-old Yessie finds a friend in Jimmie, one of the aides, who feels fortunate to escape from a life on the streets herself.   The other aide, Ricky, is a pretty cool Puerto Rican who cares about the kids and has a major crush on Joanne, the data-entry clerk.  Their romance and Joanne's increasing involvement in patient advocacy are high points of the book.

Ricky, Joanne and Jimmie are the "good kings."  There are, unfortunately, a number of "bad kings" who are abusive or criminally negligent as part of a system that values making money over delivering quality care.  The home, also know as the ILLC--Illinois Learning and Life-Skills Center, has a higher than expected number of hospitalizations for its clients.  There are disturbing undercurrents of  danger for the residents, who have few resources other than their own spirit and resilience and the dedication of the "good kings" to deflect the physical and psychological threats that confront them on a daily basis. The language is honest and raw and the situations are very believable. The tension comes from wondering if there will be any justice for the characters. The novel is gripping and at times tough to read, but its well worth the effort.

More Than This by Patrick Ness

The story opens with the vivid description of Seth Wearing's death by drowning.  We follow his sensations as Seth moves from the struggle to stay alive in the icy, merciless currents off the  coast of SW Washington,  to unconsciousness to awakening in a different world, weak, disoriented and clothed only in strange, foil-lined bandages.  In exploring the new world, which appears suspiciously post-nuclear, Seth is surprised to discover his old home in England, where his family lived prior to their move to the Pacific Northwest.  This discovery and the memories it elicits are enhanced by a series of nightmares in which Seth re-experiences scenes of his previous life--his  guilt about his little brother's kidnapping and his ostracism in high school based on the spread of an ill-advised selfie,  that pushed him to commit suicide.

Throughout the story, Seth wonders,  What is real?  His past life?  Where he now is?  Is this hell?  Is it a test?  As he looks for answers he discovers or, more accurately, is discovered by, two other teenagers who also experienced violent deaths.  Together they try to solve the mystery of where they are and why as they hide from the relentless pursuit of a merciless automaton they call the Driver.  Coming from lives marked by betrayals, they must learn to trust one another and work together to remain "alive" or real.

Written with far more questions than answers, the book nonetheless creates a believable and compelling character in Seth, as he recaptures memories of his sad and lonely childhood, and the burdens he was forced to carry by his grieving parents.  The other teens--Regine and Tomasz, provide interesting back-stories as well, posing questions and possible answers to the unusual and hostile world that confronts them.  With an unpleasant revelation around almost every corner , the story moves forward quickly, while keeping the mystery and philosophy about  their deaths relevant.  Recommended.

Jet Black and the Ninja Wind by Leza Lowitz and Shogo Oketani

On one level,  Jet Black is an adventure and action tale starring a 17-year-old precocious kunoichi, or female ninja, who sets out on a mission to her ancestral home in Japan's Oe Mountains to fulfill her dying mother's last wish.  Jet doesn't fully understand what she is supposed to do when she arrives in the village to meet her maternal grandfather, but she quickly learns that she is the target of a violent gang who will stop at nothing to kidnap her.  The early part of the book is a fast-paced account of Jet's, her grandfather's and cousin's fight to escape the gang, and contact her uncle Soji in Tokyo.  There are several stirring action sequences that display Jet's ninja fighting talents and those of her cousin, Hiro.  We learn that simple coins can be turned into deadly missiles and Ninja can move with the wind and blend with their surroundings to escape detection.

The book is more than just the adventure, however.  It is also a mystery couched in Japanese history, as Jet and her allies try to figure out what she knows about the Kuroi family's "treasure" that she, as the only surviving  Kuroi female, is duty-bound to protect and preserve.  Through her cousin, Jet learns about her tribe, the Emeshi, who  lived in the north in the Oe Mountains long before the emperor's forces invaded.  As Jet follows the path laid out for her by her elders and struggles to keep herself and Hiro safe, she  also learns more about herself and what powers she possesses.  While some may find the pacing of this part of the book trying, the glimpses into Japanese culture and myth are well-researched and informative.

Jet is a complex and compelling character.  While most of the supporting characters, Hiro, Soji and J-Bird (her mother's partner), serve mainly as vehicles to further the historical narrative, the  competing senses of danger and attraction that Jet feels towards Takumi, the ninja that hunts her,  create a welcome complication.  Overall, this is a satisfying read.  Recommended.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior contains many overarching themes: the challenges of poverty in the rural South, global warming and its many implications,  and the constraints and supports of social and faith-based networks in small communities.  The hope and despair that fight for predominance in all of these elements come together in the person of Dellarobia Turnbow.  Kingsolver has created a character who is genuine, one who struggles with the demands of being a young mother with two young children, who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a good man who has succumbed to the limited future his poverty and education have laid out for him and who spends his ample free time on the couch, channel surfing.  In the beginning of the novel Dellarobia is essentially a stereotype of women in the poor South--she married too young, is unskilled and undereducated, and is resigned to a life of dollar stores and dependency. Desperate for any sort of escape, Dellarobia is on her way to a tryst in the woods behind her home when she comes upon a miraculous site that stops her in her tracks. As Dellarobia and her community seek to understand the vision and its meaning, they must also deal with an influx of tourists, the media, opportunists, environmentalists, and a dedicated group of scientists.  Kingsolver has affection for and trust in Dellarobia and all of the characters.  The small-minded and bitter are balanced by those driven to find the truth and do the right thing, and all are capable of growth.  Flight Behavior is a wonderful book, containing a strong female lead, insights into the world of science and particular ecosystems, and a plea for the planet.

Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill

Durango has given his word that he will protect the miners of Outpost Fisher Four against the increasingly destructive raids of the Draeus--part-human carnivores who go wild at even the thought of blood and who demand the miners’ children (to eat) in return for “peace.”  Durango is a dalit, a disgraced regulator highly trained in warfare and duty.  Traditionally a regulator commits suicide when his commander or leader dies, but Durango’s father, former head of the planetary (Mars) government, ordered his son to live and to claim his rightful place as ruler of the planet. Durango and his small band have become mercenaries--this time on a mission to fight a ruthless opponent in defense of a subterranean culture that has its own sinister secrets. At his side is the feisty and seemingly unattainable Vienne--who wields her armalite with deadly accuracy and who is sworn to protect and serve her chief, which doesn’t mean she has to respect or even like him.  Durango also conducts constant and witty “thought-conversations” with Mimi, his symbiotic nano brain implant, who serves as a scout, advisor, and monitor of his armor's electronics.  

The book is best characterized by its nonstop action--usually quite violent and bloody, as the regulators blast away with armalites, explosives and chain guns against an enemy that travels on power sleds and is armed with plasma projectiles and grenades. To be caught by a Drae means to be eaten alive. Mystery about what treasure the miners are hiding, hints of romance, and Durango’s sense of humor combined with crisp dialog add to the entertainment value of this tale set in a dystopian future on a environmentally traumatized planet.