Librarian's+Pick

=**Summer Reading 2015**=


 * Here are some titles on my Summer Reading pile...**

Medina, Meg. **// Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass .// ** (Candlewick, 2013).
 * Gr 9 Up- **Piddy Sanchez has only been at her new school in Queens, New York, for five weeks when she hears through the grapevine that “Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass.” Piddy, who has never met Yaqui, tries at first to figure out on her own how to deal with the girl’s violent bullying campaign. Readers will be rooting for the immensely likable Piddy as she gets her brave on and seeks the support she needs to stop the harassment in this all-too-realistic novel.

Smith, Andrew. **Grasshopper Jungle.** (Dutton, 2014).Gr 9 Up-Austin is attracted to both his girlfriend, Shann, and his best friend Robby, but this potential love triangle is the least of his woes; the end of the world has come to the small town of Ealing, Iowa, and it involves a plague of giant, flesh-eating praying mantises that either eat or mate with anyone or anything that crosses their path. For now, Austin’s lust has to take a back seat…to survival! A hilarious romp.

The illustrated story begins in 1766 with Billy Marvel, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, and charts the adventures of his family of actors over five generations. The prose story opens in 1990 and follows Joseph, who has run away from school to an estranged uncle's puzzling house in London, where he, along with the reader, must piece together many mysteries.
 * The Marvels by Brian Selznick /**


 * The Death of the Hat: A Brief History of Poetry in 50 Objects selected by Paul B. Janeczko; illus. by Chris Raschka (Candlewick)** / Janeczko and Raschka’s fourth collaboration (beginning with A Poke in the I) offers readers fifty poems about objects; the selections range from the early Middle Ages to the postmodern and contemporary movements. Soft watercolors showcase each poem and visually encourage continuous reading. 80 pages.

High school senior Matt hopes his funeral-home job will help him cope with his own grief about his dead mother and fallen-off-the-wagon father. While all this sounds like heavy problem novel territory, it isn’t. Reynolds writes about urban African American kids in a way, warm and empathetic, that the late Walter Dean Myers would have applauded. 257 pages.
 * The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum)**


 * BEASLEY, Cassie. Circus Mirandus.** 304p. Dial. Jun. 2015. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9780525428435; ebk. $10.99

**OLDER, Daniel José. Shadowshaper. 304p. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Bks. Jun. 2015. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9780545591614; ebk. $17.99. ISBN 9780545591621.**
= = =**Graphic Novels**=
 * Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell. S. & S. /**Gr 4-7–Will, 12, is a quintessential wild child, having grown up on a farm in Zimbabwe run by her British father. When he dies, she is sent to a boarding school in England and must use all of the survival skills she learned in the bush, and then some, to negotiate this strange new world. Will is a firecracker of a character whose distinctive voice and indomitable spirit will stay with readers for a long while.

Perdidos en NYC: una aventura en el metro. tr. by Lola Moral. Spanish ed. ISBN 9781935179856. ea vol: illus. by Sergio Garcia Sanchez. 52p. TOON Graphic. Apr. 2015. Tr. $16.95.
 * SPIEGELMAN, Nadja. Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure.** ISBN 9781935179818.


 * HALE, Nathan. Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: The Underground Abductor (An Abolitionist Tale).** illus. by Nathan Hale. 128p. (Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales). bibliog. photos. Abrams/Amulet. 2015. Tr $12.95. ISBN 9781419715365.