The movie talks about how there was a ‘color line’ in baseball that kept black players from playing in the Major Leagues. Since they were not allowed in the Majors these players had their own leagues called the Negro Leagues, which was only for African American players. It tells about some of the best players to play in the Negro Leagues like Josh Gibson who was thought to be as good as Babe Ruth and once hit 77 home runs in a year and Satchel Paige who was one of the hardest throwing pitchers in baseball history.
This was a really interesting movie and I would recommend it to anyone who likes baseball or history. It is especially good to watch now because February is African-American history month.
Abraham is a student at Brashear High School in Pittsburgh.
Today I will be reviewing Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. This is the first book in a set of two books, but it can be read as a standalone novel. Overall I did enjoy this book, but if you are looking for a more in depth review you can read below.
Characters
The two main characters of this book were lovable and quirky. Leo, the main character felt a bit bland to me at first, but after the plot picked up I did enjoy reading about him. While most of the book focuses on Stargirl, I really loved his character. Stargirl (yes, her name is actually Stargirl) was really unique and fun character. Her quirkiness might have been a little overplayed, but I loved her message of being your own person. I give this area an 8/10.
Setting
I loved the fact his book took place in the desert instead of the typical Midwest town or city. The parts that were the most descriptive, like the part about the desert flowers or the large cacti, were interesting because you don’t normally hear about that kind of beauty in a desert. I do wish the school was described more. I am going to give this area a 7/10.
Plot
This book was simply heartwarming. There wasn’t any epic quest or week-long journey across the US. It was simply a book that made you feel happy on the inside. Plus, the book was so short, (180 pages) I don’t think there could have been a long, involved plot. Normally I don’t enjoy plots lacking complexity, but this book was really sweet and satisfying. I am giving this area an 8/10.
Writing Style
I did enjoy the author’s writing style. While the book wasn’t very long, he did manage to make each and every one of those pages meaningful. I zoomed through the book, and dreaded every moment when I had to put it down. I though overall the writing was pretty good, though it did have a few small issues. I am going to give this area a 9/10 because I did enjoy his style.
The Final Verdict
Once the scores are tallied up, I get a 7.5/10! I agree with that score, as the book did have a few problems, but overall was put together well. If you enjoy books with a heartfelt message, you will most likely enjoy Stargirl! My one warning is that for some Stargirl might feel too quirky. Please know these are just my opinions. I respect yours too, so why not leave a comment? Please mark spoilers for new readers.
Happy Reading!
-Laurel
Laurel is an overly creative person that is looking for good books to read. While she fills her spare time with crocheting, filming, editing, drawing, sewing, writing, and crafting, she always has a little time to read. She enjoys books that have an intricate plot and fresh new characters, but does not like books with a lot of romance. Hopefully she will find what she is looking for.
Today I will be reviewing The Selection, Book One of the Selection Series by Kiera Cass. Here is a summary of the book for anyone curious:
“For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in a palace and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon. But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn’t want. Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks. Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she’s made for herselfand realizes that the life she’s always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.”
Characters
This book combined stereotypes with a breath of fresh air. I really loved America, Maxon, and Marlee. My one complaint is that some of the characters do lack a developed personality and backstory, but this is the first book in a trilogy. This book was jam packed with interesting character relationships. A secret love interest is unveiled early on, which definitely complicates the plot. I very much enjoyed the relationship between Maxon and America, but you will have to read to see how that plays out. The relationships between America and the other Selected really was intriguing. While some simply don’t get along with her, she instantly makes a few friends. At the same time America is technically competition, so we are never too sure about how things will end up. I really enjoyed this element of suspense.
Setting
The setting of this book at first confused me. After a bit of investigating I learned that this books takes place in America. While we don’t know how far into the future this book takes place, it seems like it has been at least a hundred years. Now royalty is the main form of government and rankings determine your income, social class, and job. It‘s very interesting to read about. At the same time this author didn’t elaborate on the surroundings well. It might just be me, but I like a very vivid setting to think about. I like to know the colors of the walls, the little flaws in the architecture, and that sort of thing. While we did get small descriptions of the setting, I just feel it could have been stretched out more, especially with the castle.
Plot
The plot of this book took old clichés and made them new. I enjoyed discovering the little details of the government, and trying to figure out what would happen next, yet parts of the book seemed so close to many other dystopian novels. Mainly the book reminded me of The Hunger Games. Take out the death in The Hunger Games and replace it with broken hearts, and you have the majority of this plot. I am not going to complain about this more than I need to, as there were plot twists, original characters, and many events that were completely original, but you might get the same feeling I did when I read it.
The Final Verdict
I really enjoyed the authors writing style! I thought dialog was realistic and humorous. The actions the characters took were interesting to read about, and were described in a way that I felt like I was witnessing them. My one complaint was sometimes it was hard to figure out who the speaker was. I get a 7.5/10! This falls right in-between decent and good for me, but you should make up your mind for yourself. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a book that has interesting characters and plot, with the warning that any Hunger Games fan might find themselves bored with the story. And if you like love stories, you will like this much more than I did! The book itself isn’t all that long (only about three-hundred pages) so I recommend you get at least halfway through before you decide. The beginning can be hard to follow, but it picks up towards the start of the actual Selection. Thankfully the library systems has lots of copies in print and digitally. Please let me know what you thought of it! I’m always interested in hearing opinions. But please, mark spoilers for anyone trying to see if they are interested.
Happy Reading!
-Laurel
Laurel is an overly creative person that is looking for good books to read. While she fills her spare time with crocheting, filming, editing, drawing, sewing, writing, and crafting, she always has a little time to read. She enjoys books that have an intricate plot and fresh new characters, but does not like books with a lot of romance. Hopefully she will find what she is looking for.
Some of yinz might remember an interview published here about a year ago with one of my college roommates who is now a big-time teen author. Well, lo and behold, yet another person from my college circle of friends has published an amazing, new book for teens that is sure to become the next big thing! “The Brokenhearted” by Amelia Kahaney is a completely original, dark, gritty novel with a strong female protagonist and a superhero twist. Amelia was kind enough to take a moment out of her crazy, busy book tour schedule to answer some questions for CLPTeensburgh.
What inspired your book “The Brokenhearted”?
I knew I wanted to write about a girl superhero, but the details of that took forever for me to flesh out. When I began to think about what kind of world she would need to save, I looked around my city (New York). The banking crisis had hit recently and Occupy Wall Street was just becoming a huge movement. I took a ton of inspiration for the city of Bedlam from the headlines, many of which were grappling with the stark and shocking differences between rich and poor in New York and in the country overall. Bedlam is just an extreme version of what I was seeing all around me – corruption and greed on one side, and needless suffering on the other.
As far as Anthem’s heart, I was reading a book called The Wet Engine, which is sort of a poetic meditation on the heart as an organ and a symbol. In it, the author, Brian Doyle, writes beautifully about animal hearts, from whales to hummingbirds. I was fascinated by how fast hummingbird hearts beat, and by how close hummingbirds are to death if they become too still or go too long without food. Their hearts are high-powered, delicate machines. So I gave Anthem’s new heart some hummingbird DNA.
What interested you in writing for a teen audience?
I started writing for teens a few years ago, after landing a ghostwriting job for a popular tween series. It was so fun to play with plot, so different from the writing I’d done before. Once I caught the bug, I couldn’t stop at ghostwriting.
When did you start writing?
I took my first creative writing class in high school, but I was writing long before that. I still have an epic poem about burning my homework that I wrote when I was six or seven. There’s a talking cat in it.
What’s the coolest thing about being the author of a published book?
Once you’re published, there’s a chance you can get published again. Right now, I’m really enjoying thinking about future projects and trying to envision a life for myself as a writer. The prospect of continuing to write is intoxicating to any writer, but publication has made it that much easier to envision this as a long career and not just this weird thing I do when I find the time.
What were your teen years like?
Alienated, broody, moody, a little bit wild. I was shy and introverted one year, a maniac who sang in the hallways the next. That’s the great and scary thing about the teen years – you don’t really know who you are, and things can change so quickly if you let them.
What was your favorite book/author when you were a teen?
I loved 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Lord of the Flies, so maybe it makes sense that I’ve written something that’s been called dystopian. I also went through a huge Stephen King phase in junior high and high school. But I liked most every novel I got my hands on, from trashy romances to The Bell Jar to Kafka’sshort stories, which I read constantly all through junior and senior year of high school.
Will you share some secrets from the follow up to “The Brokenhearted”?
Book two in the series features a new villain I’m a little in love with, while also exploring Anthem’s roots. We learn where her name comes from, and a dark secret in her family is revealed over the course of the book. I just finished a draft, and I’m so excited about this secret that it’s all I can do not to spill the beans right here. Alas, you’ll have to read the book to find out more.
If your book was made into a movie, what actors and actresses do you like to see playing the characters in your story?
The failed boxer Ford was written with Taylor Lautner in mind, so I’d be okay with him doing it, or whoever the new version of Taylor Lautner is these days. Someone beefy and sweet-looking. Gavin would be played by Ezra Miller, who is a phenomenal actor, or by Richard Harmon, who did a great job as the creepy ex-boyfriend in The Killing. As for Anthem, I’d love a fresh, undiscovered actress. And if not a total newbie, Chloe Grace Moretz, who I loved as Hit-Girl in the movie Kick-Ass, will soon be exactly the right age to do the job.
What is your favorite memory from when we were young adults in college together?
I’m going to go with the fact that there was a year or two where we all—a group of maybe eight or ten of us college girls, spanning three or four or our shared houses—had the exact same haircut. I know you remember our A-line bob haircuts, Abby. A few of us learned to do that haircut in our living rooms and then there was a period of years where we all cut one another’s hair. In my memory, we were a formidable, even semi-intimidating gang of bookish, ironic liberal arts majors, and that A-line bob was like our gang hazing ritual.
Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian are friends and writing partners who have created the Burn for Burn trilogy for teen girls and fans of YA literature. The second book in the series, Fire with Fire, was released in September 2013. Jenny & Siobhan will take the stage to speak about friendship, collaborative writing, and life as it relates to teens. Both have plenty to say about their own writing careers and will share perspectives from their individual experiences.
Teen Blogger Jayne caught up Siobhan and Jenny for a little preview of Friday night’s main event.
Jayne: How did the two of you decide you wanted to write a story such as the Burn for Burn trilogy?
Siobhan & Jenny: We became friends in a writing program and after years of sharing our work together, we thought it would be fun to do something together. We worked on another idea – a screenplay – before we came up with the Burn for Burn series.
Jayne: What were the inspirations for some of the characters?
Siobhan & Jenny: We really try to put pieces of ourselves in every character we write. Lillia has a little sister Nadia, and both of us have little sisters, too. I think there are plenty of moments where we both feel quiet and shy like Mary, or confident and confrontational like Kat.
Jayne: Did you incorporate any inside jokes between the two of you in either of the books?
Siobhan & Jenny: Not exactly…but we definitely try to make each other laugh with the stuff that we do write. It comes out a lot in the Kat chapters, because that girl will say almost anything!
Jayne: Do the two of you plan to write together on another series any time soon?
Siobhan & Jenny: We’d love to work together again. After all, we are best friends!
Books for this event will be available for sale from our local and independent book store, Mystery Lovers Bookshop, before and after the program.
It is about a straight A high school student named Light Yagami who finds a notebook outside of his class room. Being curious, he picks it up and finds what it was about. It said Death Note in the front. He skimmed though the beginning of the notebook, and he thought that it was a sick prank. But even though he thought that, he brought to his house to read more about it. It said that “The person’s name that is written in this book shall die.”
Half disbelieving, he watched the news and found out a criminal was holding hostages in a nursery home. He wonder what would happen if he wrote his name in the notebook. So then a few minutes later thinking hard about it, he decided to put his name in the note book. In exactly 40 seconds later the criminal dropped dead!
Light was stunned but still he thought it was by luck. Later on in the day he did the same thing with another criminal and the same results happened! Now he believes that the Death Note is real, and he is using it to purify the world. He said that he wanted to be the “god of the new world.”
Suddenly, Light started to write the names of criminals who are the most notorious in the world. He started to kill 5 criminals a day then later on he started to kill 25 a day!! A Shinigami (a god of death) showed up and warned Light what will happen to him when he dies. The public started to notice and the police too.
The police are doing everything in their power to stop it, but now they are desperate and begged a legendary detective nicknamed L. Now the battle between Light Yagami and L begins.
Samantha – Hi! I’m a 6th grader and really excited to be blogging. I LOVE to read and write so I’m most likely going to have a lot of posts. I’ll give you the most honest reviews possible. I hope you read them!
In our modern day world, we have many non-concrete things, like peace, friendship, and most of all, love. But, in this story there is no love. Love is claimed to be a disease, deliria. To avoid the spread of deliria, every citizen must get a procedure once they are old enough, but it doesn’t always work. This is the world in the Delirium Trilogy by Lauren Oliver.
A girl named Lena grew up around deliria. Her mother was killed because of it. The first book, Delirium, begins with Lena wanting nothing more than to get her procedure and be an emotionless zombie like everyone else. Lena was so set on her brain-dead goal, until she met Alex. Lena and Alex fell in love. They planned to escape to the wilds, the only place where love is allowed. When their plan went wrong, they got caught. Alex died, but Lena made it out.
A lot of stuff happens between then and the third book, but, to sum it up, Lena thought Alex died. She fell in love with another boy named Julian in the second book, Pandemonium, and helped Julian come to the wilds with her.
Requiem begins when Lena and Alex joined a new group and discovered Alex was there. He never died, and he felt betrayed by Lena. Requiem is all about Lena and Alex coming back together, whereas, the first two books are all about their earlier time together and apart. Lena and Alex’s group decided to attack the love-free zombies. Throughout the rest of the story, they met new people and slowly fell in love again.
Do they love each other in the end? Read the story to find out.
I liked this book because it flipped back and forth from different people’s point of view. One thing would happen, and you got to hear several sides of it. Lauren Oliver really knows how to grab a reader’s attention, I couldn’t put the book down!
Samantha – Hi! I’m a 6th grader and really excited to be blogging. I LOVE to read and write so I’m most likely going to have a lot of posts. I’ll give you the most honest reviews possible. I hope you read them!
In your life, have you ever had someone who just understands you? Someone who you can just tell everything and they will listen? In this story, a girl named Katie Takeshima has a person like that; it’s her sister. Her sister Lynn taught her to look at everything and find how it is kira-kira (Japanese for glittering), she taught her how to look at everything and find its magnificence. Lynn was practically Katie’s role model, (as older siblings mostly are); Katie did what Lynn did, agreed to what Lynn agreed etc., etc. As the girls got older, they moved to Georgia. They didn’t fit in; they were one of the only Japanese families in the town. Lynn made friends while Katie didn’t. Lynn got too busy for Katie; Katie was never busy enough for Lynn. The two drifted apart. One day Lynn got sick, and there was no going back to their lives before.
I loved this book because it explained the bond of two sisters, a bond that could not be broken. Throughout the course of the book, I felt myself relating to some of the characters. I felt like I could relate because this book is about other things too, like fitting in, financial troubles and new siblings. Overall, those problems are the problems that the majority of us have to deal with every day.
Hi! I’m Anastasia. I’m a senior at Carrick High School and I volunteer at the Carrick Library, though most of my time is spent reading or writing.
As I am currently in an AP Literature class in school, we often end up reading a lot of books. Many of which are rather good, but recently I had to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness which proved to be a disappointment to me. The book revolves around the ivory trade in Africa when Europe began to colonize and split up the region. Many would describe the book as prejudiced, but I found myself too confused by the narrator to notice this. I’m not sure if it was because I was tired or if I was unable to read the book as I would like, but I was often struggling to find what exactly the narrator was talking about. One moment he was on the boat and in the next it appeared he wasn’t, or was he? I found myself confused a lot of the time. The story also brought about a lot of rumors concerning the antagonist, Mr. Kurtz, but in the end it appeared he was nothing more than a sickly old man. I was at a loss to interpret this phenomenon – was he sick due to greed’s effect on him and the things he had done? The book built his personality on rumors and other character’s accounts, so perhaps the irony of a sickly man was too much for me. For all its faults, however, Heart of Darkness wasn’t necessarily bad. It used a lot of intense imagery that added to the feel of the book, and it described the savage nature of man when it comes to greed and dominance very well, but something about the book just didn’t fit with me. Maybe, at another time, I will have to reread it and give it another shot.
Hi, my name is Jenna and I am a senior at West Mifflin Area High School. I volunteer at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh – Main. No matter where I am, you will probably see a book in my hand. I hope you enjoy my book reviews!
Titus and his friends are just ordinary teenagers in their world. Their life surrounds the feed that was implanted in their brains since before they could remember. The feed is basically like a computer. Titus and his friends can chat (message) each other’s feeds just by using their brains. The feed is constantly projecting an endless stream of advertisements, music, television shows, and world news. The people buy products using their feeds. They can even download other people’s memories and literally feel what the other person was feeling; emotions and sensations. Barely anyone talks out loud anymore… Why should they when they can do it within their heads?
But there are some people still in America that are trying to fight the feed. Like Violet, a girl Titus meets at the moon. Yes, these kids travel to the moon for fun. At first Titus just thinks Violet is interesting because she’s someone new and she’s physically beautiful. But, as Titus gets to know Violet, he realizes that she’s different than him and his friends. She hates the feed. She doesn’t go to School like the rest of the kids, where they learn about how to use the feed. She’s homeschooled by her father, who teaches Mayan language, which makes her even more weird to the other kids.
Not knowing who to believe or what to think, he is torn between what is better; life with the feed, or without?
If you are a person who hates how much today’s society is based off of media and technology, you would want to read this book. The book is a satire of society today and how big a part media plays in everyone’s lives.
This book is heavy on futuristic slang. And a lot of “like”‘s. Once you get used to the slang and figure out the meaning behind the words, it can become bearable.
Violet is a great character. I loved that she is so headstrong and independent. She didn’t need acceptance from the rich and popular kids. She was content with just being herself. She is willing to rebel against anything that tried to conform her. She is alive; unlike the boring, robotic-like teenagers Titus is friends with.
Titus is a great main character. He is willing to be different than his friends and at least try to see Violet’s point of view. It was sweet how he always stood up for her in the early stages of their relationship. But sadly, Titus is always going back and forth with what he believed, which is very similar to real-life teenagers.
This book is a good read. It is unique to say the least… I’ve never read a book quite like this one. This novel is eye-opening and warns that society could very much become like this horrible world depicted in ‘Feed’.
Samantha – Hi! I’m a 6th grader and really excited to be blogging. I LOVE to read and write so I’m most likely going to have a lot of posts. I’ll give you the most honest reviews possible. I hope you read them!
CLPTeensburgh: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Teen Services 