Cafe Book Top Pick

The votes are in and Shirley Heim Middle schoolers have made their choices.  Here are their top picks for their favorite books from this year's Cafe Book program

Top Picks:

Bruiser by Neal Shusterman
Inexplicable events start to occur when sixteen-year-old twins Tennyson and Brontë befriend a troubled and misunderstood outcast, aptly nicknamed Bruiser, and his little brother, Cody.
 

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
When Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, she is exiled to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, faeries, and shapeshifters.

Malice by Chris Wooding
Once you get into the story, there's no way out. Everyone's heard the rumors. If you gather the right things and say the right words, you'll be taken to Malice, a world that exists inside a horrifying comic book. It's a world that few kids know about ... and even fewer survive. Seth and Kady think it's all a silly myth. But then their friend, Luke, disappears and suddenly the rumors don't seem silly after all. Malice is real. Malice is deadly. And Seth and Kady are about to be trapped inside.

Maze Runner by James Dashner
Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.

Having trouble picking a good book for the summer? Relax and let the diligent Cafe Book readers help you out! 450 students from eight middle schools across Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Stafford voted this year to create a regional “Top Teen Picks” list worth sharing with the community. The twenty titles chosen this year include books that reflect the cultural, regional, and ethnic diversity of the community, as well as books that many teens would not pick up otherwise.

Cafe Book Dixon Smith was great this year- getting together during lunch to talk about the hottest new books for teens! The school library was the place to be on May 12 when 56 students cast their votes and here are the results!

Top Pick:

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.

Other Favorites:

Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin
Cabinet of Wonders by Marie Rutkoski
Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
Comet's Curse by Dom Testa 
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
If the Witness Lied by Caroline B. Cooney
Somebodyby Nancy Springer

Cafe Book is over at Rodney Thompson...it was great to get together at lunch and talk about books.  On May 5th, 55 students voted for the books their favorites.  Here are their favorites.

Top Picks:

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
In a polygamous cult in the desert, Kyra, not yet fourteen, sees being chosen to be the seventh wife of her uncle as just punishment for having read books and kissed a boy, in violation of Prophet Childs' teachings, and is torn between facing her fate and running away from all that she knows and loves.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.

Other Favorites:

The Cabinet of Wonders by Marie Rutkoski
Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin
Eon Dragoneye Reborn by Allison Goodman
Comet's Curse by Dom Testa

Top Pick:  

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins  - In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.

Other Favorites:

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman- After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.

Word Nerd, by Susin Nielsen -When some bullies at his new school almost kill him by slipping a peanut into his sandwich, friendless nerd Ambrose, forced to be home-schooled by his overprotective mother, coerces his neighbor Cosmo into taking him to the West Side Scrabble Club, where people accept him for who he is. 

Somebody, by Nancy Springer - At the age of fifteen, a girl who has spent most of her life moving around the country with her father and brother, filling the emptiness inside her with chocolate, remembers her real name, Sherica, and searches the Internet to learn the truth about her mother and her own past.

The Chosen One, by Carol Lynch Williams - In a polygamous cult in the desert, Kyra, not yet fourteen, sees being chosen to be the seventh wife of her uncle as just punishment for having read books and kissed a boy, in violation of Prophet Childs' teachings, and is torn between facing her fate and running away from all that she knows and loves.