Jellie Jam's YA Blog and Sci-Fi / Fantasy Pathfinder

Welcome fellow readers and supporters of YA literature and literacy. I am a teacher soon to be a school librarian in a middle school. On this blog site I will be sharing with you YA literature from 12 different genres.

My favorite genre and one that I have found is under appreciated on many school campuses is science fiction (sci-fi) and fantasy. For those of you that have not yet come to know and love the sci-fi and fantasy genre's I have created a cool pathfinder and blog site just for you. Clicking the What's Out There link below will take you to my pathfinder. Under the students tab are books, e-books, websites, magazines and blogs with sci-fi and fantasy as their subject. I have also created my own blog Jellie's Sci-Fi Fantasy Slam! Click on that tab and get some out of this world book-talks about some of my favorite sci-fi and fantasy jammin' Slammin' reads!

Whats Out There?

http://lanzonipathfinder.weebly.com/jellies-sci-fi-fantasy-slam.html

Jellie's Fantastic Fantasy Selection: The Giver

Lowry, Lois. The giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Print.

The Giver
by Lois Lowry

The 1994 Newbery Medal
Booklist Editors' Choice

Annotation: A boy is assigned by his community to become the holder of all their memories. The story shares his thoughts and feelings as he takes on this awesome task.

Click the link below for a selected read aloud from the book taken from the Random House website.

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/mm/audio/4s_9780807262030.mp3

William age 12, Houston, Texas

This is not a book for children. Our teacher is having us read this book right now in class. It is embarrassing because It has stuff about sex. But I do like that she does not make us talk about that stuff in class. She let's us write in our reading journals anything that we don't want to share. So that is cool. But then the girls in class want to talk about all that stuff. This book is full of weird crazy stuff!

Jellie's Yellin' Horror Story!

Stine, R. L.. The haunted mask. New York: Scholastic, 1995. Print.

The Haunted Mask

Annotation: A young girl selects a mask for Halloween that takes over her personality whenever she wears it.

Carly Beth is afraid of her own shadow and is constantly being scared and bullied by classmates and even her little brother. When a new costume shop opens in town she is determined to buy the scariest mask to get revenge on everyone, but at what cost to her, her family, friends and community?

Book Cover: www,scholasticbooks.com

Jellie's Jammin' Graphic Novel! Maximum Ride

Patterson, James. Maximum Ride: the angel experiment. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.  

Maximum Ride

By James Patterson

ALA/YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
VOYA 2005 Review Editor’s Choice Book
London Times Children’s Book of the Week
2007 IRA Young Adult Choices title
2006 – 2007 Florida Teen Book Award Master List title
2007 New Hampshire Teen Readers Book Award Master List title
2007 – 2008 Missouri Gateway Teen Book Award Master List title
2007 – 2008 Colorado Blue Spruce Award Master List title

Ever wanted to fly? No not in an airplane. Fly like a real bird! If you ever wondered what it would be like to have the wings of a bird then you are really going to like the series Maximum Ride. This flock of six youth, are humans that have wings. The downside is that they do not know where they came from, or who their parents are. All they have ever known are cages and being studied, picked, tested and prodded by scientists in a lab, that they call the “school”. The story begins and they are hiding deep in the mountains after escaping from the “school”. Until one day their tormenters find them and capture “angel”. From there the chase and adventures begins as they set out to save their friend, and what a ride, a Maximum ride!

Jammin' Historical Fiction: Lizzie Bright and the Buckminister Boy

Schmidt, Gary D. (2004). Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

2005 Newberry Honor Book
2005 Printz Honor Book
 
Annotation: A ministers family with a young son move into a new town. The boy has experiences adjusting to the move and making new friends.

The hero of the tale is a boy, a minister’s son that moves from Boston to a very small town in Maine and suddenly finds himself under the microscope of small town life. A boy that through his actions of choosing what is true and right finds himself fighting against the movers and shakers in town, while at the same time bringing him closer to his minister father.

Bookcover: www.randomhouse.com

Jammin' Realistic Fiction: The Chocolate War

Cormier, Robert. The chocolate war: a novel. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974. Print.

The Chocolate War
By Robert Cormier

An ALA Best Books for Young Adults

A School Library Journal Best Books of the Year

A Kirkus Reviews Choice

A New York Times Outstanding Books of the Year

Margaret A Edwards Award

Annotation: A young man and his experiences in a new school. Where it seems that no one has any integrity.

It is a story about a boy thrown into an unfamiliar situation with people that you would think are decent, as he is now attending a parochial school, but in reality few of them, including the teachers have any integrity and or scruples at all. Despite all of these odds, the main character, a young man, finds himself making the difficult decision of choosing to do the right thing. Even tough it may just "disturb the universe."

Jellie Jams Review: This is one of those books that everyone always told me was a great book, and being on the Banned Books List also intrigued me. For me this book did not live up to its hype. I have to say that I was disappointed in the story. I thought that he characters could have used some more beefing up.

Bookcover: www.randomhouse.com

Jammin' Slammin Poetry! Multicultural Read: Keesha's House

Awards
Michael L. Printz Award - Honor
American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults
Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year
Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library
Recorded Books Audiotape--finalist for an Audie Award

Keesha's House
by Helen Frost

Frost, Helen. Keesha's house. New York: Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print.

Annotation: The truth, love’s, lives, and trials of 7 youth that runaway from home and their families.

Booktalk: Keesha’s House is where you go when your home is not homey. Why did you do something that you knew was wrong and would have undesirable consequences? Who do you turn to when the adults in your life are the problem and not the solution? You find Keesha’s House.

http://booktrailers.ning.com/video/keeshas-house