Christine Porschet, SLMS of the high school library in the Marcus Whitman Central School District in Rushville, NY, writes of Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief:
Liesel is a girl obsessed with language and who isn’t scared of anything. Narrated by Death and beautifully written, The Book Thief is about Liesel, a scrappy girl in an increasingly troubled world. Set during the Holocaust, it shows the compassionate and the dark side of ordinary people in a war zone. The New York Times review called it “life changing,” and I agree. It gives you a new perspective on life, and this is a book that you can’t just read once.
And Jonathan Porschet, of the Geneva Middle School in Geneva, NY chose to write about another new classic for young people, Lawn Boy by Gary Paulson:
I don’t know when I have enjoyed a book more than Gary Paulsen’s Lawn Boy. With an eclectic assortment of offbeat characters in the background, the protagonist, known only as Lawn Boy, is clever, industrious, and incredibly lucky. The book is sweet, funny and exciting. I have read it aloud to small groups and recommended it to dozens of students. All who read it enjoy it. A great quick read, Lawn Boy is great for readers as young as third or fourth grade and still fun for middle school readers and beyond. A survival novel it is not, but Paulsen does not disappoint devotees of Hatchet and his other hugely popular survival novels. Read Lawn Boy!