Really, this should be called "What Ms. Tolva talked about!" I monopolized the conversation talking about books nominated for the Illinois Teen Choice Award.
Statewide winners announced for the 2021 Illinois Teen Choice Award:
- First place: Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
- Genre: mystery
- Summary: First in a series, this book set at fictional Ellingham Academy, where student detective Stevie Bell seeks to solve both a historic mystery and also deal with present-day disappearances and murders.
- Second place: Dry by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
- Genre: science fiction
- Summary: A dystopian book about what might happen when the water taps run dry in California.
- Third place: Devils Within by S. F. Henson
- Genre: realistic
- Summary: A teen boy struggles to escape his white supremacy background.
Books nominated for 2022 Illinois Teen Choice Award
- List
- Ms. Tolva serves on the nominations committee for this award, and she is chuffed that the book she nominated, Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu, made the list!
What we're reading:
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We are the Wildflowers by L. B. Simmons
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Genre: realistic
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Summary: Four unruly teens living together in a home for troubled youth find connection and strength, like that of wildflowers, as they face their harrowing pasts and new tragedies.
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Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters by Emily Roberson
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Genre: realistic
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Summary: In a reality TV retelling of the myth of the Minotaur, seventeen-year-old Ariadne fights to save her brother, Asterion, and make her own destiny in a world of celebrity, surveillance, and feigned authenticity.
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How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Moshin Hamid
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Genre: realistic
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Summary: the astonishing and riveting tale of a man's journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over "rising Asia." It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along.
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Ms. Kennedy is reading this as the first choice of John Green's online book club
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This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
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Genre: historical
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Summary: In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota's Gilead River, the Lincoln Indian Training School is a pitiless place where Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to Odie O’Banion, a lively orphan boy whose exploits constantly earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Odie and his brother, Albert, are the only white faces among the hundreds of Native American children at the school.
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And we talked about sheep
(You weren't there. We can't tell you)
- All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
- Genre: historical
- Summary: Presents the first-hand account of a young English veterinarian starting his career in the Yorkshires nearly forty years ago. And it has lots of sheep. And cows. And pigs. Some dogs. Not many cats.
- Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann; translated by Anthea Bell
- genre: mystery
- Summary: A flock of sheep living on a hillside near the Irish village of Glennkill, regularly exposed to literature by their shepherd George, feel well-equipped to investigate murder after they find George dead--pinned to the ground with a spade.