Thank you to Book Club members who shared information about our club to your peers at the Student Activities Fair! We appreciate your help and enthusiasm!

What we're reading

• Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
  • Genre: fantasy
  • Summary: After she has served a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, Crown Prince Dorian offers eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien her freedom on the condition that she act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.
  • 7 books in series
  • Here's where we learned a new literary term: "whoop" apparently means when a book makes a big change in narrative.
• Alcatraz From the Inside by Jim Quillen
  • Genre: non-fiction
  • Summary: At 22, Jim Quillen is on the run from San Quentin prison. He thinks he made a lucky escape, until he is caught and sentenced to 45 years inside America's toughest prison, US Penitentiary Alcatraz Island. This is one man's true story of life inside America's most notorious prison, from terrifying times in solitary confinement to daily encounters with the "Birdman." An inspiring, moving, and dramatic tale
  • Hunter is perturbed that he must set aside this book to read a class book.
• Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi
  • Genre: non-fiction, Lives
  • Summary: By the time he was twenty-seven, Kwame Onwuachi had competed on Top Chef, cooked at the White House, and opened and closed one of the most talked about restaurants in America. In this inspiring memoir, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age. Growing up in the Bronx and Nigeria (where he was sent by his mother to "learn respect"), food was Onwuachi's great love. He launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars he made selling candy on the subway, and trained in the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country. But the road to success is riddled with potholes. As a young chef, Onwuachi was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the world of fine dining can be for people of color, and his first restaurant, the culmination of years of planning, shuttered just months after opening. A powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest memoir of following your dreams--even when they don't turn out as you expected--Notes from a Young Black Chef is one man's pursuit of his passions, despite the odds.
  • This is Hunter's chosen book for American Lit & Comp independent reading
• Verify by Joelle Charbonneau
  • Genre: science fiction
  • Summary: Chicago teen Meri Beckley's pride of living in a land of peace, prosperity, and truth crumbles when questions following her mother's death reveal buried facts, especially that words can have great power.
  • Good connections to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Lovely Bones by Alce Sebold
  • Genre: supernatural
  • Summary: Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon, the victim of a sexual assault and murder, looks on from the afterlife as her family deals with their grief, and waits for her killer to be brought to some type of justice.
  • Author's non-fiction book Lucky is based on her daughter's experience as the survivor of a sexual assault.
• Infinity Son by Adam Silvera
  • Genre: fantasy
  • Summary: In a world where some people are born with powers and some people take them, brothers Emil and Brighton Rey get swept up in a supernatural turf war generations in the making.
• Bruiser by Neal Shusterman
  • Genre: suernatural
  • Summary: 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.
  • Clara's "I have a theory ..." statement about why Bruiser has so many bruises prompted a session of the "Hot and Cold" game. Her theory was scalding hot!
• Six Months Later by Natalie D. Richards
  • Genre: mystery
  • Summary: When Chloe fell asleep in study hall, it was the middle of May. But when she wakes up, snow is on the ground, and she can't remember the last six months. Before, she'd been a mediocre student. Now, she's on track for valedictorian and being recruited by Ivy League schools. Before, she never had a chance with sports star Blake. Now he's her boyfriend. Before, she and Maggie were inseparable. Now her best friend won't speak to her.What happened to her? Remembering the truth could be more dangerous than she’d ever imagined.
• Wake by Lisa McMann
  • Genre: supernatural
  • Summary: Ever since she was eight years old, high school student Janie Hannagan has been uncontrollably drawn into other people's dreams, but it is not until she befriends an elderly nursing home patient and becomes involved with an enigmatic fellow-student that she discovers her true power.
  • Ms. Tolva said she likes that chapter 1 happens in the school library.
• Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
  • Genre: mystery
  • Summary: Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. "A place," he said, "where learning is a game." Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym "Truly, Devious." It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history. True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.
  • Nominated for the 2021 Illinois Teen Choice Award
  • Sequels The Vanishing Stair and The Hand on the Wall
    • And because we love you, Book Club highly recommends you have access to all 3 books before starting book 1. Or you will scream.
  • Related book The Box in the Woods

Focus on history

• The People's History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
  • Genre: non-fiction
  • Summary: A social and cultural history of the United States, beginning with the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492 and continuing through the 2000 presidential election and war on terrorism, focusing on the human cost of the decisions made by politicians and businessmen, and including a bibliography and index.
  • Also graphic edition
  • Rhiannon said she didn't want "the standard narraive to be the only thing I know."
• American Royals by Katharine McGee
  • Genre: relationships
  • Summary: In an alternate America, princesses Beatrice and Samantha Washington and the two girls wooing their brother, Prince Jefferson, become embroiled in high drama in the most glorious court in the world.
• Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham
  • Genre: historical fiction, then-and-now
  • Summary: When Rowan finds a skeleton on her family's property, investigating the brutal, century-old murder leads to painful discoveries about the past. Alternating chapters tell the story of William, another teen grappling with the racial firestorm leading up to the 1921 Tulsa race riot, providing some clues to the mystery.
  • Ms. Tolva said the accepted history of the 1921 event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has recently been corrected from "blacks were rioting" to "blacks were massacred."
  • Also Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink
• Circe by Madeline Miller
  • Genre: fantasy (or is it historical?)
  • Summary: Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals.
  • Circe was the "One Book, One Community" book for Cook Memroail Public Library in 2020; Ms. Tolva heard the author via Zoom
• They Went Left by Monica Hesse
  • Genre: historical fiction
  • Summary: Zofia, a teenage Holocaust survivor, travels across post-war Europe as she searches for her younger brother and seeks to rebuild her shattered life