Teen Book Reviews - Featured

It's a classic! Animal Farm is a fabulous satire about Russia's history--although it makes a great tale in its own! Brainwashing, power, authority, manipulation, and more make this a tale that's worth reading!

The Cheshire Cheese Cat is about Skilley, a London alley cat with a secret: he eats cheese. So, he manages to get a job as a mouser at Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, a inn with a reputation for having the best cheese in London. The inn is desperately overrun with mice. However, Skilley doesn't eat mice, so he makes friends with them instead. Soon he finds out a secret that the fate of London may rest on. Will he be able to save that secret? I liked this book, but if you don't like books with animals that talk to each other as the main characters, you probably won't like it.

At the insistence of his money-hungry parents, Alton Richards agrees to drive his great-uncle Lester to bridge club and be his cardturner--all to get on his good side, for he is old, blind, and filthy rich. Little does Alton know, he's going to gain much more than knowledge of bridge, and also get himself tangled up in a web of his uncle's vague past. A definitely thought-provoking story, The Cardturner subtly yet straightforwardly delivers numerous intriguing ideas for readers to chew on. Sachar simultaneously sheds light on the complicated card game, bridge, while breathing life into his most important characters. Although a good deal of the side characters are a tad flat, the characters that are developed make the underlying story very emotionally touching. The amount of bridge content may become tedious for impatient readers (however, Sachar makes it extremely easy to skip over Bridge-heavy chapters with brief summaries).