School Library Journal Gr 9 Up-O'Brien's follow-up to Birthmarked (Roaring Brook, 2010) begins with Gaia Stone at a lonely oasis in the wasteland, far from the Enclave she escaped. She and her infant sister, Maya, are rescued by Peter, a young man from a settlement called Sylum, which, in its own way, is as strange and harsh a place as the Enclave. Women are only one tenth of the population but they rule over the men, many of whom are steril...More

Book list It's a scenario many kids are probably all too familiar with: a young boy wants to play, but older sis is gabbing on the phone, Mom is busy on the computer, and Dad is making dinner. When the power goes out, however, the family comes together to make shadow puppets on the wall, join the neighbors on the roof to admire the stars, and even head out front to the most idyllic city street you'll ever see. All good things come to an end, thoug...More

Library Journal The author of Seabiscuit now brings us a biography of World War II prisoner of war survivor Louis Zamperini (b. 1917). A track athlete at the 1936 Munich Olympics, Zamperini became a B-24 crewman in the U.S. Army Air Force. When his plane went down in the Pacific in 1943, he spent 47 days in a life raft, then was picked up by a Japanese ship and survived starvation and torture in labor camps. Eventually repatriated, he had a spiritua...More