Teen Reader
Life as We Knew It (2006) by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Sixteen-year-old Miranda is living in Northeast Pennsylvania, United States. She is a sensitive teenager with a struggling life, seeing as how her parents are divorced, and her stepmother has a baby arriving. Told in diary form, Miranda lays out the story of an asteroid knocking the Moon closer to Earth's orbit and causing worldwide catastrophes. She tells how her family struggles for survival in the apocalypse, which has caused tidal waves on the coasts, volcanoes that turn the air into killer smoke, and earthquakes shaking up the land.
Science Fiction genre and the first book in the Last Survivors Trilogy, Book two is The Dead and the Gone.
Middle Reader (5th grade and up)
Ninth Ward (2010) by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Twelve-year-old Lanesha lives in a tight-knit community in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. She doesn't have a fancy house like her uptown family or lots of friends like the other kids on her street. But what she does have is Mama Ya-Ya, her fiercely loving caretaker, wise in the ways of the world and able to predict the future. So when Mama Ya-Ya's visions show a powerful hurricane--Katrina--fast approaching, it's up to Lanesha to call upon the hope and strength Mama Ya-Ya has given her to help them both survive the storm.
Ninth Ward is a deeply emotional story about transformation and a celebration of resilience, friendship, and family--as only love can define it
Realistic Fiction genre.
Picture Book
Grandpa Green by Lane Smith
A timeless story of family history, legacy, and love. Grandpa Green wasn't always a gardener. He was a farm boy and a kid with chickenpox and a soldier and, most of all, an artist. In this captivating new picture book, readers follow Grandpa Green's great-grandson into a garden he created, a fantastic world where memories are handed down in the fanciful shapes of topiary trees and imagination recreates things forgotten. In his most enigmatic and beautiful work to date, Lane Smith explores aging, memory, and the bonds of family history and love; by turns touching and whimsical, it's a stunning picture book that parents and grandparents will be sharing with children for years to come.
Storytime: "Grandpa Green"
Leaf through this amazing book to discover the story of you at the Dorsch Memorial Branch Library (18 E. Front St. in Monroe) storytime program on Tuesday, March 19 at 11:00 a.m. and at 1:00 p.m.