Creating Motivated Readers, One Video at a Time
Wings of Fire 7 (Winter Turning) by Tui Sutherland Winter has been a disappointment to his royal IceWing family his whole life. When his sister, Icicle, runs away from Jade Mountain Academy, fleeing terrible crimes and possibly planning to commit more, Winter knows that they both need a second chance to make things right — if only he can find her. Winter’s new clawmates, Moon, Qibli, and Kinkajou, won’t let him make this dange...
The Uglies (The Uglies Trilogy – Book 1) by Scott Westerfield Tally Youngblood lives in a futuristic society that acculturates its citizens to believe that they are ugly until age 16 when they’ll undergo an operation that will change them into pleasure-seeking “pretties.” Anticipating this happy transformation, Tally meets Shay, another female ugly, who shares her enjoyment of hover-boarding and risky pranks. But Shay also d...
The Unidentified by Rae Mariz In a startlingly plausible dystopian society, the school system has failed to the point that the government gives over control of national education to corporations. These conglomerates have banded together to create what are known as Game Centers. Here students like Katey Dade, or Kid, go to “school” in refurbished shopping malls. They swipe cards to get in and out, they carry issued cell phones with G...
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck This is a story of the strange friendship between a strong man and a giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant man-child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find – in a ranch – what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them....
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins...
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The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger Holden Caulfield, a seventeen year old prep school adolescent relates his lonely, life-changing twenty-four hour stay in New York City as he experiences the phoniness of the adult world while attempting to deal with the death of his younger brother, an overwhelming compulsion to lie and troubling sexual experiences....
Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich “Shy, geeky, amiable” MIT grad Kevin Lewis, was living a double life winning huge sums of cash in Las Vegas casinos. In 1993 when Lewis was 20 years old and feeling aimless, he was invited to join the MIT Blackjack Team, organized by a former math instructor, who said, “Blackjack is beatable.” Backed by anonymous investors, team members checked into Vegas hotels under assume...
After attempting to steal back a necklace that belonged to his deceased mother, Samuel Collier is sent to an orphanage run by Reverend Hunt. The 11-year-old joins him on a journey to the New World, serving as a page to Captain John Smith. Samuel’s account of the voyage to Virginia, political intrigues among the settlers, and the harrowing first winter of the James Town settlement brings to life figures like Smith, Powhatan, and Pocaho...
