Creating Motivated Readers, One Video at a Time
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank “Alas, Babylon.” Those fateful words heralded the end. When a nuclear holocaust ravages the United States, a thousand years of civilization are stripped away overnight, and tens of millions of people are killed instantly. But for one small town in Florida, miraculously spared, the struggle is just beginning, as men and women of all backgrounds join together to confront the darkness....
Chessie Bligh by Thora Gabriel Chessie Bligh is a parentally neglected fourteen year old girl whose only friend is her Shih Tzu puppy named Wugghert. Out of defiance towards her absentee parents, Chessie trades places with another girl named Aelyn whom she encounters when their airplane flights from Europe to America (to attend boarding schools) is delayed in New York. Chessie, taking the place of Aelyn, arrives in Sterntaler, where she...
City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau Ember… It is a city without knowledge of anything beyond its walls; no one knows what’s out there and everyone is afraid to find out. With the electricity generated by the ancient generator ready to fail at any moment, Ember’s light is about to be snuffed out; the street lamps are the only remaining light source they have. The supplies stocked centuries earlier by the “Builders” are running scarc...
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former student, lives in a tiny garret on the top floor of a run-down apartment building in St. Petersburg. He is sickly, dressed in rags, short on money, and talks to himself, but he is also handsome, proud, and intelligent. He is planning on committing a murder with a singular purpose – to reaffirm his belief that he is a kind of “Superman”, above mere mo...
Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life by Rachel Renee Russell Fourteen-year-old Nikki J. Maxwell has been awarded a scholarship to a prestigious private middle school as a part of her father’s bug extermination contract. Her angst as she deals with the resident mean girl, her embarrassing parents, her crush on the hot boy, and making new friends are all recorded alongside numerous sketches of her life. Although occasionally ...
Generation Dead by Daniel Waters Phoebe Kendall is just your typical Goth girl with a crush. He’s strong and silent…and dead. All over the country, a strange phenomenon is occurring. Some teenagers who die aren’t staying dead. But when they come back to life, they are no longer the same. Feared and misunderstood, they are doing their best to blend into a society that doesn’t want them. The administration at Oakvale High attempts...
Gym Candy by Carl Deuker Having grown up in the shadow of his father’s failed NFL career, high-school football player Mick Johnson is determined not to make the same mistakes. But when he’s tackled just short of the goal in a pivotal game, he decides that vitamin supplements aren’t enough and begins purchasing “gym candy,” or steroids, from the trainer at his local gym. His performance starts breaking records and his father co...
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Homeboyz by Alan Lawrence Sitomer When Teddy Anderson’s little sister Tina is gunned down randomly in a drive-by shooting, the gangstas who rule the streets in the Anderson family’s rapidly deteriorating neighborhood dismiss the incident as just another case of RP, RT-wrong place, wrong time. According to gangsta logic, Tina doesn’t even count as a statistic. Teddy’s family is devastated. Mrs. Anderson sinks into deep depression...
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou After Maya Johnson, age five, is raped while visiting her mother in St. Louis, she and her older brother Bailey are returned to the loving care of Momma Henderson (the children’s grandmother) in Stamps, Arkansas. Because of her traumatic experience, Maya stops speaking – even five years after the incident. She becomes instead a keen observer of her surroundings, particularly with the r...
