Very LeFreak-- Rachel Cohn

For those of you who luuuurve to read books with quirky and interesting characters, and you aren't annoyed by their alarming ignorance of their own flaws, then you are in luck.

Meet Very LeFreak. Born to a free spirited pyromaniac mother and an unknown father, Very has traveled the world and lived the gloriously unstable life every kid dreams of having... until they actually do. Very's mother dies at the end of her high school years, and she goes to live with her one remaining relative, an elderly aunt who pulls some strings to get Very a scholarship to Columbia. We meet Very during her college years. She is 100% and totally a technology nerd, a total hottie in that Botticelli woman way, and is the center (and usually creator) of every social event. She sleeps with her iphone, ipod, and laptop. She has a supersecret online romance with someone names El Virus. She and her friends create The Grid, which is an underground social networking site the students use to plan parties, flashmobs, and other not-exactly-legal but extremely fun activities. But when Very stops living IRL and can only communicate through her various means of technology, her stability at Columbia begins to crumble... she is losing her scholarships, her friends, and the only hint of a normal life she has ever had. So finally, her friends plan an intervention... and Very gets sent to technology rehab.

Even though this book is about college students, I do see it's place in the YA collection. Cohn has written several other YA books and her readers would look for her latest in the YA section. Plus, the subject matter is more relatable to teens and young adults than it would be to other readers. Very is a quirky character (how could you not be with a name like Very LeFreak). I predict that some teens will *love* her and others will be totally annoyed by her. As much as I tried not to, I fell into the love category. I would recommend this book to readers of Cohn's other books, fans of Anne Brashares or Sarah Dessen, and to teens who like books that feel very "now" and up-to-date with technology.

The Maze Runner-- James Dashner

So is it just me or is everything a trilogy these days?

Apparently this book, The Maze Runner, is the first in a trilogy... and I'm moderately excited about that.

This first book in the series was a major page-turner. It begins with Thomas waking up in an elevator-like box in pitch-black-darkness. He can't remember anything about himself but his name, and although he can't see, he can tell that he is traveling upupupupup...

When Thomas arrives at the top, and the door to the box is opened, he is greeted by a Lord of the Flies-esque crew of boys who reluctantly show him the ropes. Apparently they all arrived the same way, no one remembers anything about their history, and they all only know their first names. In order to survive, the boys have created a mini-society and each person has an important role to play. Thomas is most intrigued by the maze runners, the kids who literally run through the maze that surrounds their domaine each day looking for an exit. To make things even more impossible, the walls to the maze move multiple times a day and there are strange murderous creatures roaming around waiting to kill you (think Labyrinth minus Bowie and puppets, plus puss filled robot mosquito thingies).

But one day the box opens up to reveal a girl, the first in two years... and she can telepathically communicate with Thomas. All she knows is that she is harbinger of the endtimes, and the boys must make an escape right away or they will all die.

This is a quick-read and I predict it will be pretty popular with boys. It's reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, The Hunger Games, and other books where the adults are gone and the kids survive on their own. This book will be published on October 16, 2009.

Little Brother- Cory Doctorow

Little Brother has been getting all kinds of buzzzzz on those YA blogs and listserves I read... and when an ARC showed up for the Juvie kids, I thought I'd better read it before I passed it on. I am not a big techie-scifi kinda girl, but I do love a good revolution and I always cheer for the underdog. Little Brother would be good for fans of books like Tashjian's The Gospel According to Larry (for the taking-down-the-man portions), Anderson's Feed and Westerfeld's Ugies (for the techno-revolution stuff).

It is the very near future, and terrorists have attacked San Francisco. Marcus and his three ARGing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game) and LARPing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARP) friends are found near the source of the attack and are arrested. They are brutally beaten, tortured, and treated like the scum of the earth... they received inhumane treatment that would not be appropriate for adults, let alone minors. When Marcus is released from prison a week later, the rage and rebellion he feels is uncontainable. If Big Brother wants to spy on him, control his life and watch his movements, then he wants retribution. Marcus creates Little Brother, the online group of teenage hackers and technogeeks who use technology (and their X-Boxes) to bring democracy back to America after the Department of Homeland Security flexes its muscles in a terroristic, violent manner.

While the technology and intriguing characters are central components to the plot of this novel, the techno-rants and freedom of speech tirades Marcus sometimes spews can be a little heavy handed. However, I don't think this will discourage teens, and I think they will be able to identify with the idealism expressed in the book. Also, Marcus is not a perfect character. He is flawed, but acknowledges and learns from his mistakes, which makes him even more believable.

In Little Brother, all kinds of cool gadgets and hacks are described. Here is a website (which I believe is managed by the author) that explains how to create most of what's in the book. Wouldn't be fun to do some hacking as a library program?

http://www.instructables.com/member/w1n5t0n/