Books for Teens

This is a great book for upper elementary students through middle schoolers.  I won this book in a raffle and I quickly finished the book.  It reminded me a lot of the movie National Treasure.  It is basically a treasure hunt book.  The main characters Amy and Dan Cahill are left the first clue by the grandmother.  Unfortunately, she left the same clue to many other relatives, so the race is on to see who can figure it out first.  The race leads to many historic places, with enemies ready to trap them at every turn.  Book one ends with clue #1 solved, but does this mean we have to read 38 more books to find out what the mystery treasure is?  I liked the book well enough, but I’m not sure I want to commit to reading 39 books.  Something that was cool is that each book comes with clue cards to help you decipher the big mystery.  You can go online and log in to find out more about the characters.  There are also additional card packs to buy if you want more clues.  I think kids will enjoy the internet connection and the chance to win prizes.  I went ahead and put this in my elementary library to see how the kids react to it.

I really enjoyed this first novel in the House of Night Series by PC Cast.  I must admit right up front that this book is more “mature” material than Twilight.  The main character Zoey goes to a regular high school and has a normal life until a tracker approaches her in the school hall and marks her.  What this all means is that she has been marked as a fledgling vampire and must immediately start attending the House of Night (which is like a prep store for vampires.)  Zoey must leave behind her “kind of” ex boyfriend and her not so good home life.  Things start looking up for her as she gets settled in to the House of Night.  Her mentor is wonderful, her roommate is a reliable new friend and a cute guy seems interested in her.  The only problem is that she is marked to be different than all those around her.  Her mark is filled-in, while all the other fledglings only have an outline.  Also, she can feel all the elements: earth, wind, fire, water, spirt and this is very rare.  Because of this she attracts negative attention from the popular kids in school.  Book one ends with Zoey and Aphrodite going head to head to see who will control a secret society called the Dark Daughters.

I enjoyed this enough to go out today and snag book two Betrayed from Barnes and Noble.