Niver Creek’s Library Blog…

The Boy Who Dared
by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

This book is set in Germany at the start of Hitler taking over the German government. A teenage boy is very upset to see “Jewish” friends or merchants he knew all his life be taken to prison and their business taken over “for the good of Germany” he is also angry to be told what he can and cannot listen too on the radio and to have ALL books band (he loved old westerns). He decides to stand up to Hitlers rules and tries to get others to go along with him. But at what cost? This is a true story and it really makes one realize how much freedom we have in America and how we have to stand up to wrongs being done to others.

The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak

See, it’s easy! In fact, it’s so easy, I thought of another book I wanted to tell you about… One of the books that has affected me the most after reading it is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The Book Thief is a girl named Liesel who has been taken in by a foster family in Germany during World War II. Her love of books, stories, and words helps many neghibors, her friends, and family through many difficult, terrifying nights of war. The narrator is one of the busiest characters in the story…the narrator is Death, and in 1939 Nazi Germany, Death is extremely busy. With complete honesty and a different sense of humor, Death tells the story of The Book Thief and others living in fictional Molching, Germany. This book was often difficult to read–I can’t imagine living through what Liesel lived through–but I would get so caught up in her story I would stay up late into the night to finish just one more chapter. Liesel and her family were not special, they were ordinary people living through a war. What makes them extraordinary is they way they lived their lives, and that is what made this book so amazing to me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/books/27masl.html

Bud, Not Buddy
by Christopher Paul Curtis

I read Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. It was a really good book! It’s about a boy named Bud Caldwell who lived in Michigan during the Great Depression. He runs away from his foster home to look for his dad. He thinks his dad is a famous jazz musician becacause of a flyer his mom left him before she died. Lots of good and bad things happen along the way, but nothing will stop him from finding his dad!

Boot Camp
by Todd Stasser

This could happen to any teenager…

I am hurting, and stiff from laying on the cement floor face down. They have just finished the beating for now! How much more of this can I live through, or will I finally admit I need to “fix myself”.

I never did anything bad enough for my parents to have me “kidnapped” and put in this boot camp.
I just laughed at the word “boot” because that is what they have on when they kick me, what is really funny is that this is no camp but a prison for kids like me that are disrespectful, use drugs, skip school, or are just generally be an embarrasment to their parents. I have no rights. I am hit if I speak without permission. I am hit if I don’t answer “Sir”.

I have to get out! Can I escape before they kill me, or before the level 6 kids discover my plan and turn me in?

Boot Camp by Todd Stasser shows the abuse and evil that exists for teenagers placed there for no other reason than the fact they embarassed their parents, or refused to follow the Morman church her father is leader of. There are hundres of camps like this in the USA and thousands of kids are abused in an effort to make them better. Please read this and share it with your parents, you will live through every hit and punishment because you know you are not perfect and this could happen to you.

This is a quote from Thirteen Reasons Why…it’s basically why this book is written and what it’s about. What Hannah is saying pretty much sums up the main idea, but, to me, there is so much more to this book than that.