Sarah Dessen fans!

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen! 
 
Do you love Sarah Dessen's books?  Her newest book will be available for checkout on May 5th!!  
Sydney is used to feeling invisible as her brother Peyton has always been the center of attention, and as of late, deep concern in her family. Now Peyton is serving jail time for a drunk driving incident and Sydney is feeling lost and disconnected. Then she meets the Chatham family and she begins to find her place among the warmth and chaos of this loving group.  
"Dessen delves deeper than ever into the complex dynamics of families suffering loss and confronting changes that upend everything. Once again, Dessen demonstrates her tremendous skill in evoking powerful emotions through careful, quiet prose, while delivering a satisfying romance. The author’s many devotees are sure to enjoy this weighty addition to her canon."  from the Publisher's Weekly starred book review.

Place a hold on this book here: http://catalog.trumbullct-library.org:8081/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=143C325417F6F.67&profile=remote&lang=eng&logout=true&startover=true


Check out the author's website here: http://sarahdessen.com/

The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds

This one is a quiet gentle novel about a young boy trying to deal with the recent death of his mother to cancer and his father's subsequent descent into alcoholism.  Matt lives in Brooklyn New York in a pretty tough neighborhood.  He and his mother were extremely close, so he is devastated when she is diagnosed with breast cancer and dies shortly after. His father is unable to deal with the death of his beloved wife and buries his sorrow in a bottle of alcohol.  In an attempt to deal with his grief Matt takes on an after school job at the local funeral home where his mother's service was held and begins attending funerals of strangers.  This gives him a strange sense of peace and comfort and helps him to understand that he is not alone in grieving for a loved one. Also, the funeral director, Mr. Ray, takes Matt under his wing and vows to take care of him when his dad is involved in a crippling accident that removes him from the home for several weeks. When one of the funerals Matt helps to set up and attends turns out to be for the grandmother of a girl he has had his eye on for a while his life takes an upward turn.
If you are looking for a book with a lot of action, this one isn't for you.  It's a heartfelt story that has a real feel good type of ending. From the author's afterword:  "This is going to sound weird, but the only reason this book could be written at all is because my mother took me to a lot of funerals at a very young age. So...uh...thanks, Ma."  

A book with a literary theme

Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
Jam has been enrolled by her parents in The Wooden Barn, a school in rural Vermont for troubled and disturbed teens, or as Jam puts it, "kids with issues". She is promptly chosen to participate in a Special Topics English  class taught by Mrs. Quenell, an elderly teacher who is retiring after the current semester. The class concentrates on one author, a different one each semester. This session it's Sylvia Plath, author of The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel about the journey through severe depression for those who lived in the mid 20th century, and collections of poetry.  Each student is given an antique leather journal with instructions to write in it twice a week until the class ends.  The journals have some kind of special power that transports each student back into their past to confront their own individual issues. They are also commissioned to take care of and watch out for each other throughout the semester.

This is a book about existing in the present, but living in the past. It's about accepting things that happened that you cannot change and letting things go when you have to. Learning to put the past firmly in the past and to look forward with anticipation to the future, for, as Jam says, “the rest of life—that imperfect thing—[is] waiting.” From Belzhar.

During the final class  the students confront Mrs. Quenell about the journals and how much she knew about what they could do.  She knew they could help these handpicked students with their "issues", but she also knew there was much more going on.

“But it’s never just been the journals that have made the difference, I don’t think. It’s also the way the students are with one another . . . the way they talk about books and authors and themselves. Not just their problems, but their passions too. The way they form a little society and discuss whatever matters to them. Books light the fire—whether it’s a book that’s already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.” Mrs. Quenell, from Belzhar.