“Catherine and Claudia’s Top Spring Reads” will be a recurring feature in the final months of the 2013-2014 school year. If you’re looking for your next independent reading book for Language Arts or are in need of a good read for summer, look no further! Summaries and ratings of three books will be published every two weeks.
Hate List by Jennifer Brown is about a high school junior named Valerie Leftman. On May 2nd, 2009, Valerie’s boyfriend, Nick Levil, open fires on their high school because of a “hate list” they made containing kids from school. Valerie spends the rest of the book trying to convince herself, and everyone else, that what happened was not her fault. She also tries to find ways to make amends with the families of the victims.
Stars: 9.2/10
Rating: R
It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini is about a 15-year-old named Craig. Craig tells of his depression, which is caused by too much pressure from his exclusive high school. Craig checks himself into a hospital after calling a suicide hotline, and the hospital puts him in Six North, the adult psychiatric wing. It’s Kind of a Funny Story is mainly about Craig learning to cope with his depression and the people in Six North.
Stars: 8.7/10
Rating: PG-13
Paper Towns by John Green After a middle of the night adventure, Quentin’s neighbor, Margo, disappears, leaving only a few clues for Quentin. Quentin, with the help of his friends Ben and Radar, looks over the clues and visits all the places that he went with Margo. After a while, Quentin figures out that Margo went to a pseudovision, a town that was started but never finished. He visits all the pseudovisions in Florida with no luck. Then, one day, after exploring a social media site, he finds out that Margo was going to a pseudovision in upstate New York, so on graduation day he recruits Ben, Radar, and Ben’s girlfriend, Lacey, to go find Margo.
Stars: 7.8/10
Rating: PG