Teen Scene
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The contestants competing in the Miss Dream Teen Beauty Pageant are flown to a secluded island to practice before the upcoming pageant. Unfortunately, their plane crashes upon arrival and only a few girls survive. Led by Miss Texas, the girls decide on a plan of action while waiting for rescue. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the girls, the island is not uninhabited. “The Corporation” is set up in a nearby volcano and have clandestine plans to sell arms to the country of Cha Cha, whose leader, Mo Mo B. Cha Cha, is having a love affair with a former Miss Dream Teen and now presidential hopeful, Ladybird Hope (who bears a remarkable resemblance to a certain former governor of Alaska in personality). Also, a ship of pirate actors from the hit show “Captain Bodacious” are shipwrecked and take up the task of surviving (with more than a little help from the girls) while also waiting for rescue. Little do they know that there is no rescue search planned. The Corporation has called off the search since it does not want anyone snooping around the island and possibly uncovering their plans. The entire book pokes fun at reality shows, consumerism and beauty products, and politics, but the isolation from their families also allows the girls to think and feel for themselves, which leads to topics of sex and sexuality, as well as what they really want to do with their lives. This is over-the-top funny and has lots of James Bond elements, in a beauty queen kind-of-way (picture hairspray weapons rather than guns). Commercials promoting such items as the Maxi Pad Pet pop-up throughout adding to the hilarity, as well as reports from the Corporation, and lots of footnotes explaining the products of the made-up beauty supply company. I can definitely see this becoming a movie. Recommended for readers in grades 9-12 who enjoy adventure/survival stories and satire, with a little love thrown into the mix. The story is for mature readers. Content includes foul language, sex, gays, transexuals, drinking, violence, and maybe even poisoning if you consider the local flora and fauna. 
When Clara falls for Christian, she falls hard. He’s just as much in love with her, and for the almost two years that they’re together, Clara ignores signals about the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The chapters alternate between her past relationship with Christian, and the present summer, when she has gone in hiding with her father to a beach town. This is a book about a controlling and obsessive relationship with an emotionally injured person—the kind that many teen girls as well as adult women find themselves in. Clara’s emotions—her sense that maybe she contributed to Christian’s crazed and desperate response to her, that she no longer knows who she is, or how to react normally to a potential boyfriend—all seem very real. While this book might have read as only a cautionary tale, the strong writing, the setting, and the gripping plot make this a worthwhile novel in its own right. Her relationship with her quirky father plays a large role, as well as the relationships she develops with adults and other teens during the beach summer. I was seized by the intensity of Clara’s fear and worry, and didn’t want to put this book down. For grades 8 and up.
Gwyneth Shepherd is a mostly ordinary 16-year-old living in modern day London. Mostly ordinary, except she can see and talk with ghosts. And her cousin, Charlotte, carries the family’s time traveling gene. When the story opens, everyone is waiting expectantly for Charlotte’s first journey into the past. Only things get turned on their head when it’s Gwyneth, not Charlotte, who becomes dizzy and finds herself on her own street, but in some hard-to-determine past. Suddenly, Gwyneth is plunged into a world of mysteries as part of an elite lineage of time travelers. While this book isn’t as complex as Harry Potter, there are elements that Harry Potter fans will find fun: British settings, a person who thought she was ordinary but is far from it, a fight between good and evil, and a complicated story with elaborate details that will take three volumes to work out. There’s some romance, too. This book, originally written in German, has charts, diary entries, and other mysterious clues interspersed between the story’s chapters. This is a real cliffhanger, and the next volume, Sapphire Blue isn’t due out until Spring 2012. So here’s your warning—read it now, but be prepared to be annoyed that you can’t start on the next book right away! Grades 7 and up. No objectionable content.
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