Harmless  by Dana Reinhardt, is a new book available in print and on CD in the Library's Teen Zone.  In this exciting book, a group of girls offer a harmless lie to cover some activities forbidden by their parents.  But, when they get involved in a crime and a tragedy, they are "forced" to add more little lies.  Soon their teacher is charged with a crime.  Finally each girl is faced with an awareness of where the harmless lies have taken them, and a personal decision about how they will respond.

Most of us will admit lying about something during our teenage years.  Often the lies are related to forbidden activities and to peer pressure.  However, even a small lie can go terribly wrong.  Perhaps that is why this book haunts the reader long after the last page is read.
 

Speak was a popular book (and tv movie - the Library has the DVD!) with girls.  Now Laurie Halse Anderson has written a book with a high school boy as the main character. Twisted may be even better than Speak.

At the end of his junior year, Tyler got into trouble for a calculated crazy act of graffiti at the school.  As punishment, he spent all summer sweating, doing manual labor, but started his senior year buff and famous on campus.  Bethany, the most popular girl in school, is now interested in him. Later, however, when naked photos of Bethany appear on the web, everyone blames Tyler for yet another crazy act, and his life goes dramatically downhill.  How depressing can life get before a person resorts to the worst solution possible? 

I loved this book for its glimpses into a guy's mind (as he looks at Bethany, for example).  It was funny until it got scary - I was tense for hours, wondering what decisions Tyler would make.  "No, don't do it!", my mind was shouting.  This book is also available on CD.

I recently read Breathe; a ghost story by Cliff McNish and thought it was one of the scariest books ever.  It's in the kids' section, tho.  Should it be?  A book isn't like a movie; if there are no pictures, what gives it "graphic" violence?  Perhaps it is only the way in which the book connects to our own fears. 

In Breathe, Jack, a 12-year-old boy with severe asthma and his mother come to a new home to try to move forward in their lives.  The boy's father has just died.  The new home is haunted with the ghosts of children who were brought there by a ghost mother.  The ghost mother keeps from moving on to hell by sucking life force from the ghost children.  The scariest parts were when the ghost mother takes on the body of Jack's mom and when a ghost child goes to The Nighmare Passage (hell).  However, if you know someone who has asthma, you will be quite afraid when the ghost mother who looks like mom attacks Jack and he can't breathe.   For which of us is an image of hell too scary?  Are there other people like me who are scared to death of an evil imposter inhabiting my mother?  Coraline  by Neil Gaiman is another book in which that happens.  What are the scariest books you've read?

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