Deception
Abdel-Fattah,Randa. Ten Things I Hate about Me. Scholastic, Inc. 2009. 720L
Jamilah Towfeek hides her Lebanese-Muslim background from the other kids at her Australian school "to avoid people assuming I fly planes into buildings as a hobby." She dyes her hair blonde, wears blue contacts and stands by when popular kids make racist remarks. Passing as "Jamie" is fraught with difficulties: she can't invite friends to her house, lies to cover up her widower dad's strict rules and reveals her true self only to an anonymous boy she meets online (her e-mail address is "Ten_Things_I_Hate_About_Me"). Tensions at home and school culminate when the band she plays in at her madrassa (Islamic school) is hired to perform at her 10th-grade formal. Abdel-Fattah (Does My Head Look Big in This?) follows a predictable pattern and uses familiar devices, such as the understanding teacher ("If [your friends] don't know the real you, then you've already lost them"). On the other hand, the author brings a welcome sense of humor to Jamilah's insights about her culture, and she is equally adept at more delicate scenes, for example, Jamilah's father recounting memories of Jamilah's mother.
FergusonAlane Circle of Blood by Cameryn Mahoney works as the assistant to her father, the county coroner of Silverton, Colorado. But if that's not hard enough, her long-lost mother has made a surprise return to Cameryn's life. When her mother picks up a mysterious young hitchhiker, Cameryn senses that the girl is running from something. But before she can find out more, the girl is found dead—with a gun in her hand. Is it suicide? Or something even more sinister?
Ayarbe,Heidi. Freeze Frame. HarperCollins Publishers. 2008. 490L
No matter how many times Kyle rewrites the scene, he can't get it right. He tries it in the style of Hitchcock, Tarantino, Eastwood, all of his favorite directors—but regardless of the style, he can't remember what happened that day in the shed. The day Jason died. And until he can, there is one question that keeps haunting Kyle: Did he kill his best friend on purpose?
Blundell,Judy. What I Saw and How I Lied. Scholastic, Inc. 2008. 620L
When Evie's father returned home from World War II, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought more back with him than just good war stories. When movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe's company in postwar Austria, shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him . . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two. As she begins to realize that almost everything she believed to be a truth was really a lie, Evie must get to the heart of the deceptions and choose between her loyalty to her parents and her feelings for the man she loves. Someone will have to be betrayed. The question is . . . who?
Bryant,Jen. Ringside, 1925. Random House Children's Books. 2009.
The year is 1925, and the students of Dayton, Tennessee, are ready for a summer of fishing, swimming, and drinking root beer floats at Robinson’s Drugstore. But when their science teacher, J. T. Scopes, is arrested for having taught Darwin’s theory of evolution, it seems it won’t be an ordinary summer in Dayton. As Scopes’s trial proceeds, the small town pulses with energy and is faced with astonishing nationwide publicity. Suddenly surrounded by fascinating people and new ideas, Jimmy Lee, Pete, Marybeth, and Willy are thrilled. But amidst the excitement and circus-like atmosphere is a threatening sense of tension—not only in the courtroom, but among even the strongest of friends.
Cannon,A.E. Loser’s Guide to Life and Love. HarperCollins Publishers. 2008. 770L
Ordinary, boring Ed works a loser summer job at Reel Life Movies, where he doesn't even have his own name tag. He's stuck with "Sergio." Ed's only consolations are his two best friends. Shelving DVDs isn't so mind-numbingly dull with Scout cracking jokes, and after hours Ed hangs out with the superbrain, Quark. Life starts to look up when the girl of his dreams saunters into Reel Life. Ed knows he doesn't stand a chance . . . but maybe, just maybe Sergio does. All he has to do is pretend to be a smoldering Brazilian stud for the rest of his life. Simple, right? But . . . Ed's new dream girl has her own secrets, Scout wants to be more than Ed's best friend, and his buddy Quark wants Scout for himself.
Carey,Janet Lee. Dragons Keep. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2008.
Princess Rosalind Pendragon is meant to fulfill a 600-year-old prophecy from Merlin that she will restore her family's good name and end a war. Rosalind was born with one dragon talon, which is a fearful secret known only to the teen and her mother. It is kept hidden by the golden gloves that Rosalind is never without, and over the years, the queen tries desperately to find a cure for the curse. When Rosalind reveals her claw to Lord Faul, a dragon that has been terrorizing the island, her destiny is set in motion. Taken by him to be nursemaid to his motherless children, she learns of her dragon blood and of her mother's treachery. Rosalind and the dragons are bound together in a complex relationship that, in the end, helps her fulfill the prophecy. Her heroic journey comes full circle, and she finds internal peace as well as peace for her people.
Crutcher,Chris. Deadline. HarperCollins Publishers. 2009.
Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned. Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world. How can a pint-sized, smart-ass seventeen-year-old do anything significant in the nowheresville of Trout, Idaho? First, Ben makes sure that no one else knows what is going on—not his superstar quarterback brother, Cody, not his parents, not his coach, no one. Next, he decides to become the best 127-pound football player Trout High has ever seen; to give his close-minded civics teacher a daily migraine; and to help the local drunk clean up his act. And then there's Dallas Suzuki. Amazingly perfect, fascinating Dallas Suzuki, who may or may not give Ben the time of day. Really, she's first on the list. Living with a secret isn't easy, though, and Ben's resolve begins to crumble . . . especially when he realizes that he isn't the only person in Trout with secrets.
Giles,Gail. Right Behind You. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. 2008.
When he was nine, Kip set another child on fire. Now, after years in a juvenile ward, he is ready for a fresh start. But the ghosts of his past soon demand justice, and he must reveal his painful secret. How can Kip tell anyone that he really is—or was—a murderer?
Giles, Gail. Shattering Glass. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. 2003.
Fat, clumsy Simon Glass is a textbook geek, and all three of Rob's posse hates him, each for his own reasons. But Rob is driven by the need to prove his power, and so he decrees that they will take on the seemingly impossible task of making Simon popular. They take him shopping for a better look, get his hair styled, teach him how to behave. Rob extracts painful sacrifices and uneasy moral compromises to achieve the goal, but each of his followers has a hidden empty place and a related secret that holds them in bondage to his manipulations. Soon Simon is on his reluctant way to becoming Class Favorite, but then he begins to show a dark, cruel side, and an ability to do what the others can't--defy Rob.
Giles, Gail. What Happened to Cass McBride? Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. 2007.
Kyle Kirby has planned a cruel and unusual revenge on Cass McBride, the most popular girl in school, for the death of his brother David. He digs a hole. Drugs Cass. Kidnaps her. Puts her in a box-underground. He buries her alive. But Kyle makes a fatal error: Cass knows the power of words. She uses fear as her weapon to keep her nemesis talking - and to keep herself breathing during the most harrowing 48 hours of her life.
Haddon,Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2004. 1180L
Christopher Boone is a fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a great deal about math and very little about human beings. When he finds his neighbor’s dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his world upside down.
Hall,Barbara. Noah Confessions. Random House Children's Books. 2008.
At the age of 16, it's standard procedure for every girl at Lynnie Russo's posh Los Angeles prep school to get a car. So on her 16th birthday, Lynnie is startled when she opens the small gift box from her father—it doesn't contain the shiny new set of keys she was expecting. Instead she finds a worn-out bird charm bracelet. What can he be thinking? When she cuts school to go try surfing so as to have a special day, instead of grounding her, her father hands her a manuscript box and says, "Your mother wanted you to have this when it seemed you were losing perspective. I think now's the time." Through “The Noah Confessions,” Lynnie uncovers her family's secrets, loves, and tragedies, and comes to recognize that their past may not necessarily determine her future.
Jackson, Joshilyn. Girl Who Stopped Swimming. Grand Central Publishing. 2008.
Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty. Coming from a family with a literal skeleton in their closet, she's developed this talent all her life, whether helping her willful mother to smooth over the reality of her family's ugly past, or elevating humble scraps of unwanted fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts. Her sister Thalia, an impoverished "Actress" with a capital A, is her opposite, and prides herself in exposing the lurid truth lurking behind life's everyday facts. And while Laurel's life was neatly on track, a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in lovely suburban community, everything she holds dear is thrown into question the night she is visited by an ghost in her bedroom. The ghost appears to be her 14-year-old neighbor Molly Dufresne, and when Laurel follows this ghost , she finds the real Molly floating lifeless in her swimming pool. While the community writes the tragedy off as a suicide, Laurel can't. Reluctantly enlisting Thalia's aid, Laurel sets out on a life-altering investigation that triggers startling revelations about her own guarded past, the truth about her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming.
Reinhardt,Dana. Harmless. Random House Children's Books. 2008.
One Friday night Emma, Anna, and Mariah, three best friends, are out doing something they shouldn’t. They make up a story so they won’t get in trouble at home. It seems like the easy way out. What happens next challenges their friendship, their community, their relationships with their families, and their sense of themselves. What happens next shows the harm one lie can do.
Zindel, Lizabeth. Secret Rites of Social Butterflies. Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated. 2008.
When does truth become gossip? Maggie's parents have just split up, and she's moved from New Jersey to New York City with her mom. Desperate to make new friends and to distract herself from troubles at home, she falls in with a group of social butterflies at the ritzy private school she now attends. These girls keep a top-secret record of their classmates' most intimate details on a wall in one of their apartments. Maggie's friends insist they are collecting the truth—not gossip—about the lives of today's teenagers. But she soon learns that certain information in the wrong hands can do irreparable damage.
Jamilah Towfeek hides her Lebanese-Muslim background from the other kids at her Australian school "to avoid people assuming I fly planes into buildings as a hobby." She dyes her hair blonde, wears blue contacts and stands by when popular kids make racist remarks. Passing as "Jamie" is fraught with difficulties: she can't invite friends to her house, lies to cover up her widower dad's strict rules and reveals her true self only to an anonymous boy she meets online (her e-mail address is "Ten_Things_I_Hate_About_Me"). Tensions at home and school culminate when the band she plays in at her madrassa (Islamic school) is hired to perform at her 10th-grade formal. Abdel-Fattah (Does My Head Look Big in This?) follows a predictable pattern and uses familiar devices, such as the understanding teacher ("If [your friends] don't know the real you, then you've already lost them"). On the other hand, the author brings a welcome sense of humor to Jamilah's insights about her culture, and she is equally adept at more delicate scenes, for example, Jamilah's father recounting memories of Jamilah's mother.
FergusonAlane Circle of Blood by Cameryn Mahoney works as the assistant to her father, the county coroner of Silverton, Colorado. But if that's not hard enough, her long-lost mother has made a surprise return to Cameryn's life. When her mother picks up a mysterious young hitchhiker, Cameryn senses that the girl is running from something. But before she can find out more, the girl is found dead—with a gun in her hand. Is it suicide? Or something even more sinister?
Ayarbe,Heidi. Freeze Frame. HarperCollins Publishers. 2008. 490L
No matter how many times Kyle rewrites the scene, he can't get it right. He tries it in the style of Hitchcock, Tarantino, Eastwood, all of his favorite directors—but regardless of the style, he can't remember what happened that day in the shed. The day Jason died. And until he can, there is one question that keeps haunting Kyle: Did he kill his best friend on purpose?
Blundell,Judy. What I Saw and How I Lied. Scholastic, Inc. 2008. 620L
When Evie's father returned home from World War II, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought more back with him than just good war stories. When movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe's company in postwar Austria, shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him . . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two. As she begins to realize that almost everything she believed to be a truth was really a lie, Evie must get to the heart of the deceptions and choose between her loyalty to her parents and her feelings for the man she loves. Someone will have to be betrayed. The question is . . . who?
Bryant,Jen. Ringside, 1925. Random House Children's Books. 2009.
The year is 1925, and the students of Dayton, Tennessee, are ready for a summer of fishing, swimming, and drinking root beer floats at Robinson’s Drugstore. But when their science teacher, J. T. Scopes, is arrested for having taught Darwin’s theory of evolution, it seems it won’t be an ordinary summer in Dayton. As Scopes’s trial proceeds, the small town pulses with energy and is faced with astonishing nationwide publicity. Suddenly surrounded by fascinating people and new ideas, Jimmy Lee, Pete, Marybeth, and Willy are thrilled. But amidst the excitement and circus-like atmosphere is a threatening sense of tension—not only in the courtroom, but among even the strongest of friends.
Cannon,A.E. Loser’s Guide to Life and Love. HarperCollins Publishers. 2008. 770L
Ordinary, boring Ed works a loser summer job at Reel Life Movies, where he doesn't even have his own name tag. He's stuck with "Sergio." Ed's only consolations are his two best friends. Shelving DVDs isn't so mind-numbingly dull with Scout cracking jokes, and after hours Ed hangs out with the superbrain, Quark. Life starts to look up when the girl of his dreams saunters into Reel Life. Ed knows he doesn't stand a chance . . . but maybe, just maybe Sergio does. All he has to do is pretend to be a smoldering Brazilian stud for the rest of his life. Simple, right? But . . . Ed's new dream girl has her own secrets, Scout wants to be more than Ed's best friend, and his buddy Quark wants Scout for himself.
Carey,Janet Lee. Dragons Keep. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2008.
Princess Rosalind Pendragon is meant to fulfill a 600-year-old prophecy from Merlin that she will restore her family's good name and end a war. Rosalind was born with one dragon talon, which is a fearful secret known only to the teen and her mother. It is kept hidden by the golden gloves that Rosalind is never without, and over the years, the queen tries desperately to find a cure for the curse. When Rosalind reveals her claw to Lord Faul, a dragon that has been terrorizing the island, her destiny is set in motion. Taken by him to be nursemaid to his motherless children, she learns of her dragon blood and of her mother's treachery. Rosalind and the dragons are bound together in a complex relationship that, in the end, helps her fulfill the prophecy. Her heroic journey comes full circle, and she finds internal peace as well as peace for her people.
Crutcher,Chris. Deadline. HarperCollins Publishers. 2009.
Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned. Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world. How can a pint-sized, smart-ass seventeen-year-old do anything significant in the nowheresville of Trout, Idaho? First, Ben makes sure that no one else knows what is going on—not his superstar quarterback brother, Cody, not his parents, not his coach, no one. Next, he decides to become the best 127-pound football player Trout High has ever seen; to give his close-minded civics teacher a daily migraine; and to help the local drunk clean up his act. And then there's Dallas Suzuki. Amazingly perfect, fascinating Dallas Suzuki, who may or may not give Ben the time of day. Really, she's first on the list. Living with a secret isn't easy, though, and Ben's resolve begins to crumble . . . especially when he realizes that he isn't the only person in Trout with secrets.
Giles,Gail. Right Behind You. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. 2008.
When he was nine, Kip set another child on fire. Now, after years in a juvenile ward, he is ready for a fresh start. But the ghosts of his past soon demand justice, and he must reveal his painful secret. How can Kip tell anyone that he really is—or was—a murderer?
Giles, Gail. Shattering Glass. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. 2003.
Fat, clumsy Simon Glass is a textbook geek, and all three of Rob's posse hates him, each for his own reasons. But Rob is driven by the need to prove his power, and so he decrees that they will take on the seemingly impossible task of making Simon popular. They take him shopping for a better look, get his hair styled, teach him how to behave. Rob extracts painful sacrifices and uneasy moral compromises to achieve the goal, but each of his followers has a hidden empty place and a related secret that holds them in bondage to his manipulations. Soon Simon is on his reluctant way to becoming Class Favorite, but then he begins to show a dark, cruel side, and an ability to do what the others can't--defy Rob.
Giles, Gail. What Happened to Cass McBride? Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. 2007.
Kyle Kirby has planned a cruel and unusual revenge on Cass McBride, the most popular girl in school, for the death of his brother David. He digs a hole. Drugs Cass. Kidnaps her. Puts her in a box-underground. He buries her alive. But Kyle makes a fatal error: Cass knows the power of words. She uses fear as her weapon to keep her nemesis talking - and to keep herself breathing during the most harrowing 48 hours of her life.
Haddon,Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2004. 1180L
Christopher Boone is a fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a great deal about math and very little about human beings. When he finds his neighbor’s dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his world upside down.
Hall,Barbara. Noah Confessions. Random House Children's Books. 2008.
At the age of 16, it's standard procedure for every girl at Lynnie Russo's posh Los Angeles prep school to get a car. So on her 16th birthday, Lynnie is startled when she opens the small gift box from her father—it doesn't contain the shiny new set of keys she was expecting. Instead she finds a worn-out bird charm bracelet. What can he be thinking? When she cuts school to go try surfing so as to have a special day, instead of grounding her, her father hands her a manuscript box and says, "Your mother wanted you to have this when it seemed you were losing perspective. I think now's the time." Through “The Noah Confessions,” Lynnie uncovers her family's secrets, loves, and tragedies, and comes to recognize that their past may not necessarily determine her future.
Jackson, Joshilyn. Girl Who Stopped Swimming. Grand Central Publishing. 2008.
Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty. Coming from a family with a literal skeleton in their closet, she's developed this talent all her life, whether helping her willful mother to smooth over the reality of her family's ugly past, or elevating humble scraps of unwanted fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts. Her sister Thalia, an impoverished "Actress" with a capital A, is her opposite, and prides herself in exposing the lurid truth lurking behind life's everyday facts. And while Laurel's life was neatly on track, a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in lovely suburban community, everything she holds dear is thrown into question the night she is visited by an ghost in her bedroom. The ghost appears to be her 14-year-old neighbor Molly Dufresne, and when Laurel follows this ghost , she finds the real Molly floating lifeless in her swimming pool. While the community writes the tragedy off as a suicide, Laurel can't. Reluctantly enlisting Thalia's aid, Laurel sets out on a life-altering investigation that triggers startling revelations about her own guarded past, the truth about her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming.
Reinhardt,Dana. Harmless. Random House Children's Books. 2008.
One Friday night Emma, Anna, and Mariah, three best friends, are out doing something they shouldn’t. They make up a story so they won’t get in trouble at home. It seems like the easy way out. What happens next challenges their friendship, their community, their relationships with their families, and their sense of themselves. What happens next shows the harm one lie can do.
Zindel, Lizabeth. Secret Rites of Social Butterflies. Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated. 2008.
When does truth become gossip? Maggie's parents have just split up, and she's moved from New Jersey to New York City with her mom. Desperate to make new friends and to distract herself from troubles at home, she falls in with a group of social butterflies at the ritzy private school she now attends. These girls keep a top-secret record of their classmates' most intimate details on a wall in one of their apartments. Maggie's friends insist they are collecting the truth—not gossip—about the lives of today's teenagers. But she soon learns that certain information in the wrong hands can do irreparable damage.