Teen Read Awards

Indigo (Chapters) has just announced it first annual Teens Read Awards. The awards were launched to encourage Canadians between the ages of 12-18 to selected their favourite titles across a number of categories; including best book to flick, best lip lock, best new writer, best hero, best villian, best hottie. Participants are eligible to win , gift cards, movie tickets or even a Kobo ereader.

Sound fun.
Here's the link
http://www2.teenreadawards.ca/

Read On.

The Old Country

The Old Country by Mordicai Gerstein

This is storytelling at it's finest, with vivid detail that leaves you feeling like you've just gotten lost in an enchanted wood and witnessed some very peculiar things, talking animals, fairies elves and the like, a goose who can lay golden eggs and a young girl on a mission to set things right.

I loved it!

Here's the summary:

The Old Country is a novel of singular insight and imagination set in a land where "every winter was a hundred years and every spring a miracle... where the water was like music and the music was like water... where all the fairy tales come from, where there was magic - and there was war." There, Gisella stares a moment too long into the eyes of a fox, and she and the fox exchange shape. Gisella's quest to get her girl-body back takes her on a journey across a war-ravaged country that has lost its shape. She encounters sprites, talking animals, a chicken that lays a golden egg, a court with a spider for a judge -- and bloodshed, destruction and questions of power and justice. Finally, looking into the eyes of a fox once more, she faces a strange and startling choice about her own nature.

The Old Country is at once timeless and contemporary - a tale that draws on a wealth of storytelling tradition and dramatizes the question of what it is to be human. Part adventure story, part fable; exciting, beautifully told, rich in humor and wisdom, it is the work of an artist and storyteller at the height of his powers.

Stealing Heaven

Stealing Heaven by Elizabeth Scott

From the book -

I can pry the molding off a window without making a sound. I can drive a car, climb into a house, deal with growling dogs. I know exactly how much your average 19th century tea service weighs and how many pieces it has.

For silver i learned to read, write, work numbers. For silver I learned the names of every plantation from Virginia to Florida. I can tell you which ones we've visited, which ones we want to, which ones we never will. I can tell you how to find someone's house no matter where it is. I can tell you what to do if there is silver inside.

The story of my life can be told in silver; in chocolate mills, serving spoons, and services for twelve. The story of my life has nothing to do with me. The story of my life is things. Thins that aren't mine, that won't ever be mine. It's all I've ever known.

I wish it wasn't.

This was one of my first picks for summer reading, I took it with me to the lake, and it was perfect, captivating charcters that you feel for. You can't help wanting something good/different to happen for Dani, you know she's good - it's just the way she's been brought up. Butwe all know, it's hard to change.

If you're a Sarah Dessen fan and are looking for something similar in the realistic fiction genre try some of Elizabeth Scott's books I think you'll like them.